A light-driven three-dimensional plasmonic nanosystem that translates molecular motion into reversible chiroptical function.

ABSTRACT: Nature has developed striking light-powered proteins such as bacteriorhodopsin, which can convert light energy into conformational changes for biological functions. Such natural machines are a great source of inspiration for creation of their synthetic analogues. However, synthetic molecular machines typically operate at the nanometre scale or below. Translating controlled operation of individual molecular machines to a larger dimension, for example, to 10-100 nm, which features many practical applications, is highly important but remains challenging. Here we demonstrate a light-driven plasmonic nanosystem that can amplify the molecular motion of azobenzene through the host nanostructure and consequently translate it into reversible chiroptical function with large amplitude modulation. Lig

SUBMITTER: Kuzyk A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4740900 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature