Synthetic molecular motors continue to attract great interest due to their ability to transduce energy into nanomechanical motion, the potential to do work and drive systems out-of-equilibrium. Of particular interest are unidirectional rotary molecular motors driven by chemical fuel or light. Probing the mechanistic details of their operation at the single-molecule level is hampered by the diffraction limit, which prevents the collection of dynamic positional information by traditional optical methods. Here, we use defocused wide-field imaging to examine the unidirectional rotation of individual molecular rotary motors on a quartz surface in unprecedented detail. The sequential occupation of nanomechanical states during the UV and heat-induced cycle of rotation are directly imaged in real-time. The approach will undoubtedly prove important in elucidating the mechanistic details and assessing the utility of novel synthetic molecular motors in the future.

中文翻译：

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紫外线驱动的表面结合分子马达的散焦成像

合成分子电动机由于其将能量转换为纳米机械运动的能力，做功和驱动系统失衡的潜力而继续引起人们的极大兴趣。特别令人感兴趣的是由化学燃料或光驱动的单向旋转分子电动机。探测其在单分子水平上的运转机理的细节受到衍射极限的阻碍，这限制了传统光学方法无法收集动态位置信息。在这里，我们使用散焦的宽视场成像以前所未有的细节检查了单个分子旋转电机在石英表面上的单向旋转。在紫外光和热诱导的旋转周期中，纳米机械状态的连续占据可直接实时成像。