One of the ultimate research goals of material of material science would be the construction of molecular machines, where one molecule mechanically works as a machine by external energy sources. As such molecular machines, some analyogues of rotors, gears, switches, shuttles, turnstiles, and ratchets have been proposed. However, molecular motors with power-mechanism have never been made, although biological motors are common in living things. In addition, in the molecular motors, it has remained very difficult to convert energy into unidirectional rotatory motion. Namely in the construction of molecular motors, it was a major problem to control the direction of rotation. We report here the first construction of a light-powered chiral molecular motor, which photochemically rotates only in one-direction rflecting the chirality of the motor molecule. The motor rotation is controlled by the irradiation of hight and molecular chirality.
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