Nobel Prize of Chemistry 2016

Jean-Pierre Sauvage (France), James Fraser Stoddart (USA), and Bernard Lucas Feringa (Netherlands)

The Royal Academy of Sciences of Sweden has awarded three chemists: Jean-Pierre Sauvage, of the University of Strasbourg (France); Sir James Fraser Stoddart, from Northwestern University, Evanston, United States; and Bernard Lucas Feringa, from the University of Groningen (Netherlands) for the design and synthesis of molecular machines."
The three chemists have developed molecules with controllable movements, which can perform a task when energy is added. The Academy has highlighted their works in miniaturizing machines and taking chemistry to a new dimension.

In 1983, Jean-Pierre Sauvage took the first step towards the creation of a molecular machine by successfully connecting two ring-shaped molecules, forming a chain. A catenan, as it is scientifically termed, is a mechanically intertwined molecular architecture. The second breakthrough was made by Fraser Stoddart in 1991 when he developed a rotaxane, which is a macrocycle traversed by a dumbbell-shaped molecule. Stoddart showed that the ring or macrocycle was able to move along the axis of the dumbbell. The applications: a molecular elevator, a molecular muscle and a computer chip of molecular functioning. Finally, Bernard Feringa was the first person to develop a molecular engine. In 1999 he devised a molecular rotor blade that rotated continuously in the same direction. Through the molecular motors it has rotated a glass cylinder that is about 10,000 times larger than the same motor; and also designed a nanocar.

The molecular engine is currently in the same phase of development as the electric motor in the thirties of the nineteenth century, but will be of great importance in the creation of new materials, sensors and energy storage systems