| Posted: February 24, 2010 |
Nanoswitch changes its configuration based on surrounding pH level |
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(Nanowerk News) In nanotechnology, mastering the machinery of chemical bonds is tricky business – and the fact that they are tiny, at the molecular level, is just one hurdle. Dartmouth researcher Ivan Aprahamian and his team have developed a new molecular switch that changes its configuration as a function of the pH of the environment.
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This discovery, using synthetic materials, mimics natural, biological molecular motors such as the F1-ATPase. This might someday help lead to targeted drug delivery systems, molecular-level data storage, and molecular electronics, important objectives in nanotechnology.
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| Ivan Aprahamian
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The study appeared in December online issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
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“The switching process takes place via a rotation around the carbon-nitrogen double bond, and it turns out that our system is the first chemically activated rotary switch that relies on rotation around a double bond as opposed to rotation around a single bond,” said Aprahamian, an assistant professor of chemistry, who explains that rotation around a single bond yields multiple conformations, whereas rotation around a double bond affords two configurations.
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“Light-induced configurational switches are known and have been used in various applications. Ours is chemically driven, similar to biological motors, which can lead to new possibilities in nanotechnology”.
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Aprahamian’s co-author on the paper is Shainaz Landge, a post-doctoral researcher at Dartmouth.
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