Design and Synthesis of a Nano-winch

Technical progress in the field of Scanning Probe Microscopy (SPM) has opened the way for the development of new surface-mounted artificial molecular machines, which can be addressed at the single molecule scale. In this context, a ruthenium-based molecular motor has been shown to undergo controlled unidirectional and reversible rotation when fueled with electrons delivered by the tip of a Scanning Tunneling Microscope. In this chapter, we report our efforts towards a deeper understanding of the mechanical properties of this molecular motor. In view of complementary force measurements to be performed at the single molecule scale using SPM techniques, the organometallic structure of the motor has been derivatized to append a long chain terminated by a hook. We detail here the design of this nano-winch architecture and the modular synthesis of a first prototype dedicated to Atomic Force Microscopy-based Single Molecule Force Spectroscopy experiments.