In 2016, Sauvage and two other researchers were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry “for the design and synthesis of molecular machines”, which are “the world’s smallest machines”, as the press release summarises. The development of nanomachines is a growing field. The concept is inspired by nature: muscle fibres or the flagella and cilia of bacteria are molecular motors with moving parts that work when supplied with energy. Catenanes were the first step towards the construction of nanomachines. In 1983, the French chemist Jean-Pierre Sauvage and his collaborators constructed the first catenane : two interlocking rings, but with the peculiarity that the rings are two molecules linked not by chemical bonds, but by their physical structure, like links in a chain.
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