Atoms in a molecule may rearrange to cope with the environment:
Molecules have adapability (2010)
Molecules are the most flexible and versatile machines existing in nature. Though atoms remain inside a molecule as a part of an integrated architecture, at the same time they are also independent. The degree of their independence depends on the global geometry of the molecule. The most important question is that how a local change in a few atoms could survive, resistance from all other atoms to get back to the initial structure will not revert back the system to the initial configuration.
Why have we succeeded in probing the adaptability?
Normally it is not possible to detect adaptability of a molecule since every single molecule develops a resistive force to retain its structure. However, we succeeded for the following reasons.
1. We have selected a double planar molecule, which has a relative rotation of the two planes. Any small change in the structure would be reflected in the relative angle between the planes.
2. The molecule is redox active at the same time.
3. The pseudo charge rotates around the molecule, and each location is associated with a particular rotation angle between the planes.
4. Each relative angle between the two planes is associated with an unique electronic feature, therefore we could detect a particular state by various possible means.
The future of double planar electronics
We can encode multiple electronic properties in a single system and then evolve any one of them whenever necessary. This is extremely important for building an intelligent device. Based on a larged number of entangled arguments a particular property could emerge. These particular characteristics of logically selecting a property have always been considered as the prerogatives of nature.
Rose Bengal is an example. There could be several such molecules which could be used to verify the principle explored here.
An warning for molecular electronics
Apparently the work bears a signature of hope for the field of molecular electronics. However it is not the truth. Our experiment is also a direct evidence for the fact that "one molecule one property" is not an absolute concept.
How much realistic is the claim that "this is the evidence for breaking down the concept of one-molecule-one property"?
This has always been established that molecular conformer can have different properties, therefore the obvious question arises, where is the novelty in this work. The point is that, we have used a new defintion of a conformer. These kinds of conformers are created "for a transient time" and then they disappear. We can not define these molecular species as the conventional conformer.
Earlier the defintion of conformers were based on significant noticable changes. Therefore, entire study is based on new tools and new analysis techniques that has been devised to execute this particular study of "transient mode conformers".
Untill date transient conformer's properties we used to ignore because proving their existence was very challenging. We therefore consider some properties of a molecule for which molecule were never the subject of investigation as it's multiple conformers.
