Extracting nontrivial work from ordinary chemical reactions

Recent studies propose that chemical reactions exemplify active matter. Testing this hypothesis experimentally, we embed achiral gear-shaped objects within the environment of what has become a prototypical chemical reaction: the CuAAc click reaction. Our microscopy observations show that achiral gears rotate preferentially – clockwise and anticlockwise, according to the circumstances – as anticipated for active matter. Step-size distributions are especially informative when considering how they track the chemical reaction kinetics, from far-from-equilibrium to the equilibrium state.