Maxwell’s demon describes a thought experiment in which a ‘demon’ regulates the flow of particles between two adjoining spaces, establishing a potential gradient without appearing to do work. This seeming paradox led to the understanding that sorting entails thermodynamic work, a foundational concept of information theory. In the past centuries, many systems analogous to Maxwell’s demon have been introduced in the form of molecular information, molecular pumps and ratchets. Here we report a functional example of a Maxwell’s demon that pumps material over centimetres, whereas previous examples operated on a molecular scale. In our system, this demon drives directional transport of o-fluoroazobenzene between the arms of a U-tube apparatus upon light irradiation, transiting through an aqueous membrane containing a coordination cage. The concentration gradient thus obtained is further harnessed to drive naphthalene transport in the opposite direction.

麦克斯韦妖描述了一个思想实验，其中“恶魔”调节两个相邻空间之间的粒子流，建立一个潜在的梯度，但看起来并不做功。这种看似悖论使人们认识到排序需要热力学功，这是信息论的基本概念。在过去的几个世纪中，许多类似于麦克斯韦妖的系统以分子信息、分子泵和棘轮的形式被引入。在这里，我们报告了一个麦克斯韦妖的功能示例，该示例将材料泵送到厘米以上，而之前的示例是在分子尺度上运行的。在我们的系统中，这种恶魔在光照射下驱动邻氟偶氮苯在 U 形管装置的臂之间定向传输，穿过含有配位笼的水膜。由此获得的浓度梯度进一步用于驱动萘沿相反方向输送。