Using light to control molecules
How a structure is designed is often limited by what the designer can see or touch. For chemistry researchers to work on the nanometre scale, they need new tools to manipulate chemical reactions. To control structures on this scale, researchers from the project ENPHOC (Environmental & dynamical effects in computational photochemistry) created molecular machines that work with light to control chemical reactions. By using lasers or finely tuned light pulses, scientists figured out how to control molecular processes called photochemical reactions. These photochemical reactions are extremely complex, but scientists used advanced computing to simulate the molecular interactions at an atomic scale. With these simulations and the ability to control molecular processes, ENPHOC devised simplified theoretical models that can be transferred between systems. The project also used these state-of-the-art methods to assess the mechanics, cost and accuracy of different chemical reactions. This study enabled scientists to better understand photochemical reactions and to standardise the procedures used to handle these reactions. The use of light and viewable simulations for chemical reactions will help advance the field of nanotechnology.
Keywords
Molecular machines, chemical reactions, nanometre, lasers, molecular processes, photochemical reactions