The aim of the project is to achieve greater control over chemical reactions by using photons as a catalyst and thereby making it possible to design new materials of light and matter. Markus Kowalewski has described the aims of the project in a summary:
Gaining detailed control over chemical reactions has always been a chemists dream. In the past quantum coherent control has been pursuing this dream by using specially tailored light fields to control chemical reactions on an atomistic level. New groundbreaking experiments bring this dream this dream closer to reality by showing that nanostructures acting as resonators can change the outcome of chemical reactions. Those nanostructure bring out the quantum nature of light, which allows to steer photochemical reactions into different reaction products. The light field gets trapped in the resonator, interacts with the molecules, and creates a new hybrid quantum state in which the light field becomes indistinguishable from the molecules. In this regime the light can act as a catalyst and change the outcome of a chemical reaction. This way of creating light-matter material opens up a broad variety of new possibilities. One may think of optimized electro optical devices such as light emitting diodes and improved solar cells. Other examples we are interested in are light driven catalysts. Having control over the photochemistry may also allow us to protect light sensitive substances from damaging ultraviolet light. In the ERC funded project we will theoretically investigate the possibilities to optimize these processes and to design new light matter materials.
The ERC has published an article about the grants which can be found by clicking here.