What happens within molecules immediately after interaction with light?

Prof. Mauro Nisoli (Department of Physics, Head of the Attosecond Research Center at Politecnico di Milano), along with Fernando Martín (IMDEA and Universidad Autónoma de Madrid) and Nazario Martín (Universidad Complutense de Madrid), have been awarded an ERC Synergy Grant for the TOMATTO project (the ultimate time scale in organic molecular opto-electronics, the attosecond).

Researchers will explore what happens within individual molecules immediately after interaction with light. This is uncharted territory, since light triggers events that are not easily accessible, happening as they do in extremely short time scales, in the order of attoseconds. The goal here is to study and – possibly – control the light-induced motion of electrons in molecules with an unprecedented temporal resolution; researchers also aim to understand how the interaction with light is influenced by the molecular structure, in order to alter this structure according to a specific design.

This project brings together skills and competences from different research centers and universities. The research, coordinated by a team of experts in laser technologies, is the synthesis of new organic materials and computational methods. The team in Politecnico di Milano will focus on the experimental validation of theoretical work using latest generation instruments. The end goal is to engineer the molecular response to be able to produce materials with improved opto-electronic characteristics.

TOMATTO will be funded by an ERC Synergy Grant under the Horizon 2020 scheme and will receive almost 12 million Euro of funding over 6 years. Of these, 5 million will be allocated to Politecnico di Milano.

Cover photo by starline – www.freepik.com

Credits header: Photo by Sandip Kalal on Unsplash