What happens within molecules immediately after interaction with light?

European project TOMATTO from Politecnico di Milano receives a €12M ERC Synergy grant to investigate new frontiers of light-matter interaction

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.

Fonte: Politecnico di Milano

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

Anche questo, come tutti i progetti di ricerca del Politecnico di Milano, è possibile grazie ai nostri dottori di ricerca, che sono tra i migliori al mondo. Se vuoi aiutare uno studente bisognoso ad intraprendere il percorso di Dottorato, aiutaci a finanziare una borsa: ogni contributo può fare la differenza. Donate now

Credits header: Photo by Sandip Kalal on Unsplash

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