Marie Curie Actions: Inspiring Researchers - Imdea

Mother Nature’smoleculesBimore ‘solves problems of great societal relevance,’ says projectcoordinator Larry Luer of the Madrid Institute of AdvancedStudies. Take energy sources. The oil needed to produce petrolis in short supply. While an alternative has been developed –biofuels – this option also has limitations. The production ofbiofuels is in direct competition with food production, and canlead to hunger among poor populations if it is given priority.Artifi cial photosynthesis offers a solution. The process makespossible the production of fuels from sunlight. And makingsome sit up and take notice is the fact that the system can beset up in deserts, avoiding competition with agriculture. Bimoreis investigating the elementary processes needed to constructsuch an artifi cial photosynthetic system.Bimore’s research fi eld is molecular electronics – an interdisciplinarytheme that spans physics, chemistry and materials science.Its unifying feature is its use of molecular building blocks topower electronic components, both passive (e.g. resistivewires) and active (e.g. transistors). One of its ultimate visionsis the ‘molecular computer’ in which the computing is done bysingle molecules, at a higher speed than today’s processorsby orders of magnitude.The concept of molecular electronics has caused excitementamong both science fi ction readers and writers, and scientists.The prospect of size reduction in electronics, down to the scaleof a single molecule, has sparked imagination in both quarters.On these extremely small length scales, materials have vastlydifferent properties than in the everyday world. These propertiesneed to be known and understood in order to fully exploittheir potential. Bimore is contributing to this understandingon a molecular scale. ‘This brings us closer to the molecularcomputer, but also tells us how an artifi cial light-harvestingdevice should be built,’ explains Dr Luer.In nature, sunlight is absorbed by chlorophyll and then travelsthrough a photosynthetic complex until it fi nds the ‘reactioncentre’, where light energy generates electron gradient to229