Supramolecular Photochemistry: Faraday Discussion

Since its inception in 1987, the field of Supramolecular Photochemistry has experienced impressive growth, and now impacts on many topics, including artificial photosynthesis, light-activated molecular machines, molecular logic gates, and luminescence sensing and imaging. The field has matured, taking advantage on new instrumentation and advances in synthesis, and it is now time to consider where we are and where we want to be in the near future.

Format

The Faraday Division have been organising high impact Faraday Discussions in rapidly developing areas of physical chemistry and its interfaces with other scientific disciplines for over 100 years.
Faraday Discussions have a special format where research papers written by the speakers are distributed to all participants before the meeting, and most of the meeting is devoted to discussing the papers. Everyone contributes to the discussion - including presenting their own relevant research. The research papers and a record of the discussion are published in the journal Faraday Discussions.

Themes

• Natural and artificial photosynthesis

New information derived from the study of natural systems will be discussed and used to aid design of artificial photosynthetic systems. Attention will be given to both synthetic light-harvesting antennae and molecular devices capable of efficacious charge-separation.

• Light-activated molecular machines and logic gates

The study of multi-component systems where illumination induces controlled mechanical movements (machines) and/or where light can be exploited as input/output information. The relevance to protein folding should not be missed.

• Self-organization of photo-active nanostructures

Identifying new and improved ways to assemble supramolecular entities with a photo-active unit, such as liquid crystals, organo-gels, dendrimers, etc. Although synthesis plays a crucial role in the development of such species, the discussion will deal with the synergistic features of the actual assembly.

• Luminescence sensing and imaging

The in-situ detection of changes in the local topology and in the concentration of selected substrates, including biologically relevant species.

Christian Doppler Symposium on Solar Fuels

18 September 2015. St John's College, School of Divinity, Cambridge, UK
A satellite meeting took place at St John's College Cambridge on the day after the Faraday Discussion. Further information is available from the downloadable flyer on this page.