Veranstaltungen

Prof. Dr. Milan Kivala, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg: Exciting Polycyclic Scaffolds Made from Acetylenes Highly reactive acetylene moieties are prone to a broad range of synthetic transformations to provide for the construction of unprecedented molecular architectures at will. In particular the oligophenylenes obtained through cycloadditions and transition metal-catalyzed cyclomerizations are highly relevant as versatile precursors for the synthesis of polycyclic scaffolds upon various cyclization protocols. While such transformations in solution are broadly established, comparable processes on surfaces are still associated with considerable challenges. In this talk, the synthesis of purely carbonaceous and heteroatom-doped polycyclic scaffolds of different dimensions will be presented. The unusual optoelectronic and redox properties of the compounds will be discussed in relation to their molecular geometry and constitution.

Over the past decade, the possibility of manipulating material and chemical properties by using hybrid light-matter states has stimulated considerable interest [1,2]. Such hybrid light-matter states can be generated by strongly coupling the electronic or the vibrational transitions of a material, to the spatially confined electromagnetic field of an optical resonator. Most importantly, this occurs even in the dark because the coupling involves the zero-point electromagnetic fluctuations of the resonator, the vacuum field. After introducing the fundamental concepts, examples of modified properties of strongly coupled systems, such as chemical reactivity, charge and energy transport, and magnetism will be given to illustrate the broad potential of light-matter states. References (reviews): [1] F.J. Garcia Vidal, C. Ciuti, T.W. Ebbesen, Science 2021, 373, eabd336 [2] K. Nagarajan, A. Thomas, T.W. Ebbesen, J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2021, 141, 16877.