Professor Christopher Barner-Kowollik FRSC
In an increasingly fractured geopolitical landscape, it is absolutely critical to reinforce the message that science knows no borders and nationalities; we are one community that is solely dedicated to scientific fact finding, understanding the world around us, and bettering the living conditions on our planet.
Professor Christopher Barner-Kowollik is fascinated by light and its interactions with matter. Light enables the key biochemical process that sustains us all: photosynthesis. In the lab, using light to trigger chemical reactions has mostly been based on broadly emitting light sources that emit many colours of light (i.e. wavelengths) at the same time. This has made the triggering process very undefined: like hitting an object with a sledgehammer to shape it.
Christopher and his team have transformed photochemistry using defined monochromatic wavelengths to induce chemical transformations. This ‘action plot analysis’ allows us, for the first time, to understand photochemical processes with never-before-seen precision. This precision enables chemists to design reaction systems, including those in the realm of polymer chemistry, that respond selectively to specific wavelengths. It’s now possible, for example, to generate different material properties from a specific 3D printing resin by simply changing the colour of light it is irradiated with. The team hope that their action plot analysis technique will be used by photochemists all over the world as the tuneable laser systems that underpin it have become very economical and simple to operate.
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