Prof. Vincenzo BALZANI

"In recognition of his many outstanding contributions to the development of major branches

of chemistry that include Photochemistry, Supramolecular Chemistry, and Molecular Nanotechnology."

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"Chemistry and Creativity"

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Creativity is a basic feature of Science. Like in many other fields, creativity in chemistry results from recombining old materials with a new design in mind. In recent years, chemists have learnt to operate like engineers, with the ambitious task of using molecules to make devices and machines of nanometric size. Several molecular level systems have indeed been designed and constructed that are capable of performing functions like those performed by devices and machines of the macroscopic world. Such systems are often obtained starting from “old” molecules whose well-known properties are exploited by novel ideas coming from nanoscience and nanotechnology.

This lecture will illustrate the working principles of photochemical molecular devices for information processing, with examples of memories, logic gates, and encoding/decoding systems, and the operational mechanisms of light-powered molecular machines, with examples of shuttles and switchable boxes.

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[1] V. Balzani, A. Credi, M. Venturi Molecular Devices and Machines – Concepts and Perspectives for the Nanoworld, Wiley-VCH, 2008.

[2] V. Balzani, P. Ceroni, A. Juris Photochemistry and Photophysics: Concepts, Research, Applications, Wiley-VCH, 2014.