With the help of chlorophyll, you can make oxygen and glucose, namely sugar, from carbon dioxide, light and water. A decisive step in the reaction is the energy transfer between the individual molecules. Scientists from the University of Hamburg and the LMU in Munich, under the direction of Dr John Lupton and Professor Jochen Feldmann have managed not only to metrologically track this energy transfer, but actually to be actively able to switch it on and off. As they have explained in the recent edition of Nature Materials, they employed electrical fields in order to control the transfer of electronic energy. ‘It’s a promising possibility to combine organic and non-organic materials and to use the advantages of both’, Lupton noted.

Professor John Lupton University of Utah, USA Telephone: +1 801 581 6408 Fax: +1 801 581 4801 E-mail: lupton@physics.utah.edu

Professor Jochen Feldmann and Klaus Becker LMU Munich Telephone: 089-2180-3318 or 089-2180-78001 Fax: 089-2180-3441 E-mail: klaus.becker@physik.uni-muenchen.de feldmann@lmu.de