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ENERGY TRANSFER

Three’s molecular company

Nature Chemistry volume 13, pages 726–728 (2021)Cite this article

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Energy transfer from one molecule to another over a distance of nanometres is a fundamental process of widespread relevance. Now, scanning probe techniques have been used to include an intermediary third molecule and to watch how energy flows through it.

The transfer of energy, which is often equivalent to the transmission of information, is at the core of many biological functions and often underlies the operation of technical devices. The transfer process consists of a sequence of elementary steps acting cooperatively — sometimes within quite complicated systems — and one of these steps is the intermolecular transfer of excitation. In the simplest case, this could be transfer from one electronically or vibrationally excited donor molecule to an acceptor molecule in its ground state.

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Fig. 1: Energy transfer between phthalocyanines.

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  1. Max-Planck Institute for Solid State Research, Stuttgart, Germany

    Klaus Kuhnke

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  1. Klaus Kuhnke
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Correspondence to Klaus Kuhnke.

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The author declares no competing interests.

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Kuhnke, K. Three’s molecular company. Nat. Chem. 13, 726–728 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41557-021-00761-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41557-021-00761-8

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