Research

Controlling the chemical structure of matter at the atomic level with light seemed impossible until now. Now, scientists have developed a technique to control photochemical reactions at the level of individual molecules. An international team of researchers, including Tomáš Neuman from the Institute of Physics at CAS, has published a method for controlling molecular dynamics in Nature Nanotechnology. This breakthrough could open a new chapter in photochemistry research.

The Excellent Research call in the Johannes Amos Comenius Programme (P JAC) is one of the most important Czech grant calls with a total allocation of CZK 12.2 billion, which aims to enable Czech research to reach European and global excellence. The Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences (FZU) has achieved a significant success in this competition and will participate in the investigation of six projects out of the total of 26 projects that received funding in an extremely demanding evaluation process.

The LasApp project builds on a long tradition of unique research and development in the field of laser technologies in the Czech Republic and makes full use of the existing infrastructure and expert background. Scientists have identified three strategic areas where laser technology can play a major role in the future in the search for new breakthroughs and discoveries. These areas are space applications, biotechnology and advanced laser technologies for smart manufacturing. For all these areas, knowledge in the fields of smart optics, data handling, automation, robotics and AI will play a key role in the future.

The research in TERAFIT project will focus on the development of applications that are essential for the Internet of Things and the Big Data economy. The aim is to achieve breakthroughs towards a new generation of information technologies – the three research objectives of the project focus on interconnected breakthroughs that will lead to substantial savings on energy, space and time scales.

Scientists involved in the FORTE project focus on key questions in elementary particle physics and cosmology. Their aim is to deepen our understanding of the fundamental building blocks of matter in the Universe and the interacting forces. To achieve this goal, they plan to improve measurements of some parameters of the Standard Model and to search for new particles that could lead to breakthroughs in our understanding of the Model.

Multiscale materials are assembled from different types of nanomaterials, which themselves have unusual properties. By combining them together and integrating them into higher order hierarchies, smart matter with unique functionalities and surprising applications in many different fields can be obtained.  Research with this focus is pursued by a consortium of eight partners from academia and research, led by the Jaroslav Heyrovský Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Czech Academy of Sciences.

The FerrMion project focuses on research and development of technical applications of ferroic materials, such as ferroelastic alloys with shape memory or multiferroics combining unique electrical, magnetic and mechanical properties. The planned research covers a broad spectrum of physical and technical fields and promises applications in energy, medicine and robotics. As part of the project, a unique 3D atomic probe material characterisation facility, the first of its kind in the Czech Republic, will be commissioned on the premises of the academic institutes in Prague Na Slovance.

The core of the SenDISo program is the development of a new generation of detectors and chemical biosensor solutions. Interdisciplinary research will focus on the creation of technologies for environmental monitoring (portable VOC sensors for pollution monitoring), improved medical diagnostics (discovery and analysis of trace amounts of biomarkers to combat serious diseases) and radiotherapy and quality control in industry. The new tools will, among other things, enable sensitivity at the level of individual (bio)molecules, opening the door to discoveries in life sciences and early diagnosis of serious diseases such as cancer.

An international team of scientists, led by Czech physicists, has successfully developed a unique magnetic nanographene for the first time. They combined two concepts of magnetism and were the first to detect their magnetic signal using advanced scanning electron microscopy and quantum mechanical calculations. Graphene nanoparticles have the potential to be used for information storage and processing in quantum computing.