{"id":229638,"date":"2026-01-23T01:26:35","date_gmt":"2026-01-23T07:26:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/01\/study-reveals-why-light-driven-chemical-reactions-often-lose-energy-before-bond-breaking"},"modified":"2026-01-23T01:26:35","modified_gmt":"2026-01-23T07:26:35","slug":"study-reveals-why-light-driven-chemical-reactions-often-lose-energy-before-bond-breaking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/01\/study-reveals-why-light-driven-chemical-reactions-often-lose-energy-before-bond-breaking","title":{"rendered":"Study reveals why light-driven chemical reactions often lose energy before bond-breaking"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/study-reveals-why-light-driven-chemical-reactions-often-lose-energy-before-bond-breaking.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Florida State University researchers have discovered a pathway within a certain type of molecule that limits chemical reactions by redirecting light energy. The study could enable development of more efficient reactions for pharmaceuticals and other products.<\/p>\n<p>The researchers examined <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2023-09-team-ligands-transition-metal-catalysis-photoreactions.html?utm_source=embeddings&utm_medium=related&utm_campaign=internal\" rel=\"related\">ligand-to-metal photocatalysts<\/a>. Ligands are a molecule bound to a larger molecule; in this case, to a metal. Photocatalysts are materials that use light to accelerate a chemical reaction. Theoretically, these molecules should be readily able to harness light energy toward chemical reactivity. But in experiments, chemists only found inefficient reactions.<\/p>\n<p>The FSU research, <a href=\"https:\/\/pubs.acs.org\/doi\/10.1021\/jacs.5c10766\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in the <i>Journal of the American Chemical Society<\/i>, shows why: The molecule quickly moves into a less energetic state before the absorbed energy can break chemical bonds. The energy is drained too quickly into the wrong place, so bond-breaking is limited.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Florida State University researchers have discovered a pathway within a certain type of molecule that limits chemical reactions by redirecting light energy. The study could enable development of more efficient reactions for pharmaceuticals and other products. The researchers examined ligand-to-metal photocatalysts. Ligands are a molecule bound to a larger molecule; in this case, to a [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,1497],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-229638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chemistry","category-energy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229638\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}