{"id":232659,"date":"2026-03-06T01:25:58","date_gmt":"2026-03-06T07:25:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/03\/molecular-catapult-fires-electrons-at-the-limits-of-physics"},"modified":"2026-03-06T01:25:58","modified_gmt":"2026-03-06T07:25:58","slug":"molecular-catapult-fires-electrons-at-the-limits-of-physics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/03\/molecular-catapult-fires-electrons-at-the-limits-of-physics","title":{"rendered":"Molecular \u2018catapult\u2019 fires electrons at the limits of physics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/molecular-catapult-fires-electrons-at-the-limits-of-physics.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Electrons can be \u201ckicked across\u201d solar materials at almost the fastest speed nature allows, scientists have discovered, challenging long-held theories about how solar energy systems work. The finding could help researchers design more efficient ways of harvesting sunlight and converting it into electricity. The research is published in Nature Communications.<\/p>\n<p>In experiments capturing events lasting just <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2024-01-approach-ultrafast.html?utm_source=embeddings&utm_medium=related&utm_campaign=internal\" rel=\"related\">18 femtoseconds <\/a>\u2014less than 20 quadrillionths of a second\u2014researchers at the University of Cambridge observed charge separation happening within a single molecular vibration.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe deliberately designed a system that\u2014according to conventional theory\u2014should not have transferred charge this fast,\u201d said Dr. Pratyush Ghosh, Research Fellow, at St John\u2019s College, Cambridge, and first author of the study. \u201cBy conventional design rules, this system should have been slow, and that\u2019s what makes the result so striking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Electrons can be \u201ckicked across\u201d solar materials at almost the fastest speed nature allows, scientists have discovered, challenging long-held theories about how solar energy systems work. The finding could help researchers design more efficient ways of harvesting sunlight and converting it into electricity. The research is published in Nature Communications. In experiments capturing events lasting [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[219,1633,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-232659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-physics","category-solar-power","category-sustainability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232659","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=232659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232659\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}