{"id":232914,"date":"2026-03-10T03:23:48","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T08:23:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/03\/ultrafast-light-pulses-make-molecules-rotate-on-quantum-materials"},"modified":"2026-03-10T03:23:48","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T08:23:48","slug":"ultrafast-light-pulses-make-molecules-rotate-on-quantum-materials","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/03\/ultrafast-light-pulses-make-molecules-rotate-on-quantum-materials","title":{"rendered":"Ultrafast light pulses make molecules rotate on quantum materials"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/ultrafast-light-pulses-make-molecules-rotate-on-quantum-materials.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Researchers from Germany, Japan and India, led by scientists from DESY and the Universities of Kiel and Hamburg, have found a way to collectively make molecules on a flat surface rotate by exposing them to light using ultrafast light pulses from DESY\u2019s free-electron laser FLASH and a high-harmonic generation source. However, making those molecules dance is not the ultimate goal: this result could have an impact on next-generation quantum and energy materials for electronics, data storage and energy conversion.<\/p>\n<p>Molecules sitting on a material surface usually do just that\u2014they sit on the surface without changing. If you send energy their way, however\u2014for example, in the form of light\u2014they can become dynamic and move. If this movement could be controlled, it could have a massive influence on all sorts of nanomaterials that are being investigated for a variety of applications from health to data storage.<\/p>\n<p>DESY scientist Markus Scholz, leader of a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41467-026-69801-6\" target=\"_blank\">study<\/a> now published in <i>Nature Communications<\/i>, points out that this is particularly interesting in hybrid systems where organic molecules are placed on atomically thin, two-dimensional quantum materials. Examples of these hybrid systems are molecular electronics or energy-driven functional surfaces.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Researchers from Germany, Japan and India, led by scientists from DESY and the Universities of Kiel and Hamburg, have found a way to collectively make molecules on a flat surface rotate by exposing them to light using ultrafast light pulses from DESY\u2019s free-electron laser FLASH and a high-harmonic generation source. However, making those molecules dance [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1523,1495,4,1617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-232914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computing","category-health","category-nanotechnology","category-quantum-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232914","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=232914"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232914\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}