Femtonewtons and tens of picometers

Another publication appeared in Physical Review Applied last week ! This study presents a method to measure radiation pressure on metallic nanoparticles down to the thermal limit, with a large dynamic range and fine resolution in position. This is made possible by a careful assessment of the conditions of stability through an Allan-based deviation analysis. The capacity to measure femtonewton forces is important in the context of optical spin-orbit interactions and chiral forces.

Action in the Dark

This is nor the last trendy horror movie, neither the latest Star Wars episode but just another reaction about our Science paper, now online in the asap section of ACS Central Science. It has been written by Stéphane Kéna-Cohen and Joel Yuen-Zhou and it is entitled Polariton Chemistry : Action in the Dark. The paper is open access (published under ACS Author Choice license) and you can download it here.

Source : ACS Central Science

March 8

As last year, we took a group picture with all the female workers of ISIS…plus two intruders… Happy women’s day !

Coincidence…

Due to the usual unstable weather of March in France (alternating sunny intervals and rainfalls), we had a beautiful rainbow yesterday, March 7th, at 4.59pm in front of ISIS…

But exactly one year ago March 7th, 2018, at the same time 4.59pm we observed… exactly the same thing…

Photos Eloïse and Stefano

Welcome to Rémi !

Since last week, we are welcoming a new master 2 student, Rémi Goerlich, in cooperation with the Dyno group  at IPCMS. He will work with Yoseline Cabara-Rosalès and Samuel Albert on the stochastic protocols in an optical trap.

Welcome to him !

 

Our Science paper is out !

We are very pleased to announce that our paper previously on ChemrXiv , and resulting from our collaboration with Joseph Moran’s group, has now been published on Science website. We studied the deprotection of a silane derivative bearing two possible silyl bond cleavage sites—Si–C and Si–O respectively, to show that it is possible, thanks to the strong coupling of the vibrational mode associated to one of them, to favor the cleavage of one bond versus the other, and thus the formation of one product of the reaction versus the other. The examination of the thermodynamic parameters reveal the modification of the chemical landscape of the reaction under strong coupling. This brand new approach offers an alternative way to control chemical reactivity without catalysts, prefunctionalization, or chemical changes to the reaction conditions.

Let it snow !

To start the week, here is winter group picture taken on ISIS terrace during the new year celebration of the institute, on January 24th.

Thanks to Caroline Schneider, our photograph !