Polaritonic Photocatalysis and Polariton-driven Control of Energy Relaxation Pathways in a Tunable Microcavity.

Increasing the efficiency of photocatalysis is an extremely important basic problem with applications in chemistry, biology, pharmacology, and medicine. A possible way to increase the efficiency of photocatalysis is to use the effect of strong light–matter coupling, a specific physical phenomenon that has been at the forefront of research in basic and applied physics and chemistry in recent years. One of the most intriguing characteristics of the strong coupling effect is the possibility of controlling the selectivity and yield of chemical reactions and increasing manyfold the efficiency of catalysis, which is ensured by the appearance of the upper polariton, a higher-energy electron level, upon splitting of the original electron level of the catalyst or substrate. Here, a flow-through microfluidic photocatalytic reactor has been designed, which contains a microcavity providing strong light–matter coupling and operating in the microfluidic mode with a throughput in the range of 0.01–0.1 mol/h. The design is based on the integration of a photocatalyst (functionalized porous matrix of boron nitride) into the space between the mirrors of an optical microcavity located in the microfluidic cell. It is assumed that the new technology will significantly increase the rates of photocatalytic reactions in the working volume of the reactor irradiated with visible light. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]