Molecular snooker makes science news headlines

The concept of 'molecular snooker' - in which reactants can be controlled to determine how they collide with one another in chemical processes - has made science news headlines as 2011 gets underway.

Andrzej Stankiewicz of Delft University of Technology, an academic institution with 13,000 students and a faculty of over 2,000 scientists, has been awarded a grant by the European Research Council (ERC) to look into how to more closely control the interactions between molecules.

"Today's chemical reactors, as used in industry for example, do not provide much control over the molecules," he explains, adding that this leads to the formation of unwanted by-products and can impact on the efficiency of the chemical reaction.

Molecular snooker, on the other hand, repeatedly makes science news headlines for its potential to allow individual molecules to be collided under close control, leading to known efficiency levels and predictable product outcomes.

The ERC Advanced Investigators Grant means €2.3 million (£2 million) can now be dedicated towards furthering work on the technology to bring it to a widely usable state.