The activities at Chemical Physics involve fundamental and applied research within surface and nano science. The projects are mainly connected to the development of sustainable energy systems including heterogeneous catalysis for emission control and fuel production, photovoltaics, energy storage, and fuel cells. Functional nanomaterials is the common denominator.

Our research is both experimental and theoretical. In the experimental projects, advanced fabrication techniques and vacuum based methods are developed and used to design novel nano-structured materials. Such materials often exhibit unique physical, chemical and optical properties which we explore and utilize. One example is the use of localized surface plasmons to either stimulate physical and chemical processes or to monitor different surface phenomena by means of nanoplasmonic sensing. The theoretical activity is based on electronic structure calculations within the density functional theory together with mean-field modeling and Monte-Carlo simulations for reaction kinetics. Theoretical spectroscopy is used to rationalize experimental observations and multi-scale methods are developed to link atomistic first principles results with kinetic modeling in order to bridge length and time scales.

The research at Chemical Physics is funded by the major funding agencies including The Swedish Research Council, The Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research, The Swedish Research Council FORMAS, The Swedish Energy Agency, The Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, Nordforsk and The European Union. Moreover, the activities have substantial support from the Chalmers Area of Advance Transport, Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, Materials and Energy. Chemical Physics is a part of the national Competence Centre for Catalysis (KCK). We have a long tradition of working with industrial partners and a number of spin-off companies have been established based on research conducted at Chemical Physics.