How a chance discovery overturned one of photochemistry’s oldest dogmas
By 
Katrina Krämer2026-07-06T08:46:00
The first hints of what’s behind the seemingly illogical mismatch between photochemical reactivity and absorptivity could finally end a team’s 10-year struggle to get their results taken seriously
Ten years ago, a team of researchers made a chance discovery that would overturn one of the most fundamental rules in photochemistry: that light-activated reactions work best when the wavelength used matches a photoactive molecule’s absorption maximum.
The absorption maximum is essentially a photoactive molecule’s favourite wavelength of light. Here, it can ‘capture’ the biggest number of photons and, as the logic goes, therefore do the most amount of work. ‘It’s ingrained belief, no one’s questioned it,’ says photophysicist Sarah Walden from Griffith University in Australia.