Quantemol was founded by Prof. Jonathan Tennyson FRS and Dr Daniel Brown in 2004. We develop unique software tools that bring accessibility to highly sophisticated research codes and unique data. With an expanding research team, Quantemol also provides consultancy services, which are carried out by world leading scientists in their respective fields.Since 2004 we have grown our product portfolio through collaborations with experts to develop esteemed plasma simulation codes.
Our mission statement
“To serve our users in industry and academia, to simulate complex processes more efficiently, reliably, accurately and cost-effectively and thereby accelerate technological and scientific innovation”
Products & Services
Quantemol-N (QN) Uses the UK molecular R-matrix code to model electron-polyatomic molecule interactions.
Quantemol-EC (QEC) is a new generation of highly automated software to calculate electron-molecule scattering cross sections using a suite of new R-matrix codes alongside Molpro, a quantum chemistry program.
Quantemol-VT (QVT) Brings an unsurpassed user experience to the world-renowned plasma simulation codes of Prof. Mark Kushner from the University of Michigan.
Quantemol-DB (QDB) A leading sustainable database capable of modeling the chemical and radiative transport properties of a very wide range of plasma’s. The database contains chemistry data for plasma chemistry modeling with pre-assembled and validated chemistry sets. To sign up for the database please click here.
Consultancy Unique service provided for customers ranging from small calculations to complex problems. This service is tailored to your needs by our highly skilled engineers working on a confidential basis.
Applications
Quantemol has a global presence, and our customers come from a wide range of industries. Quantum chemistry has a broad reach and as a result, our customers include R&D facilities in academia and numerous industries. The semiconductor sector represents Quantemol’s core market and new sectors which include companies using plasma processes such as plasma-assisted etch and deposition, plasma-assisted combustion, electrically powered spacecraft propulsion, biological applications and ecological studies on plasma application. Combustion is utilised in industries such as process industries, metallurgy, cement, refining & petrochemicals, energy & power, and aerospace & marine. Electrically powered spacecraft propulsion is being pursued within the space industry. Plasma medical/biological applications, as well as ecological applications of plasma such as water purification, are utilising this technology as a novel approach.
By empowering manufacturers with a better understanding of quantum-level processes, there is a reduction of experimental trial and error, thereby speeding up innovation to the mass market while reducing wasteful and expensive experimental tests. A significant benefit for society involves the development of smarter and more agile technologies in a less environmentally polluting manner by not only reducing the need for wasteful tests but also aiding the replacement of banned feed-stock gases.
For more information please see our brochures!
Testimonials
Mikhail Gryaznevich
Executive Director and Chief Scientist of Tokamak Energy Ltd.
Tokamak Energy had a contract with Quantemol Ltd on modelling atomic and molecular processes at the plasma edge. In these regions, plasma is weakly ionized, and the temperature is relatively low, so molecular effects should be considered. Quantemol Ltd is well-known in the Fusion area as experts in molecular plasma. They have constructed a list of important reactions and built a database of the cross sections and rates complemented with numerical tools for easy incorporation of the database in codes for tokamak plasma modelling. An important novelty was the analysis of bi-Maxwellian EEDFs as single-Maxwellian distributions cannot adequately describe the system and only occasionally lead to correct reaction rate coefficient estimation. Therefore, for accurate conclusions and modelling, researchers should always use bi-Maxwellian EEDF.
As a possible continuation of this project, it is aimed to use the developed library and routines to compute energy losses. We also plan to include surface reactions and analyse the effect of different reaction materials on the plasma composition and properties.
A paper has been published in Proceedings of the XXXIV ICPIG; ICRP-10, July 14-19, 2019, Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan.
Member of Technical Staff,
[Corporation name withheld]
We use extended duration, cyclical, “life tests” to validate the durability and reliability of a product during its development. Depending on the product and its application, these life tests can be highly resource-intensive which leads to increased cost. When testing involves plasma, it becomes significantly more complicated to scale back resource consumption without changing the characteristics of the plasma and affecting the outcome and relevancy of the test. The QDB global plasma model tool from Quantemol, coupled with their extensive plasma collisions and reactions database, enabled us to rapidly explore various optimization methodologies and parameters for the plasma-based life test of a new product we’re developing. We were able to arrive at an optimized plasma process which gives us equivalent species densities and an electron temperature as close as possible to the intended, final application process. This optimized process uses roughly 30 times less resources than the final application process. The money we saved pays for the subscription to QDB about 100 times over. We are quite satisfied!
Dr Paul Adamson, Naval Research Laboratory, USA
The speed with which you provided me a trial of QEC is greatly appreciated. I am very impressed with the software and plan to purchase it very soon.
Eberhard Baer
Simulation Department
Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Systems and Device Technology
Erlangen, Germany
“Q-VT is an ideal platform for plasma reactor simulation, combining an intuitive GUI for getting started easily with expert level capabilities for accessing advanced features. The support is very responsive and efficiently provides customized solutions.”
Ane Aanesland,
CEO and founder of ThrustMe and former Head of the Low Temperature Plasma group at the Laboratoire de Physique des Plasmas, Ecole Polytechnique – CNRS, France
“Iodine might be a promising future propellant in electric space propulsion, however making predictive simulation of the thruster performances was difficult because the cross sections for the vast variety of electron-neutral collisions in iodine were lacking. With the service from Quantemol, we have been able to include a complete chemistry set in our global models and fluid simulations of iodine plasmas and compare gridded ion thrusters operating in Iodine and Xenon. We will definitely use Quantemol services again should we need more electron-molecule scattering cross sections data.”
Prof. K. N. Joshipura,
Department of Physics,
Sardar Patel University,
Gujarat-India
“We – myself and my students – are happy users of the Quantemol-N UK package code for the past two years. Earlier we were working on electron scattering at intermediate and high energies, but with this code we have extended our energy range to low energies as well. We have now made comprehensive calculations on electron collision processes from almost 0.1 to about 2000 eV, for a variety of well known and lesser known molecules. An important output of the Quantemol is in the form of BEB ionization cross sections, which we can now compare with cross sections calculated in our method.”
Prof. Dr Zoran Lj. Petrovic,
Institute of Physics Belgrade,
The University of Belgrade,
Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences
“We are users of a lot of electron-molecule scattering data since models of swarm transport coefficients and weakly ionized gases require complete representation of number, momentum and energy balances. Thus we were really happy to hear that there is a code that may cover some of the missing data and that it was packaged in such a way that we (non specialists) could use it. In our first months of use we were really impressed by the level of cooperation, support and understanding from the Quantemol-N staff and how the code has grown to a very user friendly system, based, to a considerable degree, on our initial difficulties in using the code. In very short time the code has become one of the most important tools in our work on evaluation of cross section sets for plasma modeling. Most importantly the code deals with some systems that cannot be studied experimentally easily, such as radicals and very reactive molecules.”
Dr Tom Field,
Centre for Plasma Physics,
School of Maths and Physics,
Queen’s University Belfast
“Good software for finding low energy electron molecule scattering resonances with excellent user support.”
An industrial user
“We are fully satisfied with your software and support. We are convinced it is absolutely beneficial to our business. In addition we appreciate your regular and frequent software updates and are looking forward to more implemented innovations.”
A conference delegate
“… liked the simple screen approach to using the program. You were guided through the stages required to complete the calculation and everything was directly in front of you on the screen.”
Team
Dr Daniel Brown, Chairman
A successful serial entrepreneur, Daniel first founded a computer software business at the age of 13, which he ran for five years. He studied Chemical Physics and then Philosophy where he developed a passion for probability and network theory. During his doctorate in clinical psychology at the Institute of Psychiatry, he developed unique computer techniques for quantifying processes of change, which were used to build interactive models of stress based on variable subject profiles. Using this methodology for automating the fulfilment of variable user needs, Daniel co-founded APR Smartlogik, a business which he built to 50 people and revenues of $6m, winning the Times Innovation award in 2001 and NLB Visionary Design Award in 2003. He is an inventor with a range of patents, author of several books and over thirty papers, guest lecturer and Entrepreneur in Residence at University College London, and a high profile global speaker and media commentator on Information Systems. He is a director of MegaNexus Ltd, a social networking company.
Professor Jonathan Tennyson FRS, Chief Scientist
Massey Professor of Physics, former Head of UCL’s Department of Physics & Astronomy (04-11), Jonathan is the leader of a large and successful research team studying a wide range of problems in the physics of molecules. He studied Natural Sciences at Cambridge and obtained a doctorate in Theoretical Chemistry at the University of Sussex. After periods working in the Netherlands and a research laboratory, he came to UCL where he founded the Theoretical Atomic and Molecular Physics and Astrophysics research group (TAMPA) which currently contains about 25 people. He is the author of over 500 papers in scientific literature as well as a number of popular articles and books. Jonathan has developed methods for studying electron molecule collisions for over twenty years. In that time, specific calculations have been performed for problems relating to plasma etching, the edge of fusion plasmas, atmospheric processes, astrophysics, neutrino mass determination and radiation damage in biological systems. His group also studies the way molecules absorb and emit light with particular emphasis on processes important for astrophysics and the Earth’s atmosphere.
Anna Dzarasova, Chief Executive Officer
Anna joined Quantemol in August 2010. She has a unique combination of two masters degrees, one in Physics and another in Marketing which combines her commercial and technical skills. With 6 years of experience in business development and over 15 years of sales experience, Anna was appointed as CEO in August 2017. Anna is responsible for leading the development and execution of Quantemol’s long-term strategy with a view to creating shareholder value, managing the overall operations and resources of the company, and the timely execution of projects. She is the main point of communication between the board of directors and staff and maintains a keen awareness of Quantemol’s industry and market. You can always get in contact with her if you have questions regarding Quantemol via anna@quantemol.com.
Dr Sebastian Mohr, Chief Technology Officer
Dr Sebastian Mohr has joined the Quantemol team as an expert plasma physicist and specialist in HPEM in June 2014 and was promoted to CTO in March 2018. He has obtained his PhD degree at the Institute for Plasma and Atomic Physics, Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany, working on simulation and modeling of CCRF-discharges in hydrogen and hydrogen/silane with HPEM. Sebastian is working on various projects at Quantemol. He is interacting with customers to provide technical support, plasma physics consulting, also he is responsible for the implementation, debugging and documentation of new capabilities in the Quantemol-VT modeling expert system and QuantemolDB modelling capabilities. He is also supervising junior research staff.
Dr Harin Ambalampitiya, Scientific Consultant and Program Developer
Harin is a theoretical atomic and molecular physicist who joined the Quantemol’s team in June 2021. Harin has obtained his MS and PhD degrees in theoretical AMO physics from the university of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA. He now works as a scientific consultant and a program developer for our newest software: Quantemol Electron Collisions (QEC).
Hannah Larsen, Sales and Marketing Assistant
Hannah joined as a Sales and Marketing Assistant in November 2022. She recently graduated in Marketing Management from the University of Westminster in London. Before moving to study and work in London she lived and worked in Copenhagen where she worked with customer relations. Hannah will be focusing on developing and implementing online and offline digital marketing campaigns and customer relations.
Kateryna Lemishko, Junior Scientist
Kateryna Lemishko joined Quantemol as a Junior Scientist in November 2022.. obtained her undergraduate and master’s degrees in Chemistry at V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University (Ukraine) in 2011 and 2012 respectively. In 2014, she obtained a joint European master’s degree in Theoretical Chemistry and Computational Modeling at the Autonomous University of Madrid (Spain) and the University of Perugia (Italy) under the Erasmus Mundus program. In 2020, Kateryna Lemishko completed her PhD in Biophysics at the Autonomous University of Madrid. Throughout her PhD research project carried out at the IMDEA Nanoscience Institute (Spain), she used Optical Tweezers to study at the single-molecule level the activity of the proteins involved in human mitochondrial DNA replication, as well as to study the dynamics of individual synthetic molecular shuttles under force.
Advisory Board
Professor Mark Kushner
Professor Mark Kushner
George I Haddad Professor of Engineering
Michigan Institute for Plasma Science and Engineering
University of Michigan
Prof. Kushner’s research area is low-temperature plasmas, their fundamental properties and technological applications, ranging from lasers to material processing. He is a Fellow of the APS, IEEE, Optical Society of America, American Vacuum Society and Institute of Physics. Prof. Kushner has received many awards including the Semiconductor Research Corp. Technical Excellence Award, Tegal Thinker Award for Plasma Etch Technology, AVS Plasma Science and Technology Award, IEEE Plasma Science and Applications Award and the Semiconductor Industry Association University Researcher Award.
Citations: “A rate limiting step in applying plasma models to industrially relevant applications is the lack of complete cross-section data for complex molecules to be able to address broad ranges of operating conditions. Quantemol-N is capable of providing much of this cross-section data and is aiding my research group in its work. I am confident that Quantemol-N will prove to be valuable to many other researchers requiring complex cross sections for modeling and simulation.”
“Developing and applying hybrid plasma models have advanced the fundamental understanding of the chemistry, surface kinetics, and energy transport in low temperature plasmas.“
Hybrid plasma models are used in Quantemol-VT.
Professor Nigel Mason OBE
Professor Nigel Mason
Professor of Physics
Head of Department of Physics and Astronomy
The University of Kent
Prof. Mason research investigates the manipulation and control of the reactivity of molecules using electrons and photons with applications to atmospheric physics; astrochemistry, plasma physics and radiation chemistry. He is a leader of several international research networks involving more than 100 research groups in Europe, Australia and India. He has a long-term commitment to engaging the general public with science, through for example the British Association for the Advancement of Science and the Institute of Physics (where he is currently a Council member). He is also the inaugural Director of the Milton Keynes Science Festival.
Citation: “Quantemol-N provides much needed electron-molecular scattering data, particularly for molecules and molecular species that are difficult to isolate and study experimentally – such as fluoro-carbon radicals. Such molecular data is in high demand from both academia and industry. Quantemol-N’s uniqueness lies in the fact that one does not have to be a specialist in the underlying scattering theory in order to utilise it.”
Professor Viatcheslav Kokoouline
Professor of Physics,
University of Central Florida
Professor Kokoouline’ research interests revolve around a fully-quantum or adiabatic quantum description of nuclear dynamics of small poly-atomic molecules and collisions involving molecules, electrons, and photons. In particular, his current primary research area is elementary processes in cold plasma relevant for the interstellar medium, planetary atmospheres, and technological applications. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and is involved in many collaborative projects in the US, Austria, China, France, Germany, Russia, S. Korea, UK.
Citation: “Quantemol offers a unique opportunity for the plasma and AMO communities to determine cross sections for a wide range of processes taking place in collisions of electrons with polyatomic molecules: elastic and inelastic collisions with or without photon emission. A very important characteristic of the package is that it can be used at different levels of complexity by non-experts for a quick estimate of the cross sections as well as by experts in electron-scattering theory seeking for highly-accurate and reliable cross-sections”.
Partners
Dr Alex Harvey (Max-Born-Institute) visits the Quantemol office 11th February 2013:
ESiP General Assembly in London 8th & 9th November 2012
Contributors
Dr Christian Hill
Christian is a physicist and physical chemist. His specialities are spectroscopy and the representation and communication of data in the physical sciences. Christian has developed the Quantemol database (QDB), an online sustainable database of plasma process data. Initially, QDB’s focus was on binary collisional process data presented as cross sections as a function of electron energy and Arrhenius parameter sets in terms of electron temperature. These data sets are collected into “Chemistries”, validated, self-consistent compilations of collisional processes for modeling plasma processes for a range of applications. The web software developed by Christian provides a platform for users to upload, compare and validate such data and exposes an API for its automated retrieval in a range of formats suitable for use in modeling software. Additionally, Christian has implemented XML schema expanding of the QDB data model to include a characterization of the surface (substrate) composition and structure as well as the description of the behaviour of individual adsorbed species (desorption energy, diffusion energy, etc.)
Dr James Hamilton
James completed his PhD at UCL in January 2018. During this time he worked on theoretical investigations into electron scattering with complex molecular systems from interstellar and atmospheric systems to systems for application in industrial plasma etching of silicon surfaces. He has developed and tested a new method for calculating dissociation branching ratios for several electron scattering processes, viz. electron impact-dissociative ionisation, -neutral dissociation and -dissociative attachment, through these investigations. James implemented into Q-N software computational schemes for calculation of high energy electron-molecule scattering cross sections, extending the software capability to a desired by many customers ranging from 0 – 10,000 eV. James also provided regular customer support and undertook several advance consultancy projects which inspired and facilitated his theoretical developments.
Dr Alex Harvey
Alex completed his doctoral work at UCL and for the past few years has been at the Max Born Institute in Berlin. His research interests include electron scattering, photoionisation and recombination, with a particular emphasis on the role they play in the interaction of strong, short-pulse, laser fields with atoms and molecules. With this in mind, he has adapted and extended the UK R-matrix codes to treat oriented electron-molecule collisions, and photoionisation
More information about both Alex and the Max Born Institute can be found here.
Dr Derek Monahan
Derek is a computational physicist with several years of experience modeling industrially relevant low-temperature plasma processes. He has a BSc degree in applied physics from the University of Limerick, Ireland and a PhD in computational physics from the National Centre for Plasma Science and Technology (NCPST) based in Dublin City University, Ireland. During his time in Quantemol, he focused on developing the next generation of plasma simulation tools and Quantemol-VT interface. Derek’s research interests include the low-pressure plasma global-model approximation, electronegative plasma discharges and fundamental plasma dynamics.
Dr Martin Ruskov
Martin is an Information Scientist with experience in software engineering and technology-enhanced learning. A common theme across his work is lowering access thresholds to complex knowledge domains. Martin worked on Quantemol-P in order to improve the architecture, usability and ease of use, making it faster, more intuitive and more transparent. As a result of the changes he made, the software is now easier to work with, for both developer and user, and faster in achieving results.
More information on Martin and his research interests can be found on his personal web page.
Dr Will Brigg
Will has completed his PhD with Quantemol and UCL while holding an STFC studentship. His scientific research project was focused on cross sections calculations for methane, while as part of his company internship he implemented in Quantemol-N multiple features including calculation of differential cross-sections, momentum transfer cross-sections and rotational excitation cross-sections. Will also contributed to R-matrix codes development and integrated new photoionisation cross sections calculations functionality to Quantemol-N. User-friendly wizard
Powerbase Project
Quantemol is proud to be a partner of the EU funded project PowerBase (May 2015 – April 2018), within Horizon2020 framework. The research project PowerBase is developing the next generation of energy-saving Chips and preparing them for mass industrial use in smartphones, laptop computers and many other applications. Coordinated by Infineon Austria, the project’s € 87 million volume and 39 partners from nine countries. More details can be found here: http://www.powerbase-project.eu/
Press release Quantemol Powerbase project related dissemination activities October-November 2015
16/11/17 – 17/11/17
The Quantemol team presented a poster at the DPS Conference in Tokyo on the Bosch process. Check out our poster by Dr Sara Rahimi by clicking on the following link: https://www.quantemoldb.com/static/media/uploads/dps_poster_with_deliverables-2.pdf
29/10/17 – 03/11/17
The Quantemol team presented at the AVS Conference in Tampa, Florida. Check out our presentation titled ‘TSV Etch Plasma Modeling from Chamber to Feature’ by Dr Sebastian Mohr by clicking on this link: http://www.quantemol.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/AVSTalk2017-1.pdf
03/04/17 – 06/04/17
The Quantemol team presented at IOP Plasma physics conference in Oxford, UK.
A poster on plasma chemistry validation and linking it within Powerbase project presented by A. Dzarasova “QDB: A new database of plasma chemistries and reactions – concept and exemplar verification”
21/11/16 – 22/11/16
Quantemol team presented at DPS conference in Sapporo, Japan.
A poster on plasma chemistry validation and linking it within Powerbase project presented by S. Rahimi “Constructing self-consistent validated plasma chemistry”
10/10/16 – 14/10/16
Quantemol team presented at GEC conference in Bochum, Germany.
Presentation slides of the talk given by S. Mohr “Simulating industrial plasma reactors: a fresh perspective”
A poster on plasma chemistry validation and distribution presented by A. Dzarasova “QDB: Validated Plasma Chemistries Database”
21/08/16 – 24/08/16
Quantemol team presented at International Workshop on Plasmas for energy and Environmental applications (IWPEEA) in Liverpool 21-24 August 2016.
We are very grateful to organisers for giving us an opportunity to talk about recent research including Quantemol database (QDB).
Here you can find presentation slides “QDB: A sustainable database for plasma chemistries” and a poster “Electron Impact Dissociation of Ground and Metastable States of O2 Molecule”.
5/04/16
Quantemol team visits SPTS site for collaboration update by SPTS and Quantemol on the European Powerbase project; reports on significant progress and further development of BOSCH process modeling.
5/11/15
Presentation of the poster at “Dry Process Symposium” in Japan (Awaji):
DPS 2015: “Linking reactor-scale plasma modeling with feature-scale profile simulation”
22/10/15
Presentation of the poster at “American Vacuum Society Symopsium” in US (San Jose, CA)
AVS 2015: “From Plasma Reactor to Surface Level: Linking Plasma with Feature Profile Simulations”
