Virtual Chemistry Colloquium: Following and Controlling Excited State Structural Dynamic Trajectories Using Photons with Different Energies
Join the Department of Chemistry for this virtual colloquium featuring guest speaker Lin X. Chen, a professor in the Department of Chemistry at Northwestern University and a senior chemist in the Chemical Sciences and Engineering Division at Argonne National Laboratory.
Many photochemical events, such as bond breaking, intersystem crossing and electron/energy transfer, can occur well before excited state vibrational relaxation. Examples will be given in the presentation on our work of tracking excited state pathways for transition metal complexes, such as Cu(I) complexes. Using fs broadband transient spectroscopy and fs X-ray solution scattering, events of light-matter interactions in molecular systems, such as coherent vibrational wavepacket motions can be readily examined. From the time evolution of key vibrational modes, particularly the Pt-Pt stretching mode, Chen and her colleagues have mapped out excited state trajectories on potential energy surfaces of model Pt-dimer complexes for light conversion, including coherent nuclear motions. These studies were carried out in a series of model platinum dimer complexes in solution featuring rich photochemistry and a set of intricate excited state potential energy surfaces on time scale previously unattainable. The combined molecular design, experimental and theoretical approaches enabled quantitative evaluation of the excited state trajectories of a series of Pt-dimer complexes in terms of actual nuclear motions via the Pt-Pt stretch as well as the energetic variations associated with these motions.
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