Using sunlight to facilitate and promote valuable chemical reactions is an ideal solution to the challenge of meeting future energy demands.  Our group aims to address fundamental questions concerning surface plasmon resonance (SPR)-mediated interfacial electron transfer (ET) and photothermal heating in order to develop new materials and strategies for efficiently converting solar energy to chemical energy.  In this talk, I will show how we unambiguously reveal the mechanics of plasmon-mediated electron transfer (PMET) in Au/TiO₂ heterostructures under visible light (&l

The transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) represent an interesting class of bulk crystals that are built up of van der Waals bonded layers. As such, just like graphene, they can be separated into stable units of atomic thickness by mechanical exfoliation or grown in the form of atomic monolayers by chemical vapor deposition (CVD).

The ordering of small molecules, programmed with functional groups for specific non-covalent interactions, can lead to robust, dynamic, and functional monolayers or thin films. Our group studies these assemblies under well-controlled environments by atomic-resolution scanning tunneling microscopy (structural characterization) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (chemical characterization).

Chemical transformations proceed through a mechanism consisting of elementary chemical steps representing the reactive collisions of individual molecular species.  Fundamentally, such collisions may be described as a quantum mechanical inelastic scattering process involving the rearrangement of kinetic and internal energy. Important parameters, such as reaction cross-sections and kinetic rate constants, can be derived from the solutions of the Schrödinger equation.