Collaborative Research:Ultrafast Excited State Electron and Nuclear Coherences in Transition Metal Dimer Complexes and Their Roles in Photochemistry

In this project funded by Chemical Structure, Dynamics and Mechanisms program of Chemistry Division, Professors Lin X. Chen and Felix N. Catellano are developing spectroscopic and synthetic methods to investigate how multiple metal centers in transition metal complexes (TMCs) act cooperatively to convert and accumulate energy from sunlight to multiple electronic potentials that ultimately will drive catalytic reactions for generating fuels. The mechanistic details enabling multiple-electron conversion will be investigated by newly developed two-dimensional electronic spectroscopy, optical anisotropy spectroscopy and by new molecular architectures.