Ultrafast Functional Structural Dynamics in Solar Energy Conversion

Abstract: The goal of our team research is to provide a critical knowledge base for understanding fundamental light — matter interactions that influence solar photochemistry as well as emergent new science in photoredox catalysis. We explore ultrafast functional structural dynamics in photoexcited states with strongly coupled electronic and nuclear motions that are beyond Born-Oppenheimer approximation in four tasks, a) identifying key excited-state reaction coordinates of transition metal complexes in photochemical reactions; b) steering photoinduced electron transfer processes towards charge accumulation and photocatalytic bond breaking reactions by chemical modifications and tailored light pulse sequences; c) manipulating coherent vibrational motions for interfacial plasmonic driven charge transfer; and d) tracking functional structural dynamics along excited-state trajectories by ultrafast elemental specific inner shell spectroscopies and solution scattering at XFEL facilities. Specific topics above are described.