Please join Yale Chemistry for a junior faculty candidate seminar in physical chemistry with Jacob Spies, the Arnold O. Beckman Postdoctoral Fellow from University of California, Berkeley.
Abstract: Controlling materials at the level of electrons is an outstanding scientific challenge that is ubiquitous in applications ranging from solar energy conversion to information storage. The processes that govern the behavior of electrons often occur on ultrafast timescales, necessitating the use of short laser pulses to either probe or manipulate material properties. I will first discuss my previous work using tunable metal oxide solid solutions to control electron transfer dynamics in artificial photosynthetic systems. In this work, I found that using a mixed metal oxide photoanode material altered both the conduction band density of states and the electronic states in the dye sensitizer, resulting in tunable electron transfer that I studied using a variety of tools ranging from ultrafast transient absorption to X-ray spectroscopy. Building on the description of electronic structure discussed in the first part, I will describe how new methods in solid-state high harmonic generation (sHHG) spectroscopy can provide detailed insight into the band structure, topology, and symmetry of emerging materials. I will focus on my recent efforts developing time-resolved sHHG spectroscopy to probe valley polarization and transient symmetry changes in MoSe2 before providing a brief outlook on how sHHG can be applied to contemporary problems in materials chemistry.
For more information on Jacob Spies research: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=z9h2lgMAAAAJ
Faculty Host: Prof. Mark Johnson
This seminar can be viewed online here: Panopto