Presentation Rice University-THz Spectroscopy: Studying Carrier Dynamics and Solar Energy Conversion in Nanostructured Materials and Progress Toward THz VCD

Charles Schmuttenmaer Professor of Chemistry Yale University   Thursday, March 20, 2014 4:00 PM  to 5:00 PM 180  Dell Butcher Hall Rice University 6100 Main St Houston, Texas, USA

http://events.rice.edu/index.cfm?EventRecord=21857 Terahertz spectroscopy has proven itself to be an excellent non-contact probe of charge injection and conductivity with sub-picosecond time resolution. One may exploit this capability to study a variety of materials, and here we choose to probe the transient photoconductivity of dye-sensitized nanostructured wide band gap semiconductors photosensitized by high oxidation-potential chromophores. These systems are of interest in the area of renewable energy research and artificial photosynthesis. I will also describe recent efforts, both experimental and computational, to probe and understand low frequency vibrational modes in organic molecular crystals. Calculating these modes has proven challenging because of the large influence of weak van der Waals interactions which are difficult to treat computationally for periodic systems, i.e., crystals. In addition, efforts toward measuring vibrational circular dichroism (VCD) in the far-infrared will be reported.