Ultrafast Molecular Structural Dynamics Laboratory

One of the most fundamental questions in biology, chemistry, and physics is how the molecules interact, so called, reaction mechanisms. Our laboratory strives to understand the reaction mechanisms in molecular detail in gas phase, solution phase, and solid phase spanning amorphous phase, polycrystalline and single crystals. Traditionally, femtosecond spectroscopy has been used to achieve this goal, however, spectroscopic data, in most cases, fail to provide direct information on the structural changes such as bond lengths and bond angles. To remedy this, we combine the traditional femtoscience with direct structural tools such as diffraction (scattering and crystallography), EXAFS, and NMR. These techniques can be applied to a wide range of systems, encompassing small molecules, nano-scale complexes, and macromolecules such as polymers, proteins and DNA. A typical experiment is conducted in a pump-probe manner; an optical pulse such as femtosecond laser pulse is directed to the sample of interest to initiate a desired reaction, and after a well-defined time delay, a probing pulse such as an ultrashort x-ray pulse is sent to the sample undergoing a reaction. Then, the signal resulted from the interaction of the reacting system and the probing pulse captures the molecular actions in real time. Since the measured signal (in this case, diffraction signal) is a function of molecular structures, the time-dependant data at various time delays contains a clue to the molecular reaction mechanisms and a novel data analysis of the time-resolved signal finally reveals the mechanism. Third-generation synchrotron radiation facility such as European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) and Advanced Photon Source (APS) can generate an X-ray pulse as short as 100 picoseconds. With the