Welcome to the Chemical Dynamics & Analysis Lab of IESLFORTH.

Our mission is to solve chemistry problems with photons.

One research area we are interested in is Chemical Dynamics: we use photons to investigate photolytic reaction mechanisms with quantum detail. Laser photons break up chemical bonds of molecules in a molecular beam and we measure the energy and spatial distribution of the products (neutrals, ions or electrons) quantum-state-selectively utilizing a combination of laser spectroscopy, mass spectrometry and ion imaging.

Another area we are interested in is Chemical Analysis: we measure spectra (such as UV/Vis/NIR/FTIR absorption, fluorescence, Raman and other types) of chemical mixtures and we are using statistical analysis/chemometrics/machine learning/AI to identify the spectral signatures of specific target molecules, aiming to identify those molecules qualitatively and quantitatively in the mix.

Current research directions include:

  • Probing the dynamics of highly excited molecules
  • Using photoelectrons to explore chirality
  • Applying optical spectroscopy as an analytical tool of chemical mixtures related to energy and the environment
  • Developing probes to image chemistry of molecules and materials in the nanoscale.