The chemistry of condensed phase interfaces impacts a wide variety of important scientific and technological areas such as heterogeneous catalysis, electrochemistry, energy conversion and storage, tribology, chemical sensors, and biological membranes. In each of these systems, a very small number of molecules at the surface can often control the macroscopic properties and direct the overall reactivity of the entire device or structure. For this reason, spectroscopists are acutely interested in devising methods of monitoring the chemical and physical framework of such interfaces.
Our research efforts in this area are dedicated to the development and application of the spectroscopic tools necessary to monitor the variations in structure and reactivity which can occur upon the introduction of molecular and atomic monolayers into an interfacial environment. These novel spectroscopic techniques allow us to directly monitor the structure and reactivity of condensed phase interfaces in situ.
Here in the Corn Research Group at the University of California-Irvine we employ a variety of spectroscopic tools to monitor chemical structure and reactivity at interfaces: