The Gas Hydrate project is supported by a National Science Foundation Collaborative Research in Chemistry (NSF-CRC) grant. It brings together chemists, geologists and engineers to advance the state knowledge of clathrate hydrates. The CRC Project includes a community outreach program involving high school teachers. The specific target of our lab is better understanding of interactions within the hydrate structure on a molecular level, formation mechanisms of gas hydrates as well as gas hydrate stability. This knowledge can be applied to the effect of global warming on marine methane hydrate deposits and to help develop safe, efficient methods for storing and transporting hydrogen and natural gas. We devise new experiments to explore gas hydrate dynamics on micro and macro levels.
Concurrent with the hydrate projects we are continuing our spectroscopic studies of small clusters containing noble gas. Recently, we have made the first observation of the Ar-Br2 molecule, and have found that linear and T-shaped isomers coexist. Complexes composed of a rare gas atom and a halogen molecule (Rg-X2) have been studied intensely because they offer a unique opportunity to observe how various parameters control the transition from direct vibrational dissociation to intramolecular vibrational relaxation (IVR) dynamics. Our group has employed a YAG pumped dual OPO/OPA system to investigate, with both time (20 ps) and frequency resolution (2 wavenumber), the vibrational dissociation dynamics of Rg-X2 complexes. The frequency resolution of these pump-probe experiments allow for size selection of clusters, while the time resolution enables the tracking of the fragmentation process in real-time. It is therefore possible to study the evolution of the ensuing dynamics both as a function of bath size (i.e. a given a number of rare gas atoms around the halogen molecule) and of initial stretching energy of the halogen chromophore. |
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