WELCOME TO THE RATHER GROUP!

AN ULTRAFAST SCIENCE LAB

We are a new Physical Chemistry group in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Kentucky

Nature employs enzymes as catalysts to overcome large activation barriers needed to perform biological transformations. In the same way, nature also exploits photo-excited states to fuel the biomass production on earth, because the energy of an absorbed photon significantly changes the driving force for transforming reactants into products. In other words, many photophysical and photochemical reactions have quite small activation barriers, or are barrierless, owing to the huge bursts of energy supplied by the photoexcitation.

The capabilities of photo-excited entities for practical purposes are largely determined by the energetics and optoelectronic properties of the excited state produced by photo-excitation, which in turn depend on the transient structure, dynamics and transformations that occur immediately after the photo-excitation. The overall macroscopic outcomes eventually emerge from the intrinsic properties of the photo-excited entities as well as the interaction of the state of interest with the environment, with the nearest neighbor, with the nearby electronic or excitonic state, or with the nuclear vibrations, etc. The initial dynamics of importance usually occur on a femtosecond time-scale which sets the scene for the long-term behavior of the excited entity. In the Rather group, we seek to explore quantum dynamics in optical and optoelectronic properties of next-generation energy molecules and materials. More here