In order to build a clean energy economy, new photochemically-driven reactions are important for efficient solar energy capture and conversion. While driving reactions with light is less conventional than the typical heating of a beaker, it provides unique opportunities to initiate and control chemical reactions. For the past 50 years, physical chemists, especially spectroscopists and theorists, have built their so-called “chemical intuition” or understanding of how electron and proton transfer reactions occur primarily in the lowest energy states of molecules. However, when driving reactions with light, molecules necessarily become excited. The complex nature of excited states makes them more difficult to predict and understand, and thus we must develop a new chemical intuition for their reactivity. Profs. Fredin and Young received a Kaufman Foundation Integrated Research-Education Grant to establish a program for undergraduates to build chemical intuition of light-initiated electron and proton transfer in model azo dyes by combining spectroscopy and quantummechanics. Photochemistry Undergraduate Research Experience (PURE) provides a unique long-term project to develop undergraduate researchers' chemical intuition and expand academic and career success THROUGH KAUFFMAN FOUNDATION INTEGRATEDRESEARCH EDUCATION GRANT FREDIN AND YOUNG ESTABLISH Long-term undergraduate research participation has been proven to increase the academic performance, enhance the confidence, and lead to successful careers for undergraduate students. The newly established Photochemistry Undergraduate Research Experience (PURE) provides a unique long-term project for each undergraduate researcher that combines experimentation and computation. This summer four Lehigh undergraduates, Kiera Engelhart ‘22, Athina Jaffer ’23, Keyri Sorto ’24 and Ing Angsara Thongchai ’24, participated in an immersive, research-intensive, summer experience. The students worked for ten weeks learning how to model electronic structure of molecular dyes using Gaussian in the Fredin Lab, as well as how to measure steady-state and time-resolved spectroscopic properties in the Young Lab. They took part in dedicated workshops on the theory and hands-on training in each experimental or computational method. They learned about the scientific process and developed career skills. The students engaged the material with Profs. Fredin and Young, two graduate student mentors, and each other. This academic year (Fall 2021-Spring 2022) each student is continuing their research into the proton-coupled photophysics of their dyes through the combination of extensive density functional theory and spectroscopic studies. Together the trends the students are seeing, provide new chemical intuition of the photoexcited states of azo dyes. Top left: Sorto and Thongchai; Top right: Engelhart and Jaffer (left to right) Bottom: Graduate student Zach Knepp, Young, Engelhart, Jaffer, Sorto, Thongchai, graduate student Gil Repa and Fredin (left to right) IMMERSIVE RESEARCH PROGRAM Page 4 · Lehigh University
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