Jr. Core Physical Interdisciplinary Chemical Physics Materials Spectroscopy Research Group Evan Pugh Professor of Chemistry B.Ch. The realm of small dimensions often brings with it new phenomena, sometimes attributable to structure and bonding, while in other cases due to what is commonly called quantum confinement. The Castleman group is striving to bring new understanding to this challenging and important subject by employing the tools and principles from chemical physics to bridge an understanding and develop applications in a number of areas of modern chemical science. The tools and weapons are high technology molecular beams, flow reactors, ultrafast lasers, and sophisticated new mass spectrometer techniques while the targets range from atmospheric and environmental science to catalysis, microelectronics, cluster assembled materials, and even the interrogation of the effects of solvation and hydrogen bonding on the properties of biological molecules.
Clusters are the media through which the explorations take place.
In order to determine the inherent properties and reactivity of these nanoscale systems, they are studied in an unsupported fashion, either in a molecular beam or suspended in the carrier gas of a flow reactor. Because of their potential use as new electronic and optical materials, as well as possible value as new catalysts, they have attracted wide interest in the chemistry community. Work is under way to investigate their molecular properties, reactivity, and routes for their synthesis in the solid state. Along the lines of exploring the physical basis for catalysis, the group is also engaged in a number of studies of the reactivities of metal compound clusters of widely varying composition and types. Investigations are also under way to learn how the small cluster building blocks lead to different morphologies of growing particles that are of interest in wide-ranging areas from photocatalysis to developing new cluster assembled materials.