Time:2:30pm, 7/22/2014

Place:A306, 1 West Building

Speaker:Dr. Wei David WEI, University of Florida , U.S.A.

Title of Talk:Probing Surfaces with Light

Abstract of Talk:The interaction of incident electromagnetic waves with surfaces has been extensively studied in order to better understand the surface physical and chemical properties of materials. This talk will focus on investigating the properties of two different kinds of surfaces with incident light. In the first part, we will show how to probe the electronic structures of adsorbate-substrate complexes in order to better understand chemical bonding and chemical reactions that occur on a single crystal surface. The second part will demonstrate that a certain unique optical property of metallic nanostructures can efficiently mediate surface chemical reactions. More specifically, I will show how weunambiguously reveal the mechanics of plasmon-mediated electron transfer (PMET) in Au/TiO2 heterostructures under visiblelight (λ > 515 nm) during in situ operation.  I will further discuss how we directly probe the relaxation dynamics and energetics of the transferred “effective hot electrons” that participate in photocatalytic reactions. Finally,I will touch on our recent effort to use SPR-mediated photothermal effectsto synthesize hybrid bimetallic nanomaterials.

Invited by:Mingshang Jin , Chuanbo Gao