In this project, funded by the Experimental Physical Chemistry Program of the Chemistry Division, Prof. Roger E. Miller of the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill will conduct experiments with his undergraduate, graduate and post-doctoral research students to study a wide variety of chemical systems confined to cold helium droplets. The nature of the cold droplets allows Miller and his group to study a wide range of chemically interesting systems that would be difficult or impossible to study by other means. Included in these studies will be continued studies of hydrogen-bonded systems, highly reactive radical molecule complexes, metal and semiconductor clusters, and small biomolecules. Additional experiments will be performed with a powerful infrared pump laser to investigate intramoleuclar rearrangements and bimolecular reactions. The results from these very basic studies will be applicable to a wide variety of disciplines from nanoscience to biophysics.
Besides the broader impact of the research that will be performed, students trained in the Miller group are given a very broad training across many scientific disciplines.
