Dr. Loucas Christophorou is supported by a grant from The Experimental Physical Chemistry Program to study the mechanism for optically enhanced electron attachment to electronically excited molecules. This research has important implications in the potential design of light activated electronic switching devices. Dr. Christophorou has shown, in collaboration with his colleagues at Oak Ridge National Laboratories, that electronically excited states of certain molecules, produced indirectly by laser irradiation, can possess orders of magnitude larger electron attachment cross sections than corresponding ground electronic states. With this grant Dr. Christophorou will perform research directed at establishing the precise mechanism for this observation. Most of the research will be carried out on thiophenol which has been the subject of the preliminary investigations; however, the research will also be extended to studies of photofragments produced by the laser induced photodecomposition of carbon disulfide.
