This award from the Chemistry Research Instrumentation Program will assist the Department of Chemistry at the University of Tennessee in the purchase of a Laser Raman spectrometer. Several faculty members whose research is dependent upon laser Raman spectroscopy will greatly benefit from the acquisition of this instrument. Research projects to be carried out with this instrument include: (1) the chemistry of molten chloroaluminate salts, (2) study of molten salt electrochemical cells, (3) the chemical vapor deposition of diamond, (4) the characterization of fullerenes and their derivatives, (5) the determination of chemical composition for process control with energy reduction, and (6) laser fluorescence of species in the diffusion layer of modified electrodes. %%% A laser Raman spectrometer provides important spectroscopic data which can be used to obtain information about molecular structure, molecular symmetry and molecular dynamics.
