With the funds provided by the Academic Research Infrastructure Program this group plants to construct a state-of-the-art laser system for the purpose of studying interfaces making use of both second harmonic generation (SHG) and infrared-visible sum frequency generation (SFG) techniques. The 60 picosecond laser output will be tunable in the range 1.2 to 18 micrometers with pulse energies between 5 and 100 plus microJoules/pulse. The facility, which will be housed at the Purdue Chemistry Laser Facility, will constitute a cross-disciplinary Center for the Study of Interfacial Materials and Chemical Processes. The Facility will be used for the study of liquid-liquid, solid-liquid, and gas-solid interfaces with research topics including: 1) SFG studies of chemically sensitive surfaces and monolayer reactivity; orientation and vibrational spectra of molecules at lubricated solid interfaces under variable shear forces; surface spectroscopy of environmental particles; SHG studies of the nickel cluster electrocatalyst aryl thiol self assembled monolayers; SFG spectroscopy of adsorbed species at electrochemical interfaces; time resolved SFG studies of photoactivated, catalytic organometallic thin films; nonlinear optical and microscopic studies of photopolymerization on metal surfaces; interfacial orientation and biological effectiveness of dopamine receptor ligands; solvent fractionation and structure of immiscible liquid interfaces. A pulsed laser facility capable of second harmonic generation and sum frequency generation will be employed in broad ranging studies of liquid-liquid, liquid-solid, and gas-solid interfaces. The research ranges from the study of electrolytes in contact with solid electrodes and the corrosive effects of water on clay surfaces to the biological effectiveness of dopamine receptor ligands to the study of immiscible liquids in the presence of a third miscible component.
