Ph.D., University of Chicago, 1997
Phone: 718-951-5000 x2841
Grant Support: PRF, $35,000
Nature of Research:
My work involves the theoretical study of room-temperature ionic liquids. These are salts that are molten at room-temperature, and have been found to have many useful properties for technological applications. However, their chemical physics are poorly understood, and the goal of my work is to understand these systems at a microscopic level.
Rotational Proposal:
While students who come to work with me would be involved in molecular dynamics simulations (most likely involving mixed quantum-classical components), such simulations are too slow to start up for a single rotation. As a more immediate project, I have an ongoing collaboration with a radiation chemist at Brookhaven National Laboratory who is studying solvated electrons in ionic liquids. A solvated electron (free electron interacting with the solvent) is actually a highly sensitive probe of the chemical environment, and analysis of its optical absorption spectrum may offer a great deal of insight on the structure and dynamics of ionic liquids. The student would be performing numerical analysis of the spectra, using a quantum mechanical description of the electron to infer its spatial distribution and kinetic energy from its absorption spectrum. This is a project that is challenging, but achievable on the timescale of a single rotation and will serve as an introduction to the types of questions that arise in this kind of work.
References:
The Chemical Environment of Ionic Liquids: Links Between Liquid Structure, Dynamics, and Solvation by Mark N. Kobrak, in Advances in Chemical Physics v. 139, 85-138 (2008).