About

Our goal is to understand and manipulate coupled electronic and atomic displacements that drive chemistry in the ground and electronic excited states of molecules and materials.

Research topics

• Physics
• Optics
• Atomic physics
• Molecular physics
• Chemistry
• Crystallography
• Photochemistry
• Chemical physics
• Materials science
• Nuclear physics
• Physical chemistry

Selected publications

• Revealing the bonding of solvated Ru complexes with valence-to-core resonant inelastic X-ray scattering

  Chemical Science · 2021 · 36 citations

  • Atomic physics
  • Chemistry
  • Molecular physics

  Ru-complexes are widely studied because of their use in biological applications and photoconversion technologies. We reveal novel insights into the chemical bonding of a series of Ru(ii)- and Ru(iii)-complexes by leveraging recent advances in high-energy-resolution tender X-ray spectroscopy and theoretical calculations. We perform Ru 2p4d resonant inelastic X-ray scattering (RIXS) to probe the valence excitations in dilute solvated Ru-complexes. Combining these experiments with a newly developed theoretical approach based on time-dependent density functional theory, we assign the spectral features and quantify the metal-ligand bonding interactions. The valence-to-core RIXS features uniquely identify the metal-centered and charge transfer states and allow extracting the ligand-field splitting for all the complexes. The combined experimental and theoretical approach described here is shown to reliably characterize the ground and excited valence states of Ru complexes, and serve as a basis for future investigations of ruthenium, or other 4d metals active sites, in biological and chemical applications.

  DOI

• Direct observation of coherent femtosecond solvent reorganization coupled to intramolecular electron transfer

  Nature Chemistry · 2021 · 104 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Chemistry
  • Chemical physics
  • Atomic physics
  DOI

Recent grants

• Probing Coupled Electronic and Vibrational Motions in Ultrafast Proton Transfer Processes with Mixed-Frequency Multidimensional Vibronic and Soft X-ray Spectroscopies

  NSF · $452k · 2019–2023

• CAREER: Correlation of coupled electronic and nuclear motions in biological photoreceptors using femtosecond multidimensional spectroscopies

  NSF · $658k · 2009–2014

• Correlating Electronic and Atomic Motions in Photoinduced Electron-Proton Transfer Reactions with Two-Dimensional Electronic-Vibrational and X-ray Spectroscopies

  NSF · $485k · 2016–2020

Frequent coauthors

• R. W. Schoenlein

  SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

  64 shared

• Niranjan Govind

  Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

  55 shared

• Andrei Tokmakoff

  University of Chicago

  33 shared

• N. Demirdöven

  28 shared

• James D. Gaynor

  University of California, Berkeley

  22 shared

• Yu Zhang

  Ames National Laboratory

  21 shared

• Benjamin E. Van Kuiken

  European X-Ray Free-Electron Laser

  19 shared

• Elisa Biasin

  Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

  17 shared

Labs

• Khalil Research GroupPI

Awards & honors

• Dreyfus New Faculty Award (2007)
• Packard Fellowship in Science and Engineering (2008)
• CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation (2009)
• Sloan Research Fellowship (2012)
• Camille-Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award (2013)

Similar researchers at University of Washington

• Sarah Jaewon Leeh-151
• Jan Hansenh-130
• Linda Simonsenh-120
• Anna Waldh-119
• Jesse Bloomh-117