Details of Grant 

EPSRC Reference:	EP/D052521/1
Title:	Time resolved studies of surface reactions dynamics probed by femtosecond VUV pulses
Principal Investigator:	Kaplan, Dr A
Other Investigators:
Researcher Co-Investigators:
Project Partners:
Department:	School of Physics and Astronomy
Organisation:	University of Birmingham
Scheme:	First Grant Scheme Pre-FEC
Starts:	18 May 2006	Ends:	17 November 2009	Value (£):	123,987
EPSRC Research Topic Classifications:	Surfaces & Interfaces
EPSRC Industrial Sector Classifications:	No relevance to Underpinning Sectors
Related Grants:
Panel History:
Summary on Grant Application Form
Over many millennia, humankind tried to explore the phenomena of chemical reactions. Special techniques were developed just for this purpose - to get insight into the steps during a substance transformation in a chemical reaction. Observing transformation during a chemical reaction at different time instances, scientists noticed that crucial changes occur very fast, so fast that equipment used for measuring wasn't fast enough to catch this very special events when one chemical specie (molecule) was transformed into other. The time scale of this transformation is hundreds and sometimes tens of femtoseconds. It is extremely short time. In second the light can travel a few times around the Earth compare to one femtosecond, it makes the distance much shorter than a diameter of a human hair. Meeting this challenge, scientists developed new technique, called femtosecond spectroscopy, for the observation of very act that brings about chemistry - the making and breaking bonds on their actual time and length scales. The special tools used for the observation are ultrafast lasers. These lasers provide very fast flashes (pulses), exactly as a flashing stroboscope in disco hall; one can capture changes of atom positions in molecules and track how one molecule transforms into other. For molecular reaction dynamics understanding, achieving this atomic scale resolution using ultrafast lasers, as a photo cameras used to capture snapshots of a running athlete from start to finish, is a triumph. We can track the very fast and tiny movement of molecules and atoms, we are about to understand much more than just a decade before. But there are many millions of known and unknown reactions. How can we study all of them? It is impossible, but we can divide them into classes, uniting similar types of reactions, and study only a few that represent each class - prototypes. Studying the dynamics of one representative reaction we can draw reasonable conclusion about the class it represents. I am interested to study very specific class of the chemical reactions - reactions that occur on metallic surfaces. Perhaps, the most famous reaction on metallic surfaces is the production of margarine. In this reaction one type of fats is converted into other type when passed with hydrogen gas over a surface of a metal. A metal is not changed during the reaction, but without it the reaction would be very slow or wouldn't happen at all. A metal in such reaction is a catalyser; it is not only makes the reaction faster but also drives it to a specific products. I want to study and understand what are basic processes on atomic level happening on a surface during the reaction, focusing on even more simple reaction than production of margarine. It will be study of reactions that happens on a surfaces in presence of a light. When metallic surface is covered by very small molecules and irradiated by an intense light one can observe that molecules are detached from the surface. I will study about processes occurring during the irradiation using ultrafast lasers. The basic question I am trying to answer is how an energy of the light put onto metallic surface redistributes and makes a molecule to leave it, how fast does this happen? How a molecule moves after it received the energy and how fast is this movement? Using ultrafast lasers I can make motion picture of the reaction as a molecule proceeds from the state when its tightly bounded to the surface to the moment it is completely free. Perhaps, there is no immediate application of such investigation in everyday life, but the conclusions from this research will help us to understand more about metallic surface involvement in the chemical reaction, in particular, and role of surfaces in chemical reactions, in general.
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Organisation Website:	http://www.bham.ac.uk