The objective of this work has been the design of new lubricant additives to target friction in the boundary lubrication regime and the hydrodynamic lubrication regime. Modern automotive engines operate at higher temperatures and speeds than ever before, and therefore require new and more effective lubricant additives to meet higher...
Ultrafast, multi-dimensional coherent spectroscopy (MD-CS) has enabled scientists to probe fundamental aspects of chemical and photo-physical reactions on the nanosecond to femtosecond timescales. Using MD-CS, scientific contributions ranging from increased understanding of energy transfer in photosynthetic biological proteins to correlating the motion of electrons in semiconductors have been achieved. Concurrent...
The thermodynamics and kinetics of electron transfer reactions in catalysis, energy conversion and storage, and plasmon-driven chemistry depend strongly on nanoscale electrode surface structure. To elucidate the structure-function relationships that determine nanoscale electrochemical reactivity, it is necessary to observe electron transfer reactions one molecule at a time. Over the past...
Bimetallic polymerization catalysis represents a small, though active, area of research due largely to the interesting properties observed in the resulting product polymers, including higher molecular weight, increased comonomer incorporation, and enhanced tacticity. Current work is focused on furthering an understanding of the active catalytic species that give rise to...
Nonlinear optical (NLO) effects are used universally in modern day telecommunication and form the foundation of emergent photonic technologies. Twisted intramolecular charge transfer (TICT) chromophores, composed of a donor and acceptor fragment connected by a twisted bi-aryl bridge, combine large molecular NLO response with properties such as transparency in the...
This dissertation develops computational models to study the optical coupling between plasmonic nanoparticles and quantum emitters. A large number of nanophotonic applications function by using either plasmon enhanced fields to enhance optical processes within quantum emitters or the sensitivity of plasmon resonances to their environment. Developing computational methods to fully...
In this dissertation, efforts are detailed to utilize semiquinoid bridging ligands to impart strong magnetic coupling between metal centers. Chapter 1 introduces the synthetic challenge of realizing molecule-based magnets with high operating temperatures due to weak magnetic coupling between spin centers through large, diamagnetic ligands. An alternative strategy is described...
Small molecules such as indanes, chromanes, tetralins and their derivatives play a significant role in drug discovery due to their potent biological activity. This research herein presents a facile Brønsted acid-catalyzed allylsilane annulation methodology to generate fused ring systems such as indanes. The reaction goes through a homoallylic intermediate which...
Synthetic organic chemistry continues to be a driver in the discovery and development of new molecules for applications in biology, medicine, crop science, polymer science, and materials science. Central to the continued development of this field is the pursuit of new strategies and methods for the efficient construction of molecules...
Techniques in atomic physics have delivered some of the most precise measurements ever made, with frequency measurements reaching fractional precisions of 10^18 . High precision measurements can be used to test fundamental physics, such as pursuing a variation in fundamental constants. A finite drift in measurable constants such as the...