Congratulations to Marta Duchi who completed her PhD in July 2020 and was the first group member to have a viva voce examination on Zoom. Marta’s thesis work included the implementation of ultrafast two-dimensional electronic spectroscopy (2DES) in Tom’s lab. She has now joined Prof Peter Hamm’s group at the University of Zurich as a postdoc.
A previous Bristol Laser Group study of the UV photoinduced ring-opening reaction of the heterocyclic molecule, 2(5H)-thiophenone in solution (available here) served to inspire an international team to undertake an ultrafast time-resolved pump-probe study of the reaction in vacuum at FERMI, the world’s first seeded free-electron laser (in Trieste). Following photoexcitation, the new study allows direct observation of the initial ring opening and non-adiabatic coupling to the electronic ground state within 350 fs, driven by ballistic S–C bond extension, and visualization of the subsequent ground-state dynamics – that involves formation of and interconversion between ring-opened isomers and the cyclic structure and fragmentation over much longer timescales. The paper is ‘Tracking the ultraviolet-induced photochemistry of thiophenone during and after ultrafast ring opening’ by S. Pathak, …. , C.S. Hansen, R.A. Ingle, M.N.R. Ashfold, et al., published in Nature Chemistry and featured on the cover, with further details here.
Tom’s prestigious Royal Society University Research Fellowship has been renewed for a further 3 years. Tom was originally awarded his fellowship in 2015. In 2018 he was made the offer of a proleptic lectureship at Bristol, and in 2019 promoted to Associate Professor.
Congratulations to Ryan Phelps, and to Luke Lewis-Borrell and coauthors for recent papers in the Journal of the American Chemical Society and Chemical Science. Both papers report transient ultrafast spectroscopy of reactive intermediates. Ryan’s work describes studies of the mechanisms and kinetics of carbene reactions with organic solvents to form ylides and enols (Direct observation of ylide and enol intermediates formed in competition with Wolff rearrangement of photo-excited ethyl diazoacetoacetate, R. Phelps and A.J. Orr-Ewing, J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2020, 142, 7836; DOI 10.1021/jacs.0c00752). Luke’s paper shows how multiple sequential steps in a photoredox catalysed cycle can be tracked by transient IR absorption spectroscopy (Mapping the multi-step mechanism of a photoredox catalysed atom-transfer radical polymerization reaction by direct observation of the reactive intermediates, L. Lewis-Borrell, A. Bhattacherjee, M. Sneha, et al., Chemical Science 2020, 11, 4475; DOI 10.1039/D0SC01194K).
The recent paper ‘Ultraviolet photolysis of H2S and its implications for SH radical production in the interstellar medium’ (Nat. Comm. 11, 1547 (2020)) describing collaborative work by Mike Ashfold, Colin Western, ex-group member Chris Hansen (now at UNSW in Sydney) and colleagues at the Dalian Coherent Light Source has been selected to feature in a Nature Communications Editors’ Highlights webpage.
Congratulations to Georgia Thornton for winning a poster prize at the annual RSC Spectroscopy and Dynamics Group Conference, held at the University of Warwick from 6 – 8 January 2020. Georgia’s poster entitled “Studying the Electron Transfer Driven Polymerisation of N-ethylcarbazole using Transient Absorption Spectroscopy” describes her work studying reaction mechanisms in solution using ultrafast spectroscopy.
Giordano Amoruso, Mary Jenkinson-Finch (Steve Mann’s group) and Roman Abrams (Jonathan Clayden’s group) were the University of Bristol’s representatives at the 6th Jilin University Chemistry Graduate Forum. Giordano presented his recent work investigating Förster resonant energy transfer in quantum dot-bacterial reaction centre conjugates.
Congratulations to former group member Dr Chris Hansen who has won an Australian Research Council DECRA Fellowship to launch his independent research into the impact of fluorinated compounds in the atmosphere. Chris will be leading this research project at the University of New South Wales in Sydney.
Congratulations to Matt Bain for a successful defense of his PhD thesis in his viva on 4/11/2019. Matt’s doctoral research involved development and application of new photoionization and multi-mass velocity map imaging methods to study photochemical dynamics and product branching ratios. He is now a postdoctoral research fellow with Prof Steve Bradforth at the University of Southern California.
Congratulations to Ed Mahoney for success in his PhD viva. Ed’s thesis explores alternative excitation mechanisms in microwave activated plasmas operating under conditions relevant to the chemical vapour deposition (CVD) of diamond. Ed is spending a few more months in Bristol as a PDRA working on an impact acceleration project to improve the atom efficiency of diamond CVD, but plans to be travelling in South East Asia before the end of 2019.
Dr Daniel Polak joins the Bristol group following PhD studies with Dr Jenny Clark at the University of Sheffield. In his PhD, Daniel studied singlet fission of polyenes inside de novo maquette proteins and the effect of microcavities on the emission efficiency of singlet fission. Daniel will use multidimensional optical spectroscopies to explore chemical and biomolecular condensed phase dynamics.
Congratulations to Aditi Bhattacherjee who won a poster prize at the 14th Femtochemistry Conference (FEMTO 14) in Shanghai (July 28 – Aug 2 2019). Her poster, “Tracking a Photocatalytic Decarboxylation Reaction over Picosecond to Millisecond Timescales using Ultrafast Infrared Transient Absorption Spectroscopy” described some of the Bristol group’s recent studies of the mechanisms of photoredox catalysed organic reactions using transient infra-red absorption spectroscopy.
Victoria Taylor, Giordano Amoruso, Mahima Sneha and Luke Lewis-Borrell presented their ultrafast studies at the 29th International Conference on Photochemistry in Boulder, Colorado, USA. Tom Oliver co-chaired and organised the Ultrafast Photochemistry session of the conference with Vanessa Huxter (University of Arizona).
To celebrate Mike Ashfold’s sixty-fifth birthday, Andrew Orr-Ewing has guest edited a special issue of Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics themed on Photodissociation and Reaction Dynamics to coincide with Mike’s birthday. The volume contains 59 peer-reviewed articles from Mike’s friends, colleagues and collaborators from across the world, including contributions from current Bristol colleagues Carmen Galan, Tom Oliver, Andrew Orr-Ewing, Dudley Shallcross, Colin Western, and Bristol alumni Basile Curchod, Jeremy Harvey, Craig Murray and David Tew.
Congratulations to Joe McManus, Becky Martin and Ben Carwithen who all won School of Chemistry prizes for their achievements in the final year of their degree programmes. Joe (left) was awarded the Physical and Theoretical Chemistry Project Prize and received a Head of School Commendation Letter. Becky (centre) received the Peter Cox Prize and a Head of School Commendation Letter. Ben (right) was awarded the Richard Dixon Prize.
The Scientific Committee for Faraday Discussion 217, the first ever to be held in California, comprised Mike Ashfold and recent Benjamin Meaker Fellow Steve Bradforth (Univ. S. California), Tom Oliver, Jennifer Ogilvie (Michigan), Naomi Ginsberg (U.C. Berkeley) and Vas Stavros (Warwick). The Discussion, which was very well attended, featured Introductory and Closing Remarks lectures by, respectively, Majed Chergui (EPFL) and Bern Kohler (Ohio State), 23 other papers for discussion and about 60 posters (including one from group member Marta Duchi, who is pictured with Mike on the beach in Malibu).
Andrew was invited to give the 2019 Burton Lecture at King’s College London on 20 March, and spoke about his research group’s work on the use of transient absorption spectroscopy to study photochemical reaction mechanisms. Professor Harold Burton was Head of the Department of Chemistry from 1947 until 1966, and the series of annual lectures to commemorate his contributions began in 1970.
Congratulations to Luke Lewis-Borrell who won a poster prize at the SCI Spotlight on Photoredox Catalysis and Photochemistry meeting in London on 26th Feb. Luke’s poster highlighted how ultrafast transient absorption spectroscopy methods can be used to characterize the excited state lifetimes and electron transfer rates of organic molecules designed for use as photoredox catalysts, and hence how photoredox-catalysed reaction mechanisms can be unravelled. The work will lead to new design principles for future generations of catalysts.
Andrew Orr-Ewing travelled to the University of Kansas in February 2019 to deliver the annual Arthur William Davidson Lecturer. This lecture series in Physical Chemistry has run since 1987 and Andrew was the first scientist based outside the USA to be invited to deliver the Davidson Lecture.
Congratulations to Ryan Phelps who won a prize at the RSC Spectroscopy and Dynamics Group’s annual conference for his poster entitled “Observing the fate of keto carbenes using ultrafast spectroscopy”. The poster describes Ryan’s studies of short-lived reactive intermediates in solution using transient infra-red spectroscopy on femtosecond to picosecond timescales. The SDG annual meeting was held at the University of Nottingham from 7-9 January 2019 and was attended by almost 150 delegates.
