简介：
Atmospheric Chemistry: Spectroscopic and Photo-Reaction Chamber Studies
Elijah Schnitzler and Wolfgang Jäger
Department of Chemistry, University of Alberta, Edmonton,Alberta, Canada
Atmospheric aerosols can severely affect human health and cause allergies, asthma, and cardiovascular and respiratory diseases. Aerosols have also significant effects on Earth’s climate. They have direct effects of Earth’s energy balance by scattering of, for example, incoming solar radiation and indirect effects by serving as cloud condensation nuclei. The first part of the presentation will be about photo-reaction (‘smog’) chamber experiments to study ageing of soot aerosol particles. Soot particles consist of many primary particles and have complex morphologies. If soot particles are coated with volatile organic compounds or secondary organic aerosol, they undergo structural changes. In the second part of the talk, spectroscopic studies of clusters of organic acids with water will be described. Such clusters are thought to play a critical role in the initial steps of secondary organic aerosol particle formation.
Wolfgang Jaeger – brief biography
Wolfgang Jäger received his PhD degree in Chemistry from the Christian Albrechts University in Kiel, Germany, in 1989. He joined the Department of Chemistry at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada, in 1995 after spending time as postdoctoral fellow and research associate at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 2001 and to the rank of Full Professor in 2003.
Professor Jäger’s research is multifaceted and includes fundamental studies of intermolecular interactions using spectroscopic investigations of weakly bound complexes and clusters, development of atmospheric trace gas sensing techniques that utilize solid state infrared diode lasers, photoreaction chamber studies of aerosol formation, and design and fabrication of external cavity lasers using MEMS technology. His work has resulted in more than 160 publications thus far.
For his scientific achievements, Professor Jäger was awarded the NSERC Steacie Memorial Fellowship in 2002, in 2004 he became a Tier I Canada Research Chair in Cluster Science which was renewed in 2011, and in 2008 he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. From 2009 to 2010, he spent a sabbatical year at the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society in Berlin, Germany, which was funded by a prestigious Humboldt Fellowship.
Chirality-Sensitive Spectroscopies of Non-Covalent Interactions
Yunjie Xu
Department of Chemistry, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, T6G 2G2
Our research program focuses on applying and developing new spectroscopic tools to determine chirality and to establish chirality recognition models at the molecular level. Our recent rotational spectroscopic studies of clusters of 2-fluoroethanol and trifluoroethanol, two common organic solvents, highlight the importance of bifurcated H-bonds and F···F attractive interactions and their decisive roles in conformational preference. We also apply vibrational circular dichroism and Raman optical activity to probe how chiral molecules interact with each other and with solvent molecules directly in solution. Recent examples on H-bonding, dihydrogen-bonding, and halogen-bonding will be discussed. Finally, a new instrument development on coupling mass spectrometry with IR laser spectroscopy will also be described.
A brief biography
Yunjie Xu obtained her BSc in Chemistry and her supplementary BSc in Applied Mathematics from Xiamen U. and her PhD in Molecular Spectroscopy from UBC, Canada. After postdoctoral periods at the National Research Council in Ottawa and at U. of Alberta, she started her independent research career at the U. of Alberta in 2003 and quickly rose to full professor in 2010. She has been Tier I (Senior) Canada Research Chair in Chirality and Chirality Recognition since 2011. Her research focuses characterizing chirality and chiral recognition at the molecular level. Her group not only applies vibrational circular dichroism, Raman optical activity, and rotational spectroscopy but also develops new IR-mass spectrometry techniques to study chirality recognition processes and chirality transfer phenomena in the gas phase, in solution and at metal nanoparticles. She has published 133 refereed articles in leading scientific journals including Science, Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., J. Am. Chem. Soc., J. Phys. Chem. Lett. and Phys. Rev. Lett. Most recently, her work is selected as a Research Highlight in Nature Rev. Chem. She has received many awards and honors including 2014 International Dr. Barbara Mez-Starck Prize for outstanding contributions in the field of experimental structural chemistry and molecular physics, 2015 International Mercator Fellowship from Freiburg U., Germany, and 2016 Clara Benson Award from Canadian Society for Chemistry.
