Welcome to Lian's Ultrafast Dynamics and Single Molecule Research Group.

              The long term goal of our research program is to contribute to the advancement of solar energy conversion science and technology through basic research. Currently, our research efforts are focused on the preparation, characterization and fundamental understanding of photovoltaic and photocatalytic nanomaterials. Of particular interest are fundamental dynamical processes in the materials and their interfaces (such as charge transfer, solvation, energy transfer and relaxation) which are not only essential to their functions, but also relevant to many other materials and applications. We utilize state-of-the-art laser spectroscopic and imaging techniques (femtosecond transient absorption in the visible and IR, nonlinear second harmonic and sum frequency generation, and single molecule/particle fluorescence) to investigate these processes. We aim at achieving fundamental understanding of these processes by designing experiments that can be used to test modern theory and computational modeling.  

            Our research efforts have been funded by the US Department of Energy, National Science Foundation and the Petroleum Research Fund. There are five major ongoing projects:

1) Ultrafast interfacial charge separation dynamics in photovoltaic nanomaterials

2) Nonlinear spectroscopic probe of adsorbate orientation and electron transfer dynamics on single crystal surfaces

3) Single molecule/particle interfacial electron transfer

4) Multi-exciton dissociation in quantum dots