MSUM Physics & Astronomy Seminar Series: Energy Transfer in Molecular Systems
Friday, Nov. 3 | 3-4 p.m. | Hagen Hall 325
Zachary A. Morseth, Ph.D.
Department of Chemistry
Minnesota State University Moorhead
The transport of energy in molecular systems is at the heart of efficient energy conversion in both natural photosynthetic and artificial (man-made) molecular systems. In these structures, photoexcitation of a donor chromophore ‘D” is followed by the transfer of the excitation to a nearby acceptor chromophore ‘A”. While the chromophores are separated spatially, they experience a long-range Coulombic coupling that facilitates energy transfer on time scales ranging from femtoseconds to milliseconds (10-15-10-3 s). The theory of energy transfer with weak donor-acceptor coupling was reconciled by Theodor Fӧrster in 1946, where the rate of energy transfer was found to depend on a number of factors, including chromophore orientations, through-space distance, and the spectral properties of the donor and acceptor chromophores. Taken together, energy transfer has found a wide range of applications spanning from distance measurements in proteins to molecular design of next-generation chromophores for solar energy conversion applications.