Abstract:
The ability to induce and amplify motion at the molecular scale has always been a dream for scientists and engineers. Light-driven molecular motors have been identified as actuators holding great potential to precisely control the dynamics of nanoscale devices with photons, but designing effective light-driven molecular motors is not trivial. In this talk, we will discuss several light-driven molecular motors designed theoretically by our group, which show good performance for both photo- and thermal isomerization processes. These molecular motors were designed by using electronic structure calculations, and confirmed by trajectory surface-hopping molecular dynamics at the OM2/MRCI level. Our results show the feasibility of simultaneously improving the efficiencies of photo- and thermal isomerization of light-driven molecular rotary motors.
Biography:
Chenwei Jiang earned a B.S. in Physics from Xi’an Jiaotong University in 2005 and a Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics from Xi’an Jiaotong University in 2010. He studied in the Department of Physics at Texas A&M University for two years as visiting graduate student between 2008-2010, and served as a visiting scholar in Department of Chemistry at the University of Washington between 2016-2017. Currently, he is an Associate Professor and the Dean of Department of Optoelectronic Information Science and Engineering in Xi’an Jiaotong University. His research focuses on developing molecular devices, such as molecular switches and molecular motors, with first principle calculation and molecular dynamics simulations, and exploring their working mechanism in gas phase and solution. Chenwei Jiang is also interested in investigating dynamics process in molecules with ultrafast spectroscopies.
Seminar Series by the NYU-ECNU Center for Computational Chemistry at NYU Shanghai
This event is open to the NYU Shanghai, NYU, ECNU community and the computational chemistry community.