Aditi Bhattacherjee, assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry, has earned a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to study the behavior of single-site transition-metal catalysts when exposed to visible light. 

The award, the organization’s most prestigious honor in support of early-career faculty, includes a five-year research grant for $700,000. 

Single-site transition-metal catalysts are essential to industrial polymerization, a chemical process used to produce plastics, resins, and other materials. Scientists believe that these catalysts have one active site that precisely controls chemical reactions, but their mechanisms are not well understood.

With polymer demand set to increase steadily over the next decades, more sustainable production methods are a priority for manufacturers.

“Understanding some of the chemical principles of the inner workings of these catalysts can help usher in alternative modes of activation such as light,” said Bhattacherjee. “Currently these catalysts need to be preactivated by hundred-to-thousandfold higher amounts of co-catalysts which are often toxic, flammable, and costly.” 

Bhattacherjee and her team will use femtosecond X-ray transient absorption spectroscopy to examine the ultrafast behavior of charged particles impacting chemical bonds in catalysts that have been exposed to visible light. A team of graduate and undergraduate students has constructed a table-top high harmonic generation set up that converts near-infrared light to extreme ultraviolet and soft x-ray wavelengths for the project. 

The study could open the door to revealing the mechanisms of molecular photocatalysts, where different parts of a molecule work together in synergy to carry out a complex chemical reaction. 

“Many of these effects are far too small to see or even imagine as they involve quantum wave packets, where not only the charge plays a central role but the electron spin too,” Bhattacherjee said.