Clocking transient chemical changes by ultrafast electron diffraction

J. Charles Williamson, Jianming Cao, Hyotcherl Ihee, Hans Frey and Ahmed H. Zewail
Additional contact information
J. Charles Williamson: California Institute of Technology
Jianming Cao: California Institute of Technology
Hyotcherl Ihee: California Institute of Technology
Hans Frey: California Institute of Technology
Ahmed H. Zewail: California Institute of Technology

Nature, 1997, vol. 386, issue 6621, 159-162

Abstract: Abstract With the advent of femtosecond (fs) time resolution in spectroscopic experiments, it is now possible to study the evolution of nuclear motions in chemical and photobiochemical reactions. In general, the reaction is clocked by an initial fs laser pulse (which establishes a zero of time) and the dynamics are probed by a second fs pulse; the detection methods include conventional and photoelectron spectroscopy and mass spectrometry1–4. Replacing the probe laser with electron pulses offers a means for imaging ultrafast structural changes with diffraction techniques5–8, which should permit the study of molecular systems of greater complexity (such as biomolecules). On such timescales, observation of chemical changes using electron scattering is non-trivial, because space-charge effects broaden the electron pulse width and because temporal overlap of the (clocking) photon pulse and the (probe) electron pulse must be established. Here we report the detection of transient chemical change during molecular dissociation using ultrafast electron diffraction. We are able to detect a change in the scattered electron beam with the zero of time established unambiguously and the timing of the changes clocked in situ. This ability to clock changes in scattering is essential to studies of the dynamics of molecular structures.

Date: 1997
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/386159a0 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:386:y:1997:i:6621:d:10.1038_386159a0

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/386159a0

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().