Chemistry Colloquium Professor Kana Takematsu, Bowdoin College

“The Challenge of Moving Protons”

The controlled movement of charges is essential to many redox processes in chemistry, including the harnessing of solar energy. The conversion of solar to chemical energy is key for environmental sustainability and national security. Our group uses a class of compounds called photoacids to investigate the coupling between light energy and movement of protons. Photoacids are compounds that become much more acidic upon light excitation. We will discuss how a combination of spectroscopic and theoretical tools can be used to shed light on the structural and environmental factors that tune proton transfer pathways in derivatized naphthalene photoacids.