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Current
Research Program
Ultrathin organic films (mono- or
multilayers of molecules) at interfaces are of much importance to industry
and science. For a number of years they have been successfully applied as
corrosion inhibitors to protect pipelines from aggressive elements of crude
oil. Further progress in development of microelectronic devices urges for
the use of ultrathin films as photoresist for future devices. Fundamental
studies of the functionality of biological membranes are also done using
ultrathin biomimetic membranes.
We advance
established methods such as Infrared Reflection Absorption Spectroscopy (IR
RAS) and develop new techniques (e.g. electric potential or polarization
modulation) to monitor changes in orientation and surface-coordination of
ultrathin films of organic molecules at interfaces. In order to obtain
quantitative information via in situ
experiments, one has to first significantly reduce the relative standard
deviation (improve the signal-to-noise ratio) of the chemical
instrumentation used. The signal arising due to organic monolayers is
typically about 0.001 on the absorbance scale, necessitating the reduction
of r.m.s. noise to less than 0.0001 in order to achieve experimental data
of sufficient quality for quantitative evaluation. Such a “sharpening of
the tool before its use” requires through optimization of the chemical
instrumentation used.
We apply Fresnel
equations describing the propagation of light through a stratified medium
to gain understanding of Reflection Absorption Spectroscopy in all its
aspects from optimization of experimental conditions to the insight into
interpretation of experimental results. Specifically, we employ simulation
of IR spectra at various experimental conditions using in-house software
that we develop (“Fresnel1”, available for free upon request). If the
theory and experiments match, we have confidence that a reasonable degree
of understanding of the behavior of the system is achieved.
Publications
Grants
Government Contract
(DRDC) (2010-2013)
CFI
(2004, 2006-2010, 2007)
NSERC Discovery Grant
(2003-2006, 2006-2008, 2008-2010)
Acadia University Start Up
(2002)
Awards
Chemistry Teaching Award (2014)
Acadia
Research Showcase Top Faculty Presenter (2003)
The Canadian Section of the Electrochemical Society Student Award (2002)
Bruker Spectrospin Graduate Scholarship (2001)
A.J. Carty Scholarship (2000)
H. Zimmerman Memorial Scholarship (2000)
H.G. McLeod Scholarship (1999)
Ontario Graduate Scholarship (OGS) (1999-2001)
University of Guelph Graduate Scholarship (1996-1998, 2001)
Professional Affiliations
Canadian Society for Chemistry
Canadian Section of the Electrochemical Society
International Society of Electrochemistry
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