News

2024

 

November

  • We would like to welcome Ningjing Jiang, Post Doc, from China. Jiang's research focuses on molecular spectroscopy, with an emphasis on rotational spectroscopy, to investigate sulfur-containing interstellar molecules, which are crucial for understanding the chemical composition and dynamics of the interstellar medium (ISM). By exploring the potential chemical evolution pathways of these molecules, she aims to shed light on the long-standing "sulfur depletion" problem, a significant issue in astrochemistry regarding the observed scarcity of sulfur in the gas phase of the interstellar medium compared to its expected cosmic abundance. By combining rotational spectroscopy with discharge techniques, her research enables the detailed analysis of the structure, formation processes, and interactions of sulfur-containing molecules. This work not only advances our understanding of the chemical processes in the ISM, including the formation of complex, life-supporting sulfur-containing molecules but also contributes to broader insights into astrochemical evolution, offering clues about the distribution and fate of sulfur in the universe.

September

  • Congratulations to the team involved in the publication of "Probing the structure and dynamics of the heterocyclic PAH xanthene and its water complexes with infrared and microwave spectroscopy." The article has been published in the journal Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics. To read more, please visit: https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2024/cp/d4cp03030c 
  • We are happy to receive our guests Mark D. Marshall and Helen Leung from Amherst College, Massachusetts. They will join us in our lab until the end of October.

  • We are pleased to announce the dates for the upcoming microwave seminars during the winter term: October 9th, 2024, at 10:00 a.m., November 13th, 2024, at 10:00 a.m., December 12th, 2024, at 5:00 p.m., January 8th, 2025, time TBC, February 12th, 2025, at 10:00 a.m.

August

  • After the summer break, we are glad to be back with exciting new microwave lectures, the new dates will be announced soon! 
  • Stay also tune for the next round of our biweekly CMWS seminars held on Thursdays at 12:00 via Zoom. This coming winter semester taking place on: 24.10.24, 07.11.24, 21.11.24, 12.12.24, 09.01.25, 30.01.25.
  • We would like to welcome Liuting Wang, our new PhD student from China.

 

June

  • How many water molecules does it take to dissolve hydrochloric acid? Investigating the dissociation of acids in the presence of a limited number of water molecules is crucial for understanding various elementary chemical processes. In our study focusing on HCl(H2O)n clusters formed in a cold and isolated jet expansion, we utilized the nuclear quadrupole coupling tensor obtained via rotational spectroscopy to decipher the nature of the H-Cl chemical bond in a micro-aqueous environment. For n = 1 to 4, the H-Cl bond is covalent. At n = 5 and 7, the contact ion pair of H3O+Cl− is spontaneously formed within the hydrogen bond networks of “book” and “cube” acid-water clusters, respectively. Further Information can be found here. For full access to the manuscript see here: https://www.science.org/stoken/author-tokens/ST-1954/ful
  • Christina M. Tonauer receives funding by the strategic Partnership for Innovation, Education and Research (PIER) for realizing her project “Photocatalytic CO2 splitting enabled by water ice – Observations from the gas phase to the surface“ in the recent PIER Seed Projects Call 2024. Together with her collaboration partner Charlotte Ruhmlieb (UHH), she will explore the catalytic properties of water ices for CO2 conversion. Congratulations, Christina!
  • Denis Tikhonov and Niclas Wieland from AG Marcus Ilchen (University of Hamburg) received support from PIER for their joint project, "Chirality-sensitive covariant mass spectrometry." In this work, they plan to develop a new technique for sensing the chirality of molecules based on Coulomb explosions and covariance analysis of the mass spectra. Congratulations, guys, and good luck in this endeavor!
  • Christina M. Tonauer receives the Georg-and-Christine-Sosnovsky Prize 2024 for her dissertation "Near-Infrared Spectroscopy for Characterization of Crystalline and Amorphous Ices", where she first-time characterizes 11 phases of ice in the wavelength range 1-2.5 µm. Her work establishes the previously neglected near-infrared range as a significant spectral region for the detection and identification of various ice structures in space, thereby enabling fundamental insights into the composition of icy celestial bodies through space telescopes such as JWST or JUICE. Congratulations, Christina!
  • We would like to welcome Colin Sueyoshi, a student at Amherst College in Massachusetts, USA, coming for this summer

May

 

  • We would like to welcome our upcoming visitor Madhusree Roy Chowdhury visiting from Kassel

April

  • Congratulations to Maria Khon for successfully submitting her Master's Thesis!
  • Upcoming Seminars for the Summer Semester 2024
  • MUSS Seminars: We are welcoming our two invited speakers for the MUSS Seminar this summer: Poul Erik, on May 16th at 10:00 AM, and Sandra Eibenberger on June 6th, 2024.
  • Microwave Seminars: Join our regular exchanges within the microwave spectroscopy community. For more information, please visit: Virtual International Microwave Seminar.
  • CMWS Seminars: Participate in our CMWS Seminars focused on water-related science and technology. The seminars take place every second Thursday at 12 PM. Interested? Please visit: CMWS Seminar.

 

January/February

  • The group has new Ph.D.! Congratulations to Gayatri Batra and Himanshi Singh on their recent achievements! Well done!
  • CMWS Water days: The CMWS Water DAYS 2024 took place at DESY in Hamburg from February 26-28, 2024. This was the 7th general meeting of the CMWS – to discuss key challenges in molecular water research and the status and future of the Centre for Molecular Water Science (CMWS). To read more, please visit: Focus on molecular water science - CMWS Water DAYS 2024

 

October 2023

  • We are happy to welcome our new PhD Student Jiayi Li.  She will be working on the chirality group, focusing on the non-covalent interactions in asymmetric organocatalysis. Welcome to Hamburg Jiayi!

 

September 2023

  • Gayatri Batra was awarded with the Rao Prize, at the 77th International Symposium of Molecular Spectroscopy, June 17-21, 2023, for an outstanding student talk. The title of her talk was "Exploring the formation of silicon derivatives of aromatic and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in the electrical discharge of phenyl silane". Warm congratulations, Gayatri!
  • Himanshi Singh received an outstanding poster presentation award from Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics and CrystEngComm at the 25th International Conference on Horizons in Hydrogen Bond Research, held in Bologna, from September 11-15, 2023. Her presentation focused on the conformational flexibility of a potential bio-renewable chemical, 6-amyl-α-pyrone, which was investigated using rotational spectroscopy. Well done!
  • Christina M. Tonauer is back to the group, but now as a Postdoc Researcher. Her research will be focused on photochemical activation and reactivity of small molecules in astronomical ices.

 


August 2023

 

  • How would a chiral environment impact the dynamics of hydrogen atoms? We investigate this question in our recent publication with the title “Hydrogen-Atom Tunneling in a Homochiral Environment” in the journal “Angewandte Chemie International Edition. Using rotational spectroscopy in combination with the solution of a simple one-dimensional Schrödinger equation, we revealed the intriguing distinctions of hydrogen atom dynamics between homochiral and heterochiral dimers of trans-1,2-cyclohexanediol. A special congrats to Fan!
  • Exciting results were also shown in the new article “Detection of ethynylbenzene in TMC-1 and the interstellar search for 1, 2-diethynylbenzene”. Within this research, we delved into the reactivity of the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon naphthalene under the extreme energetic conditions produced by an electrical discharge nozzle. In this context, we pinpointed a potentially significant species, 1,2-diethynylbenzene, which could play a role in the formation of naphthalene. An astronomical search for the resulting products in the Taurus Molecular cloud was carried out and confirmed the detection of ethynylbenzene in the Taurus Molecular Cloud. Congrats to Amanda and Dona.
  • Fan Wu joined the group for a 2-months internship within the group. Meet Fan and some of her experience within the next lines:  “I am from California, and just before I started the internship, I had just completed my Master's in Ocean and Climate Physics at the University of Hamburg. So my background is in geoscience, but my interest in astronomy led me to participate in this internship. During the internship, I was given the opportunity to help run experiments with the COMPACT spectrometer from which I received the data that I analyzed. Overall, I had such a positive experience during my internship. Everyone in the research group is incredibly friendly and helpful, and I never felt left out, even coming from a different field. One of the group members (Diksha) also gave me a tour and introduced me to both Petra and FLASH. Such an environment really inspires love of learning!
  • We would like to extend our congratulations to Christina Tonauer on her recent Ph.D. achievement and warmly welcome her to our group!

July 2023

  • We are happy to announce our new article “Quantum tunnelling facilitates the water motion across the surface of phenanthrene”, published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. In this paper, we exploit the high resolution of broadband rotational spectroscopy to disentangle in great detail the complex internal dynamics of a single water molecule when interacting with the planar carbon surface of phenanthrene, which serves as a small-scale carbon-surface like model. The results show that the diffusion of a single water molecule on carbon surfaces occurs via quantum tunnelling of the water molecule between one aromatic ring of phenanthrene and the equivalent one. A special congrats to Dona!
  • The group successfully attended the The International Symposium on Molecular Spectroscopy (ISMS) in Urbana-Champain, IL, US. 

June 2023

  • We are happy to celebrate with Swanje her EmpowerMINT Award 2023, given by the University of Kiel for her outstanding achievements in her Master Thesis „Investigation of steroid hormones and complexes with a steroid hormonal fragment by rotational spectroscopy“. Congratulations Swantje!

May 2023

  • The group made another successful retreat this year. This time near the Elbe in beautiful Glückstadt. We experienced a lot of exciting discussions, reporting and tutorials provided by our own field experts. Thanks to all the group members for the efforts put into it!
  • We are happy to welcome Maria Khon from the University of Kiel to join our group as a master student. Maria will be working on her thesis project, focusing on rotational spectroscopy for heterocyclic compounds such as phenoxazine with a further study of the astrophysical properties. We are delighted to have Maria as a part of our group. Welcome Maria!
  • We would like to welcome and thank our invited speaker Piero Ferrari from Felix Laboratory, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands with the title of his talk “Mass spectrometric-based techniques to explore the size- and composition-dependent properties of gas-phase clusters” 

April 2023

  • More seminars coming up! Another exciting semester is startingm and we have another round of seminars coming up!
  • We are also happy to announce another series of CMWS Seminars based on water-related science and technology. The aim of the series is to intensify the scientific exchange within the framework of the Center for Molecular Water Science CMWS. Interested? Please visit CMWS Seminar (cmws-hamburg.de)
  • We are also looking forward to the next round of ELCH Seminars! This semester hosting Robert Cameron/University of Strathclyde, Janine Franz /Uni Kassel, Francesco Tani/MPI of Science of Light and Xuewen Chen from the Huazhong University of Science and Technology. For details please visit SFB-Seminar (uni-kassel.de)

March 2023

  • More exciting publications! Congratulations to the authors for their publication in the journal “Angewandte Chemie”, with the title “Chiral control of gas‐phase molecules using microwave pulses”. This minireview paper reviews some recent developments in the area of microwave three-wave mixing and its extension to enantiomer-selective population transfer and presents the new experimental results on improving the enantiomer-selective population transfer to obtain an enantiomeric excess of about 40%. Brilliant work, Himanshi and Freya!  The full article can be found here.
  • PhD Defense coming soon! Diksha Gard will be defending her PhD thesis this 24th of March in CFEL Building at 14:00.

February 2023

  • Beamtime at FLASH! We are investigating the stability of PAH tetracations depending on the molecular backbone's size and topology
  • More than 120 scientists met for the CMWS DAYS 2023!  More than 120 participants from 20 countries met from 21-24th of February for the CMWS DAYS 2023 to discuss the key challenges in molecular water research and the status and future of the Centre for Molecular Water Science (CMWS). This meeting includes recently launched joint research projects between DESY and CMWS partners and Science highlights within CMWS. As a part of the CMWS DAYS 2022 the 20th annual DESY Research Course for students, young research fellows and interested scientists was focused on "Water in Climate-, Astro and Geo Sciences", which is an essential part of the CMWS research agenda. For further information about the CMWS DAYS 2023 and the Centre for Molecular Water Science click here
  • The manuscript with the title CO2 Aggregation on Monoethanolamine: Observation from Rotational Spectroscopy was accepted by the journal “Angewandte Chemie”! Monoethanolamine (MEA), as an alkanolamine, is a potentially applicable molecular system for absorbing the CO2 emission from power plants. This study investigated the initial steps of the CO2 aggregation processes on MEA in the gas phase using broadband chirped-pulse Fourier transform microwave spectroscopy. The full article can be found here
  • Congratulation to all the people involved for publication with the title “Inducing transient enantiomeric excess in a molecular quantum racemic mixture with microwave fields”, in the journal Nature Communications. This paper presents the recent results of manipulating molecular chirality in floppy transient chiral molecules like benzyl alcohol using a custom developed microwave pulse scheme and is highlighted by the DESY News. Further information can be found at: https://www.desy.de/news/news_search/index_eng.html?openDirectAnchor=2637&two_columns=1.

January 2023

  • We are happy to welcome Jan Schlicht from the University of Kiel to join our group as a master student. Jan will be working on his thesis project, which focuses on investigating propiophenone and its derivatives in vacuum and isolated microsolvation environments using microwave spectroscopy. We are delighted to have Jan as a part of our group. Welcome Jan!
  • Elch Workshop: ELCH Workshop in Hamburg. The FS-SMP group hosts the first workshop of 2023 from the CRC 1319 ELCH. It will take place in Hamburg on January 17th and 18th. We are looking forward to welcoming all the ELCHE from Kassel, Berlin, Marburg, and Frankfurt.
  • MUSS Seminars: We are happy to announce that we will be hosting two speakers for the MUSS Seminar in January 2023, this time as a hybrid event at 10:00 in CFEL.

    Gabi Wenzel, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), will visit us on Thursday 12th, 2023, and will tell us about her latest astrochemistry results on polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.

    Martin McCoustra, from Heriot-Watt University, will give his talk on January 19th, with the title “Laboratory Surface Science Studies in Astrochemistry - Always Measure Don't Trust Your Intuition!”. For a full abstract please visit https://indico.desy.de/event/36866/attachments/78267/101523/Abstract.pdf

    Come and join us!. For more information about the MUSS Seminars please visit: https://indico.desy.de/category/396/

  • CMWS Waterdays: The next CMWS Water Days are planned for 21-24th February, 2023. Save the date! This meeting will include the DESY Research Course, which is a part of DESY’s annual series dedicated to Master, PhD-students and other interested scientists. The focus of the upcoming research course will be on "Molecular Water in Climate-, Astro-, and Geo-Sciences". We are looking forward to you joining us! . For more information visit https://www.cmws-hamburg.de/news_amp_events/

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Older News

December 2022

  • Our recent theoretical proposal on making planar molecules chiral was published in the journal Science Advances, entitled “Pump-probe spectroscopy of chiral vibrational dynamics”. In this paper, we explored how light can turn a planar molecule into a chiral arrangement with just one particular handedness, providing new insight into the long-standing problem of absolute asymmetric synthesis. More information about this research can be found here: https://www.desy.de/news/news_search/index_eng.html?openDirectAnchor=2502&two_columns=0
  • Congratulations to Swantje for receiving the Kekulé Scholarship from the Fonds der Chemischen Industrie! With this scholarship, Swantje will continue her path in academia as a Ph.D. student in the group. She will keep working on interactions in complexes with biological interest using chirped-pulse Fourier transform microwave spectroscopy. Congratulations Swantje!

November 2022

  • We welcome Chen Gu from the University of Hamburg as a Master student. In his thesis, he will focus on evaluating the conformations of heteromacrocyclic amines using chirped-pulse Fourier transform microwave spectroscopy. Welcome Chen!

October 2022

  • A warm welcome to Christina Tonauer, who will be visiting our group for six months. Christina is a PhD student from the Loerting Group at the University of Innsbruck and focuses on the synthesis and spectroscopic characterization of different H2O-ices. In our lab, she will study the (photo)chemical reactivity of ice poly(a)morphs and their gas-phase products. Welcome Christina!

September 2022

  • We are happy to welcome to our group Maider Parra-Santamaria from the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU). Maider will be visiting for three months and her main area of research will be investigating large macrocyclic molecules and their complexes with solvent. Welcome Maider!

August 2022

  • Our latest results exploring the dynamics of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons has been published in PCCP in the themed collection "Ions, electrons, coincidences and dynamics: Festschrift for John H.D. Eland". The paper results from one of our previous FLASH beamtimes and uses recoil-frame covariance and theory to extract the kinetic energies from dication and trication dissociation pathways of the PAHs. The paper has been selected by PCCP as a 2022 HOT Article and is free to access. Thank you to all collaborators who made this publication possible.

July 2022

  • We are happy to welcome to our group James Merrick from the University of Oxford, UK. Joining us via the DESY summer school program starting July 19th '22, he will be working on projects in ultrafast pump-probe spectroscopy during his stay. Further information can be found at: https://summerstudents.desy.de

June 2022

  • Prof. Wolfgang Jaeger and Prof. Yunjie Xu from the U. of Alberta will visit our lab in the afternoon of Wednesday, June 29. Prof. Xu, who is an Associate Editor of PCCP, will also chat with our members about publishing in and serving as a reviewer for PCCP.

May 2022

  • Our manuscript on an interesting chiral molecule, methyl-p-tolyl-sulfoxide (MTSO) has been published online in Journal of Chemical Physics. This is Wenhao’s first publication in the group. Congratulations! In this work, the internal dynamics of MTSO was explored in the gas phase, including the low-barrier internal rotation of the methyl top and the interesting pyramidal inversion of the sulfoxide group, which transfers the handedness at sulfur, using our 18-26 GHz microwave spectrometer and quantum-chemical calculations. Many thanks to our collaborators, Dr. Arne Senftleben at the University of Kassel and Dr. Isabelle Kleiner at the CRNS. Nice work. 

  • Our manuscript on exploring the ultrafast dynamics of the astrochemical relevant polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon, fluorene, has been published online in the special issue "Electronic and Nuclear Quantum Dynamics of Molecules in Intense Laser Fields" of Frontiers of Physics on 12th May 2022. The interaction of fluorene molecules with extreme ultraviolet (XUV) pulses from the free-electron laser at FLASH opens various fragmentation channels for fluorene. These channels are investigated through time-resolved pump-probe XUV-Vis spectroscopy that enabled us to extract the electronic relaxation lifetimes of the fluorene parent monocation and dication in the range of few tens to few picosecond timescales.

April 2022

  • Members of the FS-SMP group successfully participated in a beamtime at the DESIREE ion storage ring at Stockholm University in collaboration with the University of East Anglia. The experiment investigated the isomerization of two small astrochemical molecules, azulene and naphthalene.

March 2022

  • Congratulations to Fan, who has received a Humboldt Research Fellowship for Postdocs from The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Fan will continue doing research on chiral molecular systems via spectroscopic methods.
  • The first lecture of the Virtual International Microwave Seminar series has taken place on March 8th. Around 80 international participants - from Asia, Australia, and Europe - attended the talk delivered by Sonia Melandri from the Università di Bologna entitled "The shape and flexibility of molecules and molecular complexes: non-covalent interactions at play", which was followed by active discussion.    
    We thank all for the contributions and the attendance of this first seminar and hope to see you next time (12.04.2022)!

November 2021

  • Welcome to Fan from the University of Alberta, Canada, who joins the group as a new Postdoc!

October 2021

  • Our manuscript describing results from the Schnell-Manschwetus 2018 FLASH beamtime has been published online by Nature Communications! The experiments investigated three polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, demonstrating a pattern in the preferred dissociation pathways and electronic relaxation on the 10-100 femtosecond timescale for the neutrals, monocations, and dications. The manuscript is accompanied by a short “Behind the Paper” article on the Nature Chemistry Community website.

September 2021

  • Well done to all the group’s attendees at the 27th Colloquium on High-Resolution Molecular Spectroscopy (HRMS), especially the undergraduates, who all presented posters on their work in the group, and Pablo, who gave an oral presentation!

  • Extra congratulations to Melanie, who was awarded the prestigious International Dr. Barbara Mez-Starck Prize 2021 at the HRMS colloquium! The prize was awarded for “her outstanding studies of structural changes in water complexes with increasing amounts of water molecules as well as for her pioneering investigations of enantiomers and the separation of these chirally different molecules”. 

August 2021

  • Members of the FS-SMP group successfully participated in the Schnell-Lee beamtime at the Free Electron Laser in Hamburg (FLASH). This experiment explored the ultrafast relaxation and dissociation dynamics of polycyclic aromatic molecules in the XUV range and involved a large international collaboration between Germany, Sweden, the US and the UK.

  • FS-SMP has moved into a new home!  The group has moved into the newly built Centre for X-ray and Nano Science, CXNS, only a stone’s throw away from our previous home in 25F.

  • Congratulations to Freya, who successfully defended her master’s thesis!  Freya worked in the chirality subgroup, and will continue with the group for her PhD (after a short but well deserved break)!

July 2021

  • Congratulations to Dalona, who successfully defended her bachelor’s thesis!  Dalona worked in the astrochemistry subgroup looking at discharge reactions on the COMPACT spectrometer.

  • Congratulations to Dona for giving a superb invited talk on the topic of electrical discharge of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons at the International Symposium on Molecular Beams (ISMB)!

June 2021

  • Well done to all the group’s contributors at the International Symposium on Molecular Spectroscopy (ISMS) 2021! 

May 2021

  • The group bids farewell to Mariyam!  We wish her all the best in her new postdoc position at the University of Cologne!

April 2021

  • Welcome to Laura from the Christian Albrechts University in Kiel, who joins the astrochemistry subgroup for a master’s project!
  • We also bid farewell and good luck to Cristóbal, who leaves us for a position at the University of Valladolid!
  • And welcome (welcome back) to Chris, who rejoins the group from the University of New South Wales for a research visit!

March 2021

  • The group recently had two papers accepted to the Journal of Molecular Spectroscopy’s Festschrift celebrating Stephan Schlemmer’s 60th Birthday with the theme “Laboratory Spectroscopy for Astrophysics”! Congratulations to everyone involved in these collaborative projects! The first focuses on the characterization of the lowest vibrationally excited state of propylene oxide, and the work was conducted with the group of Thomas Giesen at the University of Kassel. In the paper, the complicated spectrum is deciphered, including the effect of the methyl group’s free rotation. The second piece extends our previous publication on the N-heterocycle imidazole by considering the rotational spectra of its vibrationally excited states and heavy-atom isotopologues across the 2-295 GHz range. The data presented is essential for observational searches for these species, and, in addition, comprehensive structural analyses and comparisons to similar molecules are presented. The project included collaborations with the Center for Astrochemical Studies at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, the University of Virginia, and the University of Rennes. And a special shout out to Gayatri for her first publication in the group!

February 2021

  • Farewell Weixing! Good luck at your new job at Fudan University, building up an amazing broadband rotational spectrometer
  • The group has its first paper accepted in The Astrophysical Journal! The publication centers on the rotational spectra of three amino alcohols - alaninol, valinol, and leucinol - between 2-110 GHz. Accurate rotational constants and line lists are delivered to enable astronomers to search for these doubly-functional molecules and their isotopologues and vibrationally excited states in the interstellar medium. This publication’s sister paper, which introduced our 18-26 GHz spectrometer and reported on our work on isoleucinol, was published in PCCP last year. Congratulations to everyone for the completion of this ambitious project!

January 2021

  • Welcome to Alcides Simao and Eva Gougoula as new Postdocs! Both will be supporting our astrochemistry subgroup. Alcides will be bringing the commissioning of our IR-UV spectrometer up to speed, and Eva will be working on the rotational spectroscopy side of it.

August 2020

  • Congratulations Dan! We wish you the best in your new position as Junior Professor at the Uni Göttingen!
  • Bon voyage and best of luck Sérgio in your home town Portugal and in your future career as a scientific researcher at the University of Coimbra!