| Graduate Financial Aid > IGERT at Rensselaer > Faculty and Trainees >
Alexandra Krawicz
Chemistry and Chemical Biology
I am a Ph.D. candidate working with Prof. Peter Dinolfo in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, and my co-advisor is Prof. Kim Lewis from the Physics Department. I work on the synthesis of nanoscale porphyrin arrays for the development of molecular electronics, nanowires and terahertz energy generation. I use the “click” chemistry based molecular multilayer assembly technique, developed in our laboratory, to construct porphyrin arrays on gold surfaces.
My research is focused on the characterization, and measuring the bulk electrochemical properties, as well as studying the molecular conductance properties of these materials with conductive Atomic Force Microscopy, Scanning Tunneling Microscopy and Break Junction techniques available in Prof. Lewis’s lab. This in turn allows for comparison of the bulk electron transfer rates from electrochemical methods with the single molecule conductance properties as determined by STM. These materials provide a flexible synthetic platform to study quantum transport at the nanoscale level. Eventually, these studies will allow us to construct nanoscale multilayer assemblies with enhanced charge transfer and non-linear optical properties, thus potentially creating a new class of materials for the generation of terahertz energy. Additionally, terahertz energy can be used to probe the charge transfer properties of these molecular systems.
|
