Structural Dynamics Research Group

---

Team leader: dr hab. Katarzyna N. Jarzembska, prof. ucz.

Team leader’s e-mail address: katarzyna.jarzembska@uw.edu.pl

---

Brief description of the research topic:

The scientific activity of our group is primarily devoted to research and modeling of solid-state photoactive materials. We mainly deal with photoactive organic compounds and transition metal complexes. We want to better understand the mechanism of their interaction with light and its consequences, and then use this knowledge to consciously design functional materials with desired properties. To achieve this goal, we study the influence of both minor and more significant modifications of the material on its properties. We modify the molecules themselves (metal centers, ligands), but also the environment of the molecules in the crystal (change of packing, influence of temperature and pressure) and we study changes in the quantum efficiency of emission, stability of metastable/excited states of molecules, the possibility of controlling the energy of emitted light, etc. In our laboratory and thanks to very wide international cooperation, we use many different research techniques. To investigate excited/meta-stable states in molecular crystals, we use advanced time-resolved methods, starting from optical spectroscopy (in the range from femto- to microseconds), through in situ photocrystallographic methods on an X-ray diffractometer, to the most modern and advanced methods of ultrafast electron diffraction and synchrotron radiation scattering/XFEL. Our group not only performs experiments, but is also active in the field of methodology development (new tools and algorithms for data analysis). Moreover, we relate experimental results to computational/modeling results obtained using quantum chemical methods.