报告题目：Excitons and the Optical Functionality of Biomimetic Self-assembled Molecular Aggregates

报 告 人： Professor Jasper Knoester 荷兰格罗宁根大学

报告时间：2019年5月20日 上午09:00

报告地点：无机-超分子楼A301

Abstract:

Self-assembled molecular systems with optical functionality have attracted much attention during recent years. In Nature, such systems occur as light-harvesting antennae of photosynthetic bacteria and higher plants. In addition, many synthetic examples have been created in order to produce nanoscale systems with specific optical functionality, such as excitation energy transport wires, artificial light-harvesting systems, and nonlinear optical elements.

In this lecture, I will discuss recent progress in this field. Particular attention will be given to the concept of collective excitations, known as Frenkel excitons, and the application of state-of-the-art optical spectroscopies (single-particle microscopy and ultrafast spectroscopy) to unravel the excitonic properties and understand the structure-property relations. The precise packing of the molecules within the self-assembled structure is crucial for the functional properties, but in general it is impossible to image this packing directly. With a multidisciplinary group of coworkers around the world, we have been working towards getting a better understanding of this packing and possible structural disorder and how this influences the functionality, both for natural and synthetic systems. The connection between theory and experiment will be stressed.

Biography:

Jasper Knoester received his PhD in 1987 at the Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands. From 1987-1989 he was postdoc at the University of Rochester, NY, USA. In 1989 he received a Huygens Fellowship from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO)In 1993 he was appointed as full professor of Theory of Condensed Matter Physics at this university, a position he has held till today. In the academic year 2001-2002 Knoester was visiting professor at the Chemistry Department of MIT. From 2003-2009 he was Director of the Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials at the University of Groningen.Since 2010, Knoester has been Dean of the Faculty of Science and Engineering (till 2016 known as the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences) of the University of Groningen.

The main research interests of Jasper Knoester concern optical properties of natural and synthetic materials. He has (co)authored over 175 peer reviewed publications, with a total of over 5500 citations and an h-index of 39. He has presented invited talks at over 100 international conferences and workshops. Since 2008, he has held a guest professorship at Jilin University in Changchun, China.

Knoester is chair and (or) member of a large number of national and international boards and committees, amongst which Dutch Board of Deans of Science, Board Dutch Physical Society, Board Foundation Physica, Supervisory Board NanoNext, Board of Governors NOVA, Board of Governors NIKHEF, Board of Governors Advanced Research Center CBBC (“Chemical Building Blocks Center”), International Board ICL conference, and International Board EXCON conference.