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Many molecules exhibit multiple conformers that often easily interconvert under thermal conditions. Therefore, single conformations are difficult to isolate which renders the study of their distinct chemical reactivities challenging. We…
Many molecules exhibit multiple rotational isomers (conformers) that interconvert thermally and are difficult to isolate. Consequently, a precise characterization of their role in chemical reactions has proven challenging. We have probed…
The relationship between the shape of a molecule and its chemical reactivity is a central tenet in chemistry. However, the influence of the molecular geometry on reactivity can be subtle and result from several opposing effects. Using a…
Cyclic molecules are ubiquitous across applications in chemistry and biology. Their restricted conformational flexibility provides structural pre-organization that is key to their function in drug discovery and catalysis. However, reliably…
We use plasmon rulers to follow the conformational dynamics of a single protein for up to 24 h at a video rate. The plasmon ruler consists of two gold nanospheres connected by a single protein linker. In our experiment, we follow the…
Following the changes in molecular structure throughout the entirety of a chemical reaction with atomic resolution is a long-term goal in femtochemistry. Although the development of a plethora of ultrafast technique has enabled detailed…
In this thesis, we use classical, semi-classical and quantum-mechanical methods to simulate chemical reaction dynamics inside of an optical cavity. Within such a cavity, by selectively coupling vibrational modes of the reactants to the…
Knowledge of molecular structure is paramount in understanding, and ultimately influencing, chemical reactivity. For nearly a century, diffractive imaging has been used to identify the structures of many biologically-relevant gas-phase…
Chemically-responsive polymers are macromolecules that respond to local variations of the chemical composition of the solution by changing their conformation, with notable examples including polyelectrolytes, proteins and DNA. The polymer…
We investigate theoretically the physics of diffusion-limited intramolecular polymer reactions. The present work completes and goes beyond a previous study [Nat. Chem. 4, 268 (2012)] that showed that the distribution of the polymer…
Phase-separated liquid condensates can spatially organize and thereby regulate chemical processes. However, the physicochemical mechanisms underlying such regulation remain elusive as the intramolecular interactions responsible for phase…
The ultrafast photoinduced ring-opening of 1,3-cyclohexadiene constitutes a textbook example of electrocyclic reactions in organic chemistry and a model for photobiological reactions in vitamin D synthesis. Here, we present direct and…
Photoinduced isomerization reactions, including ring-opening reactions, lie at the heart of many processes in nature. The mechanisms of such reactions are determined by a delicate interplay of coupled electronic and nuclear dynamics…
In recent years, fluorescence correlation spectroscopy has been increasingly applied for the study of polymer dynamics on the nanometer scale. The core idea is to extract, from a measured autocorrelation curve, an effective mean-square…
Rapid modulation of the electromagnetic response in both time and space creates temporal boundaries in the medium and leads to time-reflection and time-refraction of light and to the eventual formation of the photonic time crystal within…
For a detailed understanding of chemical processes in nature and industry, we need accurate models of chemical reactions in complex environments. While Eyring transition state theory is commonly used for modeling chemical reactions, it is…
X-ray as well as electron diffraction are powerful tools for structure determination of molecules. Studies on randomly oriented molecules in the gas-phase address cases in which molecular crystals cannot be generated or the interaction-free…
Molecular isomerization kinetics in liquid solvents are determined by a complex interplay between the friction acting on a rotating dihedral due to interactions with the solvent, internal dissipation effects (also known as internal…
Retrosynthesis plays a crucial role in the fields of organic synthesis and drug development, where the goal is to identify suitable reactants that can yield a target product molecule. Although existing methods have achieved notable success,…
The advent of ultrafast pulsed X-ray free-electron lasers with very high brightness has enabled the determination of transient molecular structures of small and medium-sized organic molecules in excited states and undergoing chemical…