Illustration shows shape changes that occur in quadrillionths-of-a-second intervals in a ring-shaped molecule that was broken open by light

Explore Chemistry at LCLS

LCLS is a Department of Energy funded user facility at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory managed by Stanford University. The chemistry-related research here is supported and performed by the Chemical Sciences Department. 

 

Learn more about the department's research activities, & publications on the LCLS website

Contact the department head Thomas Wolf

Science Impact

Mapping Chemical Bonds, Frontier Orbitals

Time-resolved resonant inelastic X-ray scattering (RIXS) is a powerful new XFEL approach providing element-specific insight to the dynamics of chemical bonds and excited-state charge distributions. 

MLCT excitation

Coupled Electronic & Molecular Dynamics

Charge separation, migration, redistribution, and localization are central to efficient and robust energy storage and retrieval from chemical bonds and general photo-driven chemical transformations.

Hard X-ray scattering and XES studies using a model iron-based molecular light harvester

Solvent Dynamics in Charge Transfer and Chemical Reactivity

LCLS studies in a model mixed-valence complex for photocatalysis illustrates the importance of understanding the role of solvent dynamics in mediating charge transfer and chemical reactivity.

Model system of the solvated cyanide-bridged mixed-valence bi-metallic charge-transfer complex

Probing Catalytic Reactions in Real Time

Thermally-driven chemistry is mediated by the transition state that separates reactants from products, and determines reaction pathways. Understanding the chemical structure of ephemeral transition states is a grand challenge in chemistry.

Atoms forming a tentative bond, a moment captured for the first time in experiments with an X-ray laser at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory