Chemical Dynamics

Reaction dynamics emerged as a separate branch of chemistry 80 years ago with the derivation of the quantum mechanical expressions for the potential energy surface of chemical reactions. Since then, a huge body of experimental and theoretical work has led to a better understanding of the quantitative nature of chemical reactions. Sandia's chemical dynamics research is aimed at understanding the details of individual reactions that make up complex combustion systems. These studies are done at single collision conditions. The study of photodissociation, inelastic scattering and reactive scattering are important areas of research that are being pursued at Sandia. The techniques that are used to study these processes are ion imaging, time resolved photoelectron spectroscopy, Resonance Enhanced Multiphoton Iionization (REMPI)spectroscopy, and photoelectron / photoion coincidence spectroscopy. Experiments are typically designed to test the most sophisticated theories and calculations on chemical reactions.