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Updated: Jul 30, 2026

Direct Imaging of Laser-driven Ultrafast Molecular Rotation
Published on: February 4, 2017
Direct imaging of transient molecular structures with ultrafast diffraction
H Ihee1, V A Lobastov, U M Gomez
1Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, Arthur Amos Noyes Laboratory of Chemical Physics, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA.
Abstract:
Ultrafast electron diffraction (UED) has been developed to study transient structures in complex chemical reactions initiated with femtosecond laser pulses. This direct imaging of reactions was achieved using our third-generation apparatus equipped with an electron pulse (1.07 +/- 0.27 picoseconds) source, a charge-coupled device camera, and a mass spectrometer. Two prototypical gas-phase reactions were studied: the nonconcerted elimination reaction of a haloethane, wherein the structure of the intermediate was determined, and the ring opening of a cyclic hydrocarbon containing no heavy atoms. These results demonstrate the vastly improved sensitivity, resolution, and versatility of UED for studying ultrafast structural dynamics in complex molecular systems.
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