Deprotonation of phenol linked to a silicon dioxide surface using adaptive feedback laser control with a heterodyne...

The development of laser-controlled surface reactions has been limited by the lack of decisive methods for detecting evolving changes in surface chemistry. In this work, we demonstrate successful laser control of a surface reaction by combining the adaptive feedback control (AFC) technique with surface sensitive spectroscopy to determine the optimally shaped laser pulse. Specifically, we demonstrate laser induced deprotonation of the hydroxyl group of phenol bound to a silicon dioxide substrate. The experiment utilized AFC with heterodyne detected vibrational sum frequency generation (HD-VSFG) as the surface sensitive feedback signal. The versatile combination of AFC with HD-VSFG provides a route to potentially control a wide range of surface reactions.