Patrick Vaccaro
Yale University, CT·Chemistry
Many molecules are chiral: like left and right hands, they cannot be lined up perfectly with their mirror image. Chiral molecules rotate the polarization of light that passes through them, and mirror-image versions rotate it in opposite directions.
- Fields
Chemistry
Physics
- Topics
chirality
chiroptical spectroscopy
optical activity
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jul 2027
What they work on
- Measure electronic circular birefringence of isolated, solvent-free chiral molecules using cavity ring-down polarimetry, a mirror-cavity method sensitive to tiny polarization rotations, to benchmark theoretical predictions of optical activity.
- Dissect how atomic vibrations contribute to chiroptical response using temperature-dependent and optical-pumping experiments that change molecules' vibrational states.
- Explain optical activity arising from isotopically engendered chirality, where isotope placement alone makes a molecule chiral, by studying coupling between electronic and nuclear motion, and develop ways to engineer this isotopic response.
- Link isolated and dissolved chiroptical behavior by measuring chiral molecules in tunable supercritical fluids, guided by quantum-chemical analyses and molecular dynamics simulations of chiral solvation.
More about the research
In principle this lets scientists tell the two forms apart. In practice it is hard to interpret, because samples are often mixtures, and the rotation is affected both by how the molecule's atoms vibrate and by the surrounding solvent. This project asks where a molecule's built-in optical response to chirality comes from, and how vibrations and solvent change it.
Why it matters
Telling left- and right-handed molecules apart matters in biology, where many molecules are chiral, and in asymmetric catalysis, which makes one handedness selectively. By showing how vibrations and solvents shape a molecule's optical response to chirality, and by providing solvent-free benchmarks for theory, this work could make optical measurements of chirality easier to interpret and predict.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Melanie Reber
University of Georgia, GA·Chemistry·Early-career
Build ultrafast transient absorption spectroscopy inside external optical enhancement cavities, which recycle laser light through the sample, to reach the sensitivity needed to probe the low molecular densities of a molecular beam.
Shaul Mukamel
University of California-Irvine, CA·Chemistry
Develop models and computational tools to predict and interpret spectroscopy signals made with entangled photons, combining electronic structure and quantum dynamics simulations.
Bernadette Broderick
University of Missouri-Columbia, MO·Chemistry
Measure which molecules and molecular shapes leave ices containing polar and nonpolar compounds, using temperature programmed desorption in the custom CPICE ultrahigh vacuum apparatus at temperatures down to 4 K.
The school
Yale University: 73 labs on PI Pages, $1.5B a year on research, 438 research doctorates a year.
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