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Dr Klaas Nauta

ARC Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Contact Details

School of Chemistry, Building F11
University of Sydney, NSW, 2006, Australia
E-mail address: klaas.nauta@sydney.edu.au
Telephone: +61-2-9351-3777
Fax: +61-2-9351-3329
Home Page: http://sydney.edu.au/science/chemistry/~nauta_k

Career Profile

  • Doctorandus Chemie, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, 1988-1994

  • PhD (Chemistry), University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1996-2001

  • Postdoctoral fellow, University of Sydney, 2001-2002

  • ARC Postdoctoral fellow (APD), University of Sydney, 2002-2005

  • ARC Research fellow (ARF), University of Sydney, 2006-

Areas of interest

  • Laser spectroscopy

  • Helium nanodroplet isolation spectroscopy

  • Spectroscopy and structure of weakly bound complexes

  • Pre-reactive complexes

  • Laser-induced chemistry

Research

My research involves the study of molecules embedded in superfluid helium droplets. These droplets contain between several hundred up to 100,000 helium atoms and are a few nanometers in diameter. They are formed by expanding high pressure helium gas at very low temperatures (~20 K) into vacuum and the average size can be controlled via the expansion conditions. Helium droplets are an excellent medium for molecular spectroscopy because it is weakly interacting, has a very low temperature (~0.4 K), is indiscriminate as to the nature of the dopant and allows for precise control over the degree of clustering between dopant species.

There are many neat things that one can use helium droplets for. One application relies on the fact that at the extremely low temperature inside the droplet, molecular complexes can exist in geometries that are clearly not the thermodynamically most stable, but are unable to rearrange because they lack the necessary thermal energy.

Using laser spectroscopy, these complexes can then be studied and their geometries determined which tells us a lot about the nature of the intermolecular interactions. Of particular interest are complexes between molecules (or radicals) that at room temperature would rapidly react, but are prevented from doing so that close to 0 K.

Publications (2008 - 2010)

  1. Troy, TP; Nakajima, M; Chalyavi, N; Clady, RGCR; Nauta, K; Kable, SH and Schmidt, TW. Identification of the jet-cooled 1-indanyl radical by electronic spectrscopy. J. Phys. Chem. A, 113 (38), 10279-10283, 2009. DOI: 10.1021/jp905831m

  2. Reilly, NJ; Nakajima, M; Troy, TP; Chalyavi, N; Duncan, KA; Nauta, K; Kable, SH and Schmidt, TW. Spectroscopic identification of the resonance-stabilized cis- and trans-1-vinylpropargyl radicals. J. Am. Chem. Soc., 131 (37), 13423-13429, 2009. DOI: 10.1021/ja904521c

  3. `Richmond, C; Tao, C; Mukarakate, C; Fan, H; Nauta, K; Schmidt, TW; Kable, SH and Reid, SA. Unraveling the Ã1B1<-- (X)over-tilde1A1) spectrum of CCl2: The Renner-Teller effect, barrier to linearity, and vibrational analysis using an effective polyad Hamiltonian. Journal of Physical Chemistry A, 112 (45), 11355-11362, 2008. DOI: 10.1021/jp806944q

  4. Kokkin, DL; Troy, TP; Nakajima, M; Nauta, K; Varberg, TD; Metha, GF; Lucas, NT and Schmidt, TW. The optical spectrum of a large isolated polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon: Hexa-peri-hexabenzocoronene, C42H18. Astrophysical Journal Letters, 681 (1), L49-L51, 2008.

  5. Reilly, NJ; Kokkin, DL; Nakajima, M; Nauta, K; Kable, SH and Schmidt, TW. Spectroscopic observation of the resonance-stabilized 1-phenylpropargyl radical. Journal of the American Chemical Society, 130 (10), 3137-3142, 2008. DOI: 10.1021/ja078342t