Research

Current Wright group research breaks down into two major subdivisions: 

The first is a Nanomaterials collaboration with the Bob Hamers and Song Jin groups. This work is carried out on the femtosecond laser system. It includes analyzing ultrafast quantum dot dynamics that are important to solar energy, doing spectroelectrochemistry, and looking at newly synthesized metal chalcogenide nano-scale thin films. Some of our newer nanomaterials work also utilizes a photoluminescence and imaging system, which has spatially and temporally-resolved photoluminescence capabilities. 

The other major subdivision is related to the Spectroscopy of Biologically Relevant Metal Centers, with a goal of improving understanding of the Oxygen Evolving Complex of Photosystem II. This work is primarily carried out on our picosecond laser table. The femtosecond table work probes couplings between electronic states and the picosecond work probes vibrational as well as vibronic couplings. These metal centers can be small model compounds modeling protein metal centers or proteins themselves such as PSII, Cobalamin, and heme proteins. Parts are in collaboration with the Thomas Brunold group.

Both subdivisions model spectral data to extract relevant parameters, and both also do a fair amount of Method Development.