Direct Imaging of Transient Molecular Structures with Ultrafast Diffraction

• DOI: 10.1126/science.291.5503.458
• Publication Date: 2002-07-27T09:53:24Z
• Authors: Hyotcherl Ihee; Vladimir A. Lobastov; Udo M. Gomez; Boyd M. Goodson; Ramesh Srinivasan; Chong-Yu Ruan; Ahmed H. Zewail
• Keywords: Ultrafast electron diffraction; Picosecond; Reaction dynamics

Ultrafast electron diffraction (UED) has been developed to study transient structures in complex chemical reactions initiated with femtosecond laser pulses. This direct imaging of was achieved using our third-generation apparatus equipped an pulse (1.07 ± 0.27 picoseconds) source, a charge-coupled device camera, and mass spectrometer. Two prototypical gas-phase were studied: the nonconcerted elimination reaction haloethane, wherein structure intermediate determined, ring opening cyclic hydrocarbon containing no heavy atoms. These results demonstrate vastly improved sensitivity, resolution, versatility UED for studying ultrafast structural dynamics molecular systems.