Wai-Lun Chan, PhD

Generating energy in cost-effective ways with minimum environmental impacts is a major challenge in the 21st century. Enabling new energy technologies involves the use of new materials and nano-scaled structures, but the properties of these materials and structures are not well understood. The major goal of my group is to understand the fundamental physics of charge and exciton generation and transport in these new materials, and how these properties may have potential impacts to practical applications

More specifically, our research focuses on understanding the fundamental electronic processes, such as exciton transport and charge transfer, in molecular solids, conjugated polymers, organic-inorganic hybrid systems and 2-D layered crystals. These materials can be potentially used in next generation devices for applications ranging from light harvesting to flexible electronics. However, the lack of fundamental understandings in the electron dynamics of these materials can hinder future applications. Using novel experimental techniques such as time-resolved two photon photoemission spectroscopy and other ultrafast time-resolved techniques, we probe the dynamics of photoexcited electrons and molecules in an ultrafast timescale (10-14 – 10-9 s). A better understanding of these processes will help us to design cost-effective ways to produce energy.