Processes occurring at environmental interfaces are notoriously difficult to study. Many well-established surface-selective methods are restricted to vacuum conditions, which prohibits the investigation of buried interfaces that are common in the environment. In recent years, the advancement of optical techniques has granted researchers access to such solid/liquid and liquid/air interfaces, allowing for an exciting expansion of studies on interfacial environmental phenomena.In this work, sum frequency generation-vibrational spectroscopy (SFG-VS) of environmental interfaces is highlighted. SFG-VS has been used extensively to investigate molecular orientation and and vibrational spectroscopy of molecular interfaces, but has been plagued to some extent by uncertainty in spectroscopic assignments and a lack of quantitative information for complex molecular interfaces. The current work examines the use of SFG-VS on mineral oxide-water interfaces, and also brings to light the development of high-resolution broadband sum frequency generation (HR-BB-SFG), which allows for unprecedented access to vibrational spectroscopy of complex environmental molecular interfaces.A portion of the research was performed using EMSL, a national scientific user facility sponsored by DOE BER and located at PNNL.

Investigation of environmental interfaces using scanning and high-resolution broadband sum-frequency generation spectroscopic techniques

245th National Meeting (2013)

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