At the invitation of Key Laboratory of Photochemical Conversion and Optoelectronic Materials, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Prof. Miguel A. Garcia-Garibay from University of California, Los Angeles visited TIPC,CAS on Dec. 7, 2010 and gave a lecture entitled Reaction Mechanisms And Kinetics Studies With Molecular Nanocrystals: A State in Transition Between Supramolecular Entities and Bulk Solids.

In the lecture, Prof. Miguel A. Garcia-Garibay described the preparation of stable water suspensions of nanocrystalline compounds and demonstrate their use in the characterization of solid-state spectroscopic properties using simple transmission procedures. He started with well-known photophysical probes with characteristic solid state properties to illustrate the fact that nanocrystals are a state of matter in transition between supramolecular structures and bulk solids. He also showed some examples to illustrate the use of nanocrystals to obtain detailed mechanistic information of excited state processes and highly selective reactions in crystals, including a novel strategy for signal amplification with a gain based on a very unusual excited state chain reaction.