Title: On the nature of chemical reactivity in atmospheric aerosol
Abstract:
Most of our intuition about chemistry stems from observations made in macroscopic beakers. Increasingly observations made in small containers, where surface to volume ratios are large, defy standard expectations suggesting that on the smallest scales chemical reactivity can be altered. In this talk, I will discuss some of our work on chemical reactivity in the presence of extensive air-water interfaces, like that which occur in atmospheric aerosol. I will show how rates and mechanisms of reactions can vary dramatically in such heterogeneous environments and how modern computational tools can be deployed to render testable predictions.
Bio:
David Limmer is an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry at University of California Berkeley, a Research Scientist in the Materials and Chemical Sciences Divisions of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and a Fellow of the Kavli Energy NanoSciences Institute. From 2016-2018 he held the Chevron Chair in Chemistry at UC Berkeley. He received his B.S. in chemical engineering in 2008 from the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, and his Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley under the supervision of David Chandler. From 2013-2016, David was an independent fellow of the Princeton Center for Theoretical Science. Throughout his independent career, David has been recognized as a Heising-Simons Fellow of the Kavli Foundation, a Scialog Fellow of the Research Corporation for Science and Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, and a Hellman Fellow. In 2019, he was the recipient of the Department of Energy Early Career Award. In 2021, he was awarded an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship. In 2022, David was recognized with the Donald S. Noyce Prize for excellence in undergraduate teaching. He is the author of Statistical Mechanics and Stochastic Thermodynamics, a graduate textbook on equilibrium and nonequilibrium statistical mechanics.
Host: Prof. Arun Yethiraj & Prof.Reid Van Lehn