Doctor of Philosophy in Chemistry - Surface Chemistry

SUNY Stony Brook University

The Department of Chemistry, within the College of Arts and Sciences, offers courses of study leading to the degrees of Master of Arts in Teaching Chemistry, Master of Science, and Doctor of Philosophy. Students in the M.A.T. program must register through the School of Professional Development. A student in the Ph.D. program may choose dissertation research in any one of the diverse areas of chemistry represented by the interests of the program faculty, or may choose an interdisciplinary topic under the guidance of a faculty member in another program. Coordinated activities exist with several programs, and include optional concentrations in chemical physics and chemical biology. Catalysis, corrosion, and friction are a few examples of familiar processes that occur on solid surfaces. The field of surface chemistry tries to unravel and understand the basic chemical principles that underly such phenomena. At Stony Brook we are actively researching how the electronic and geometric structure of a surface affects its chemical selectivity and reactivity during surface-mediated processes such as catalysis and the chemical vapor deposition of metals from organometallic precursors. In addition, we are interested in understanding the interactions between energetic ions and surfaces in both atmospheric and metal-etching reactions. An arsenal of sophisticated techniques is available to prove both the geometric and electronic structures of a reacting surface on an atomic level. Techniques such as Auger electron spectroscopy (AES) and high-resolution, electron energy loss spectroscopy (HREELS) are used to determine the composition of a surface, while ultraviolet and X-ray photons are commonly used to eject photoelectrons from a surface (which are energy analyzed) yielding electronic structure information. Another technique, low-energy electron diffraction (LEED), exploits the wave nature of electrons and is used to help determine the geometric structure of a surface. These techniques, routinely used at Stony Brook, are complemented by the powerful extended- and near-edge X-ray absorption fine-structure techniques (EXAFS and NEXAFS), available at the National Synchrotron Light Source at nearby Brookhaven National Laboratory.