Sustaining local electric fields in confined microscopic environments as polarizing agents for catalyzing reactions is important. It is argued that many enzymes operate based on this principle and lessons learned from them can be extended to other catalytic systems. We use Stark shift spectroscopy to measure electric fields in electrochemical interfaces for understanding solvation, interfacial polarization, molecular structure, steric hindrance, and frustrated bond formation. We will present experimental results on fields at the junction of electrolytes and biased metal electrodes. Both simple dilute electrolytes that are mostly described by the continuum Gouy-Chapman model and its variants, and ionic liquids which deviate from such a description will be discussed. A major challenge is engineering and designing local environments that can sustain such fields. With inspiration from the relatively new field of Frustrated Lewis Pairs (FLPs), we report our results on Lewis bonds near a surface. We comment on the electric field perspective of the mechanism of FLP catalysis and propose approaches on how to use frustrated Lewis pairs as polarizing environments near an electrode for driving reactions. We also present computational results that establish a connection between a chemical bond and electric fields. In particular, we show that electric fields are capable of breaking dative bonds even when there is no explicit redox reaction involved. This helps solidify the fundamental connections between field and chemical bonds.
Dr. Jahan Dawlaty finished his undergraduate degree in chemistry with emphasis on physical chemistry from Concordia College in Minnesota. He joined Cornell University in 2001 for graduate studies, where he worked both in chemistry and electrical engineering departments. For postdoctoral work, he joined UC Berkeley Chemistry Department, where he worked on ultrafast spectroscopy of exciton transfer in photosynthetic complexes. He started his independent career in 2012 at the University of Southern California, where he is an associate professor of chemistry. Dr. Dawlaty’s research areas are spectroscopy of interfaces with particular attention to local electric fields, and ultrafast dynamics of proton transfer in molecular systems.