Tata Institute of Fundamental Research
Graduate Student, DEPARTMENT OF CHEMICAL SCEINCES
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Prof. Sanjay Wategaonkar
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About
Presently I am engaged in understanding the details of intermolecular interactions. The specific kind of interactions my work is focussed on is the weak kind of hydrogen bonds. These interaction are of he energy range ~ 1-10 kJ/mol. This energy regime is extremely important as on can see that such interactions are strong enough to impart structural rigidity to a molecular system at the same time weak enough to allow the system to be dynamic in nature (remember RT ~ 2.5kJ/mol @ room temp). Examples of these interactions playing an important role can be found in wide ranging systems from processes related to large biomolecules to a simple chemical reaction where solute solvent interactions are present.
The tools I use to elucidate the nature of such subtle interactions is Laser spectroscopy based methods performed on cold molecular beams (trans temperature ~1K) produced using supersonic jet expansion method.
