Xiangcheng Sun of the Rochester Institute of Technology will give a seminar titled "Fluorescent Probes for Single Molecule Polymerization Imaging and Chemical Sensing" in CHEM 144 from 3:30-4:30 p.m. on Friday, March 31.

The seminar will also be available on Zoom for those who would like to attend remotely. The talk is free and open to the public.

Fluorescent materials have been widely used in sensing, imaging and catalysis areas. In this talk, Sun will present synthesis of small fluorescent monomers with different emission colors, and polymerization of synthesized monomers at both ensemble and single-molecule level. The Sun Lab has achieved real-time optical sequencing of single synthetic polymer chains under living polymerization conditions. Multi-color imaging of polymer growth by single catalysts at single-monomer resolution has been realized through CREATS (coupled reaction approach toward super-resolution-imaging). In another project, he will show the use of green fluorescent carbon dots (CDs) for efficient detection of Ferrous ions. The Sun Lab has found the green fluorescence of carbon dots could be sensitively and selectively quenched by Ferrous ions. His lab proposes aggregation induced quenching is responsible for the fluorescence quenching, and the sensing mechanism is verified.

Sun has been an assistant professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the Rochester Institute of Technology since fall of 2021. He is also the program faculty of School of Chemistry and Materials Science at the institute. Prior, he conducted his postdoctoral research at Cornell University and University of California, Santa Barbara, and obtained his Ph.D. degree in chemical engineering at University of Connecticut. His current research interests include design and preparation of novel fluorescent probes for chemical sensing and single-molecule catalysis. As a new faculty member, he recently received American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund for supporting the single-molecule catalysis work.

Zoom meeting ID: 835 9661 3040
Passcode: 1AnylSem!