This book compiles spectroscopy methods under high pressure to investigate different systems such as guest-host interactions, chemical reactions, multiferroics, lanthanide ions and-doped glasses or in general inorganic materials. Among others, luminescence studies, inelastic scattering as well as infrared and Raman studies under high pressure are discussed and described regarding various applications.

It is a great challenge in chemistry to clarify every detail of reaction processes. In older days chemists mixed starting materials in a flask and took the resul tants out of it after a while, leaving all the intermediate steps uncleared as a sort of black box. One had to be content with only changing temperature and pressure to accelerate or decelerate chemical reactions, and there was almost no hope of initiating new reactions. However, a number of new techniques and new methods have been introduced and have provided us with a clue to the examination of the black box of chemical reaction. Flash photolysis, which was invented in the 1950s, is such an example; this method has been combined with high-resolution electronic spectroscopy with photographic recording of the spectra to provide a large amount of precise and detailed data on transient molecules which occur as intermediates during the course of chemical reac tions. In 1960 a fundamentally new light source was devised, i. e. , the laser. When the present author and coworkers started high-resolution spectroscopic stud ies of transient molecules at a new research institute, the Institute for Molecu lar Science in Okazaki in 1975, the time was right to exploit this new light source and its microwave precursor in order to shed light on the black box.

High-pressure Molecular Spectroscopy describes examples of the applications of several spectroscopic methods to investigate the behavior of various chemical systems under high pressures, including guest-host interactions, chemical reactions, molecule-based multiferroics, lanthanide ion-doped glasses, and organic, inorganic and organometallic materials. The techniques involved include: Luminescence studies Inelastic neutron scattering Infrared and Raman studies Synchrotron X-ray diffraction

Molecular spectroscopy has achieved rapid and significant progress in recent years, the low temperature techniques in particular having proved very useful for the study of reactive species, phase transitions, molecular clusters and crystals, superconductors and semiconductors, biochemical systems, astrophysical problems, etc. The widening range of applications has been accompanied by significant improvements in experimental methods, and low temperature molecular spectroscopy has been revealed as the best technique, in many cases, to establish the connection between experiment and theoretical calculations. This, in turn, has led to a rapidly increasing ability to predict molecular spectroscopic properties. The combination of an advanced tutorial standpoint with an emphasis on recent advances and new perspectives in both experimental and theoretical molecular spectroscopy contained in this book offers the reader insight into a wide range of techniques, particular emphasis being given to supersonic jet and matrix isolation techniques, spectroscopy in cryogenic solutions (including liquid noble gases), and in both crystalline and amorphous states. Suitable quantum chemical methods are also considered, as are empirically based force field methods for calculating spectra of large molecular systems. The wide range of topics covered includes: molecular dynamics and reactivity, time-resolved and high-resolution spectroscopy, conformational analysis, hydrogen bonding and solvent effects, structure and dynamics of weakly bound complexes, transition metal and organic photochemistry, spectroscopy of excited states, ab initio prediction of molecular spectra, and biochemical and astrophysical applications.

The goal of this book is to present an overview of applications of molecular spectroscopy to investigations in organic and inorganic materials, foodstuffs, biosamples and biomedicine, and novel characterization and quantitation methods. This text is a compilation of selected research articles and reviews covering current efforts in various applications of molecular spectroscopy. Sections 1 and 2 deal, respectively, with spectroscopic studies of inorganic and organic materials. Section 3 provides applications of molecular spectroscopy to biosamples and biomedicine. Section 4 explores spectroscopic characterization and quantitation of foods and beverages. Lastly, Section 5 presents research on novel spectroscopic methodologies. Overall, this book should be a great source of scientific information for anyone involved in characterization, quantitation, and method development.

This book offers historical and state-of-the-art molecular spectroscopy methods and applications in dynamic compression science, aimed at the upcoming generation in physical sciences involved in studies of materials at extremes. It begins with addressing the motivation for probing shock compressed molecular materials with spectroscopy and then reviews historical developments and the basics of the various spectroscopic methods that have been utilized. Introductory chapters are devoted to fundamentals of molecular spectroscopy, overviews of dynamic compression technologies, and diagnostics used to quantify the shock compression state during spectroscopy experiments. Subsequent chapters describe all the molecular spectroscopic methods used in shock compression research to date, including theory, experimental details for application to shocked materials, and difficulties that can be encountered. Each of these chapters also includes a section comparing static compression results. The last chapter offers an outlook for the future, which leads the next-generation readers to tackling persistent problems.

In recent years, there has been a major expansion of high pressure research providing unique information about systems of interest to a wide range of scientific disciplines. Since nuclear magnetic resonance has been applied to a wide spec trum of problems in chemistry, physics and biochemistry, it is not surprising to find that high pressure NMR techniques have also had many applications in these fields of science. Clearly, the high information content of NMR experiments combined with high pressure provides a powerful tool in modern chem istry. It is the aim of this monograph, in the series on NMR Basic Principles and Progress, to illustrate the wide range of prob lems which can be successfully studied by high pressure NMR. Indeed, the various contributions in this volume discuss studies of interest to physics, chemical physics, biochemistry, and chemical reaction kinetics. In many different ways, this monograph demonstrates the power of modern experimental and theoretical techniques to investigate very complex systems. The first contribution, by D. Brinkman, deals with NMR and NQR studies of superionic conductors and high-Tc supercon ductors at high pressure. Pressure effects on phase transitions, detection of new phases, and pressure effects on diffusion and spin-lattice relaxation, represent a few of the topics discussed in this contribution of particular interest to solid state physics.