UC Berkeley

The solvated electron, an isolated electron in polar solution, is a species of fundamental interest to the physics of solvation and to the understanding of condensed phase reactions in the presence of ionizing radiation. In radiation chemistry and biology, the solvated electron acts as a powerful reductant and has been shown to act as a reagent in a wide range of processes from atmospheric chemistry to radiation-induced DNA damage. As the "simplest'' quantum mechanical solute, the solvated electron serves as a fundamental probe of solute-solvent interaction and thus has been used as a model system for studying solvation processes.

Here, time-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy is used to study the binding motifs and solvation dynamics of solvated electrons in various polar solvents. This thesis is separated into three parts: first, an introduction to the research and description of the apparatus, second, results from experiments on the relaxation dynamics of the solvated electron after photoexciation and after generation by charge-transfer-to-solvent and, third, preliminary designs and proposed experiments for a liquid jet photoelectron spectrometer with attosecond time resolution.