The Center for Chemistry at the Space-Time Limit (CaSTL)

加州大学欧文分校化学创新中心——时空极限下的化学（CaSTL）旨在观察和记录化学行为，一次一个事件，一次一个分子。通过观察单个分子进行化学转化，并制作分子原子和电子重排的电影，该中心将揭示重要化学反应的内部工作原理。分子在还原时的振动动力学，分子吸附到催化位点时电子密度的重排，电子通过分子线的转移，以及键的断裂或形成都是研究的直接目标。该中心通过突破空间和时间分辨率的实验限制，使用扫描隧道显微镜和超快非线性光谱的组合来实现同时Ångstrom-femtosecond分辨率的目标。在与大分子化学相关的尺度上（例如，纳米-微秒），使用扫描探针显微镜结合时间分辨非线性光谱学来获得化学特定的延时显微镜。必要的理论，特别是等离子体增强光谱学和随时间变化的密度泛函方法，是并行发展的，以准确地模拟这些过程，解释和设计实验。使科学和工具具有共同的知识基础和工具集，可以调整其清晰度，以提供精确的联合时空分辨率（从Ångstrom-femtosecond到微米-微秒）来研究广泛的化学过程所需的精度。基本化学过程的延时图像的可访问性将从根本上改变我们对分子科学和工程的探究和操作模式，并可能在一系列依赖于亚分子理解和操纵我们世界的领域取得根本性突破。CaSTL致力于各级教育，直接通过在这些具有挑战性的科学领域进行研究生研究和博士后培训，并为许多加州高中和社区大学的学生提供研究机会，特别是那些来自弱势群体的学生。将与私营部门合作，广泛传播新的科学仪器和计算化学包的发展。该中心还将通过与圣安娜发现科学博物馆的合作，为所有年龄段的学生提供一个拓展项目。该中心变革性科学的视觉性质使其对广大公众特别容易接近。基础化学过程的CaSTL视频片段将用于课堂、播客和其他基于网络的形式，并将通过电视广播进行广泛的公共科学宣传。

The UC Irvine Center for Chemical Innovation - Chemistry at the Space-Time Limit (CaSTL) aims to observe and record chemistry in the act, one event at a time, one molecule at a time. By watching single molecules undergo chemical transformation and creating movies of a molecule's atomic and electronic rearrangements, the Center will uncover the inner workings of important chemical reactions. The vibronic dynamics of a molecule upon reduction, the rearrangement of electron density in a molecule as it adsorbs onto a catalytic site, the transfer of electrons through a molecular wire, and the breaking or making of a bond are among the immediate targets of investigation. The Center achieves its goals by pushing the experimental limits of space and time resolution, using a combination of scanning tunneling microscopy and ultrafast nonlinear spectroscopy to attain simultaneous Ångstrom-femtosecond resolution. On the scale of relevance to macro-molecular chemistry (e.g., nanometer-microsecond), scanning probe microscopies combined with time-resolved nonlinear spectroscopy are used to obtain chemically speciated, time-lapse microscopy. The requisite theory, in particular of plasmon-enhanced spectroscopy and time-dependent density functional methods, are developed in parallel to accurately model these processes, to interpret and to design experiments. The enabling science and tools have a common intellectual base and a toolset that can be tuned in sharpness to provide the precision needed to study a wide range of chemical processes with precise joint space-time resolution, from Ångstrom-femtosecond to micrometer-microsecond. The accessibility of time-lapse images of elementary chemical processes will fundamentally change our modes of inquiry, and manipulation of, molecular science and engineering, and could underlie fundamental breakthroughs in a range of fields relying on sub-molecular understanding and manipulation of our world. CaSTL is committed to education at all levels, directly through graduate research and postdoctoral training in these challenging fields of science, and research opportunities to many California high school and community college students, particularly those from under-represented groups. The development of new scientific instruments and computational chemistry packages will be widely disseminated in partnership with the private sector. The Center will also offer an outreach program to students of all ages through a partnership with the Discovery Science Museum in Santa Ana. The very visual nature of the Center's transformative science makes it particularly accessible to the public at large. CaSTL video clips of fundamental chemical processes will be used in classrooms, podcasts and other web-based formats, and broad public science outreach will be enabled through television broadcasts.