Ultrafast Electron Diffraction as a New Tool for Studies of Structural Kinetics:
Experimental Development at Caltech

Vladimir Lobastov, California Institute of Technology

Time-resolved electron diffraction is a new tool for studies of complex molecular systems undergoing the structural transformation during chemical reactions initiated with femtosecond laser pulses. Developed pulsed electron source and advanced image detector allowed us to achieve ultimate temporal resolution (~ 1 ps) without compromising a precision in determination of structural parameters (~ 0.01 Å). Experimental results are recorded movies of chemical reactions—direct imaging of the transient molecular structures in a real time on a picosecond time scale.

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