Bernadette Broderick
University of Missouri-Columbia, MO·Chemistry
When ice warms in a vacuum, molecules escape straight from the solid into the gas without melting first. This process, sublimation, shapes the water cycle, helps set how much sunlight Earth reflects, and affects clouds and aerosol particles in the upper atmosphere.
- Fields
Chemistry
Physics
Earth & Environmental Science
- Topics
sublimation
ice desorption
rotational spectroscopy
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jun 2027
What they work on
- Measure which molecules and molecular shapes leave ices containing polar and nonpolar compounds, using temperature programmed desorption in the custom CPICE ultrahigh vacuum apparatus at temperatures down to 4 K.
- Identify desorbed products with isomer-, conformer- and vibrational-state detail using chirped-pulse millimeter-wave rotational spectroscopy, which fingerprints molecules by how they rotate.
- Test how heating rate and increasing molecular complexity change the relative amounts of species released during sublimation, using buffer gas cooling to strengthen weak rotational signals.
More about the research
It also matters for chemistry in icy space environments. Yet little is known about exactly which molecules, and which shapes of those molecules, leave ices that contain more complex organic compounds.
Why it matters
Better knowledge of how ices release molecules could improve models of the water cycle, Earth's reflectivity, and cloud and aerosol behavior in the upper atmosphere. It could also help astrochemists interpret chemistry in interstellar and planetary ices and inform materials scientists who work with solid-to-gas transitions. The project also creates a Freshman Interest Group for first-year chemistry majors at the University of Missouri.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Arthur Suits
University of Missouri-Columbia, MO·Chemistry
Develop uniform-flow photoacoustic spectroscopy (UF-PAS), which senses molecules through sound waves produced when they absorb infrared light, as a broadly applicable probe of reactive intermediates in cold supersonic flows.
Karin Oberg
Harvard University, MA·Astronomy & Astrophysics
Measure UV- and electron-induced photodissociation cross sections and breakdown products for 15 organic molecules embedded in interstellar ice analogs, using ultra-high vacuum experiments monitored by FTIR spectroscopy.
Patrick Vaccaro
Yale University, CT·Chemistry
Measure electronic circular birefringence of isolated, solvent-free chiral molecules using cavity ring-down polarimetry, a mirror-cavity method sensitive to tiny polarization rotations, to benchmark theoretical predictions of optical activity.
The school
University of Missouri-Columbia: 21 labs on PI Pages, $509M a year on research, 260 research doctorates a year.
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