Saptarsi Mondal Ultrafast & multidimensional IR spectroscopy
Menu

Postdoctoral Researcher · Department of Chemistry · UT Austin

Saptarsi Mondal

Saptarsi Mondal, photographed outdoors on a coastline at dusk.
Baiz Group · UT Austin · saptam@utexas.edu

I use two-dimensional infrared spectroscopy to measure how hydrogen-bond networks and ion solvation shells rearrange at electrified and confined interfaces — on the femtosecond-to-picosecond timescales that decide catalysis, ion transport and light–matter coupling.

Research programme Publications — 34 CV ↓

Google Scholar ↗ Research group ↗

Peer-reviewed articles

28

Research settings

4

India, Japan, South Korea, United States

Journal cover selections

2

Current position since

Nov 2024

Selected publications

34 records → all publications

Featured projects

research programme →
Two-panel schematic. Left: a SEIRAS cell where an infrared beam enters a zinc selenide prism, generating an evanescent wave enhanced at a gold film working electrode, with silver/silver-chloride reference and gold wire counter electrodes, and an arrow marking DMSO enrichment at negative potential. Right: the surface-enhanced 2D IR geometry, where pump and probe pulses interact with gold-tethered nitrile probe molecules and a plasmonically enhanced third-order signal emerges.

■ Interfacial & electrochemical dynamics

Cosolvent and potential control of interfacial water

Establishing cosolvent composition as a second, orthogonal handle — alongside applied potential — on the structure and dynamics of water at an electrode surface, and measuring both with surface-specific vibrational spectroscopy.

More
Two-panel schematic. Left: a Fabry–Perot cavity between two distributed Bragg reflector mirrors separated by half a wavelength, with the vacuum cavity field drawn as a lens shape and molecular vibrations as arrows within it, and the resonance and strong-coupling conditions written beneath. Right: a PMMA film above an array of indium tin oxide nanocrystal blocks, with an infrared wave entering from below along a tunable-plasmon scale bar and an arrow marking vibrational energy transport through the polymer via the carbonyl mode.

■ Polaritonic & plasmonic control

Tunable plasmonic metasurfaces for vibrational coupling

Using self-assembled doped-oxide nanocrystal metasurfaces, tunable across the mid-infrared, as an open-faced alternative to high-Q microcavities for coupling light to molecular vibrations — and using broadband 2D IR to measure what that coupling does to molecular dynamics.

More

Research themes

Academic journey

full academic journey →

  1. 2024–present current

    Postdoctoral Researcher

    The University of Texas at Austin · United States

  2. 2023–2024

    Postdoctoral Researcher

    University of Michigan · United States

  3. 2019–2023

    Research Professor

    Korea University · South Korea

  4. 2013–2018

    PhD, Chemistry

    Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science · India

Recognition & service

all awards & recognition →

  • Best Poster Award in Photochemistry

    14th International DAE-BRNS Biennial Conference on Radiation and Photochemistry, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre · 2018

  • Journal cover selection, Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters

    American Chemical Society · 2021

  • Front cover selection, Journal of Physical Chemistry A

    American Chemical Society · 2023

Cover of The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters, volume 12, issue 38 (2021). J. Phys. Chem. Lett. · 2021 Front cover of The Journal of Physical Chemistry A, volume 127, issue 15 (2023). J. Phys. Chem. A · 2023

Reviewer for Angewandte Chemie and The Journal of Chemical Physics . Peer review & service →