Equipment: Acquisition of an Ultrafast Laser for Research and Education at North Carolina Central University

The Historically Black Colleges and Universities - Undergraduate Program (HBCU-UP) provides support to strengthen STEM undergraduate education and research at HBCUs. This Equipment Proposal from North Carolina Central University (NCCU) seeks the establishment of an ultrafast fiber laser system to support materials research and education across STEM disciplines. The system will enable enhancement of existing ultrafast microscopy capabilities and development of additional far- and near-field optical and THz spectroscopy facilities. This fiber-based laser is a robust turnkey system that is resistant to changes in ambient laboratory conditions, minimizing the time and expertise needed for optimization and enabling experiments performed over longer durations and has sufficient power to enable simultaneous performance of several ultrafast spectroscopy experiments. These capabilities will be used to build time resolved transient absorption microscopy, photoluminescence microscopy, far- and near-field terahertz spectroscopy and two-dimensional electronic spectroscopy experiments to study carrier dynamics and charge transfer with ultrafast (~ 100 femtosecond) time resolution. The instrument will thus enable a diverse group of faculty and students drawn from the Chemistry and Physics programs at North Carolina Central University to investigate mechanisms underlying a wide range of ultrafast phenomena in advanced materials, including charge transport in heterogeneous organic-inorganic metal halide perovskites, charge transfer in mixed-dimensional 0D/2D heterostructures and the relationship between nanoscale structure and charge transfer in bulk polymer heterojunctions. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.