Summary
Ilana Molesky is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Nevada, Reno.
Research interests
To create the electronic and photonic devices of the future, new materials with exciting dynamical properties must be discovered and characterized. The Molesky Lab is interested in unraveling the fundamental chemical processes that occur in solid-state materials on the ultra-short timescales. These processes include the initial light-matter interaction, electronic dynamics, and microscopic structural motions that underly the macroscopic properties of the system.
The Molesky Lab utilizes lasers with ultra-short pulses to both initiate and measure the properties of materials as they evolve in time. We use ultrafast spectroscopic techniques to study real working devices in situ.
Another area of research in the Molesky Lab is the development and implementation of new techniques at X-Ray Free Electron Lasers (XFELs), large national facilities that produce the brightest ultra-short X-Ray pulses. Our lab collaborates with scientists all over the world to perform cutting-edge measurements on emerging materials down to the attosecond (10^-18 s) timescale.
Materials we are currently focusing on include the strong light-matter coupled 2D transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs), soft lattice ferroelectric materials like halide perovskites, and materials with unusual topological properties.
Education
- Postdoctoral Scholar, Stanford University and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (Matthias F. Kling and Aaron M. Lindenberg), 2022-2025
- Ph.D. in Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley (Stephen R. Leone), 2022
- B.S. in Chemistry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2016
Selected publications
- Z. Taylor, T. Reddy, L. Fang, … , I.J.P. Molesky, et al. High-resolution in-situ characterization of laser powder bed fusion via transmission X-ray microscopy at X-ray free electron lasers. J. Synchrotron Radiat. 2025, 32 (3) 524-533.
- R. Géneaux, H.-T. Chang, A. Guggenmos, R. Delaunay, F. Légaré, K. Légaré, J. Lüning, T. Parpiiev, I.J.P. Molesky, B.R. de Roulet, M.W. Zuerch, S. Sharma, M. Schultze, S.R. Leone. Spin dynamics across metallic layers at the few-femtosecond timescale. Phys. Rev. Lett. 2024, 133, 106902.
- I.J.P. Molesky, M.W. Zuerch, A.M. Baranger, S.R. Leone. Coherent phonons in antimony: an undergraduate physical chemistry solid-state ultrafast laser spectroscopy experiment. J. Chem. Educ. 2022, 100 (1) 342-349.
- I.J.P. Molesky, A. Lee, S.K. Cushing, H.-T. Chang, J.C. Ondry, A.P. Alivisatos, S.R. Leone. Characterization of carrier cooling bottleneck in silicon nanoparticles by extreme ultraviolet (XUV) transient absorption spectroscopy. J. Phys. Chem. C. 2021, 125 (17) 9319-9329.
- H.-T. Chang, A. Guggenmos, S.K. Cushing, Y. Cui, N.U. Din, S.R. Acharya, I.J.P. Molesky, U. Kleineberg, V. Turkowski, T.S. Rahman, D.M. Neumark, S.R. Leone. Electron thermalization and relaxation in laser-heated nickel by few-femtosecond core-level transient absorption spectroscopy. Phys. Rev. B. 2021, 103 (6), 064305.
- S.K. Cushing*, I.J.P. Molesky*, B.R. de Roulet, A. Lee, B.M. Marsh, S. Szoke, M.E. Vaida, S.R. Leone. Layer-resolved ultrafast XUV measurement of hole transport in a Ni-TiO2-Si photoanode. Sci. Adv. 2020, 6 (14), eaay6650.