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Jeff Terry

Interim Chair, Social Sciences
Professor, Physics
Professor, Mechanical, Materials, and Aerospace Engineering
Illinois Institute of Technology
Materials Research CAT
Phone: (630) 252-9708
Fax: (630) 252-0358
Email: terryj@iit.edu

Paper Mail Address:

Pritzker Science Building
Illinois Institute of Technology
3101 S. Dearborn
Chicago IL 60616

Jeff's Vitae (pdf/65K)
My Favorite Links

My training is in chemical physics with a specialization in synchrotron radiation techniques. I have extensive experience using a variety of synchrotron techniques to examine many problems of interest in the chemical sciences. Presently, I have ongoing projects involving the chemistry of photovoltaic cells, nuclear reactors, molecular magnets, nanocluster formation and patterning, heavy metals in the environment, radiopharmaceuticals, and high-Z materials.

I primarily use the synchrtotron radiation techniques of photoelectron (PES), x-ray emission (SXE), and x-ray absorption spectroscopes (XAS) to determine the electronic and geometric structures of these systems. These techniques are direct probes of the electronic structure of a material. Also, local atomic structure (bond lengths, angles, bonding sites) can also be determined using these techniques due to the interference properties of the emitted photon (fluorescence holography (SXE)) or photoelectron (photoelectron diffraction (PED), extended x-ray absorption fine structure (EXAFS)).

I was trained to handle radioactive materials as a staff scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory. I continue to study a variety of radioactive materials at MR-CAT. Many issues (environmental, energy, health, physics) involving radioactive materials can be solved using the above techniques. I utilize the training that I received at LANL to continue work in these areas. At MR-CAT, we routinely work with plutonium (Pu), uranium (U), americium (Am), technetium (Tc), cesium (Cs), carbon (C), and neptunium (Np).