Professor

Kazuya Watanabe, PhD
kw_at_kuchem.kyoto-u.ac.jp
ORCID record
Room 352, Graduate School of Scince Bldg. No. 6

Research Profile

Kazuya Watanabe is a Professor at the Department of Chemistry, Molecular Spectroscopy Lab. His research focuses on ultrafast spectroscopy of condensed matter, particularly on dynamics at surfaces and interfaces and optoelectronic properties of molecular assemblies. He is particularly interested in non-adiabatic dynamics induced by hot electrons on metal surfaces, including energy and charge transfer on ultrafast time scales. Actual target systems range from simple molecular adsorbates on metal surfaces under ultra-high vacuum conditions to organic semiconductor films fabricated using vacuum vapor deposition. To this end, Watanabe is using optical nonlinear spectroscopic methods to probe elementary excitations at interfaces, focusing on second-harmonic and sum-frequency generation spectroscopy together with conventional pump-probe methods. He is also developing novel spectroscopic techniques to allow the investigation of rare events at surfaces and interfaces.

Scientific Background

Kazuya Watanabe studied and obtained his M.Sc. degree in applied physics at the Osaka University, Japan, in 1994. In 1997, Watanabe obtained his Ph.D. from the same university under the supervision of Professor Hiroshi Masuhara. His dissertation focused on the transient absorption spectroscopy study of ultrafast exciton and charge carrier dynamics of organic solids. In 1997, Watanabe was appointed as an Assistant Professor at the Institute for Molecular Science (IMS) in Okazaki, Japan, with Professor Yoshiyasu Matsumoto, where he joined the field of surface sciences and began developing a time-resolved technique for well-defined surfaces under ultra-high vacuum conditions. In 1999, Watanabe moved to the Graduate University for Advanced Studies in Hayama, Japan, where he worked on ultrafast dynamics of surfaces and succeeded in observing coherent nuclear motions of surface monolayer adsorbates. In 2004, Watanabe returned to the IMS with Professor Matsumoto and worked on sum-frequency generation spectroscopy with time-resolved fashion. In 2007, he moved to the Kyoto University, Japan, where he was appointed as an Associate Professor, and then became a Professor in 2019.

Recent Invited Talks

"Excited state dynamics at interfaces and in microcavities", 17th Fukui Institute Symposium, 2020/01/30, Kyoto
"Ultrafast Spectral Diffusion in Organic Thin Films", The 41th annual meeting of the laser society of Japan, 2021/01/20, online
"Non-adiabatic processes at interfaces and in microcavities", The 13th Annual meeting of Japan Society for Molecular Science, 2019/09/20, Nagoya.
"Growth of ice film on Rh(111) studied by Sum-frequency generation", 8th SFG Symposium, 2018/10/26, Saitama.
"Singlet Fission Dynamics in Crystalline Rubrene Film", 10th Asian Conference on Ultrafast Phenomena, 2018/01/09, Hong Kong.
"Non-equilibrium Adsorbate Dynamics on Metal Surface Induced by Electronic Friction", 21th East Asian Workshop on Chemical Dynamics, 2017/12/19
"Ultrafast Vibrational Dynamics of Surface Adsorbates Studied by Time-Resolved Optical Spectroscopy", Gordon Research Conference: Dynamics at Surface, 2017/07/31, Newport, USA.
"Non-equilibrium Adsorbate Dynamics Induced by Electronic Friction", 10th International Symposium on Ultrafast Surface Dynamics, 2017/06/12, Inzell, Germany.
"Ultrafast dynamics of alkali-intercalated graphene", 9th asian photochemistry conference, 2016/12/08, Singapore.
"Optical response of intercalated graphene", 9th asian conference on ultrafast phenomena, 2016/02/22, Philippines.
"Ultrafast vibrational dynamics of desorbing molecules", ISSS-6 International symposium on surface science, 2011/12/11, Tokyo.
"Ultrafast vibrational dynamics at metal surfaces", The 15th east asian workshop on chemical dynamics, 2011/05/17, Pohang.