anyone in physical chemistry?

[SymmetryOfImperfection]

Anyone here doing physical chemistry, especially in the field of nanomaterials and devices? I am wondering about the funding and employment situation in this field. I am thinking of making the switch to back to physical chemistry if the employment situation is better. Job websites don't really help since at the PHD level there's just not too many jobs overall so its hard to talk statistics, especially when chemistry can span from very qualitative and intuition based to strongly physical and engineering yet employers will often say "chemistry" for jobs in both say, bio and nanotech which are totally unrelated.

[Eigen]

I'm in nanomaterials and devices, but I wouldn't say I'm in physical chemistry, per-se. What area are you working on? Characterization?

[SymmetryOfImperfection]

I'm in nanomaterials and devices, but I wouldn't say I'm in physical chemistry, per-se. What area are you working on? Characterization?

Characterization, mostly magnetic properties of ceramic thin films but don't want to stay in this area. It just seems like physics is both harder to get in and harder to get employment for. Not sure if I want to stay with characterization but what else is there in chemistry other than synthesis and characterization?

What would you place yourself as? It might help me in searching for programs to check out and even articles to read.

Edited July 18, 2012 by SymmetryOfImperfection

[Eigen]

I'm in Bioorganic Chemistry- I do synthesis and characterization of nanostructured materials.

Looking at employment trends, however, Physics is at the top of the pile in the sciences.

[SymmetryOfImperfection]

I'm in Bioorganic Chemistry- I do synthesis and characterization of nanostructured materials.

Looking at employment trends, however, Physics is at the top of the pile in the sciences.

damn, doesn't feel like it. Looked at Bureau of Labor Statistics and it seemed physics was less employable, also heard stories about how people in physics were being unemployed.

What type of materials do you work on and what characterization do you do? XRD? Electron microscopy? Scanning probe microscopy? Electrical measurements? Calorimetry? Optical spectroscopy? Or is your direction more in traditional chemistry and mostly use HPLC, NMR, stuff like that?

I hadn't thought of bioorganic being part of nanomaterials. Thought that was mostly in physical chemistry from the schools I've looked at. At least, that's where it was placed in my alma mater.

[Eigen]

Similarly, I've never heard of it being in physical!

I don't personally use all of the above on my current work, but our group uses them all, and I've used most of them at some time or another, and will be using them in the near future.

[SymmetryOfImperfection]

Similarly, I've never heard of it being in physical!

I don't personally use all of the above on my current work, but our group uses them all, and I've used most of them at some time or another, and will be using them in the near future.

thats very interesting. I think schools classify stuff differently. at my alma mater, the physical chemistry division is basically a hodgepodge of "non-synthetic applied chemistry" and so has faculty from chemistry, physics and chemE/matSci. there's 4 professors crossed with physics and 5 crossed with chemical engineering/materials science out of 27 associated faculty. Its mostly a highly interdisciplinary division, not many professors (I think maybe 1) does "traditional" p-chem stuff like reaction mechanisms anymore. No money. Its either bio- something or nanomaterials.

[Eigen]

I don't think it would be possible to publish much on synthesis and design of nanomaterials if you weren't willing to do the characterization.

What I see more commonly in the physical area is instrument design, rather than use.

I'd also say reaction mechanisms fall under one of the defined subfields (biophysical, physical organic) which are more usually placed under the parent fields of biochem and organic chem rather than physical.

Physical seems to be instrument/technique development (Spec, NMR, microscopy, lasers, etc.), computational chemistry, and theoretical chemistry from what I see at conferences. Also a big movement in molecular spectroscopy. My roommate is a physical chemist, very much on the physics end.

[SymmetryOfImperfection]

I don't think it would be possible to publish much on synthesis and design of nanomaterials if you weren't willing to do the characterization.

What I see more commonly in the physical area is instrument design, rather than use.

I'd also say reaction mechanisms fall under one of the defined subfields (biophysical, physical organic) which are more usually placed under the parent fields of biochem and organic chem rather than physical.

Physical seems to be instrument/technique development (Spec, NMR, microscopy, lasers, etc.), computational chemistry, and theoretical chemistry from what I see at conferences. Also a big movement in molecular spectroscopy. My roommate is a physical chemist, very much on the physics end.

I see... thank you for telling me this. I had always thought that spectroscopy/NMR/microscopy are simply techniques that you use for whatever field you're in, whether it be chemical biology, organic synthesis or materials science, and you COULD focus on the instrument design itself, but you had other choices in p-chem.

What do you think about this paper? It's a semiconductor processing paper and was classified under "physical chemistry" at UCLA. http://iopscience.iop.org/0953-8984/24/16/164214

What would it fall under at your school?

[Eigen]

Either Physics, Material Science or most likely Inorganic Chem.