Ultrafast Dynamics in Polythiophene Probed with Transient NEXAFS Spectroscopy

A broad range of chemical reactions are triggered by the absorption of light. Examples include photosynthesis and charge transfer in semiconductors and molecules. Electronic dynamics which evolve on the few femtosecond to attosecond timescale are expected to play an important role in these processes. We aim to investigate these dynamics with transient X-ray absorption near edge structure (XANES) spectroscopy. XANES spectroscopy uses resonant excitation of particular atoms in a molecule to provide a highly localised probe of electronic structure. By employing attosecond soft x-ray pulses generated via high harmonic generation for XANES spectroscopy this atomic scale spatial resolution can in principle be combined with the attosecond temporal resolution required for tracking electronic dynamics. I shall present development of a beamline for transient XANES spectroscopy and progress towards visible pump, soft x-ray probe experiments in the organic polymer poly(hexylthiophene).