Jason M. Montgomery, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Chemistry
Perhaps more than in any other discipline, chemistry builds upon itself and requires a solid foundation. There is no denying its construction is a challenge; a student cannot be passive and expect to succeed. My approach in the classroom is not only to convey my own understanding but also to create an environment in which students can develop critical thinking and analytical skills and build a solid foundation through practice and making connections throughout the curriculum.
Biography
Dr. Montgomery received his B.S. degree in Chemistry and an M.S. degree in Chemical Physics from Texas Tech University and a Ph.D. in Chemistry at the University of Chicago in 2007. Upon completing a postdoctoral appointment at the Center for Nanoscale Materials at Argonne National Laboratory in 2009, he joined the Florida Southern faculty as Assistant Professor of Chemistry and was promoted to Associate Professor of Chemistry in 2015.
Given that many of the solutions to today’s challenges, such as energy, the environment, disease, etc., will be met with engineering at the molecular and nanoscale, Dr. Montgomery’s research focuses on the properties of matter at the molecular scale and nanoscale. Using sophisticated computational methods, the ultimate goal is to elucidate experiments and guide engineers in the design of novel devices capable of exploiting the interesting phenomena that can result from the interactions of light with matter at these length scales.In regards to the nanoscale, Dr. Montgomery is interested in studying metallic nanostructures that exploit the electromagnetic field confinement and enhancement due to the excitation of surface plasmons at metal / dielectric interfaces for applications in chemical and biological sensors, optoelectronics, spectroscopy, medical imaging and treatment, etc. Recent projects involve the design and optimization of plasmonic crystals for surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) sensors and the study of metallic nanoparticles for photothermal ablation of cancer cells.
While nanoparticles are small, they are still large enough to treat using classical methods. At the molecular scale, however, one must use quantum mechanics to accurately describe the properties of matter. Dr. Montgomery is interested in the development of efficient theoretical methods to calculate bound and resonance states for molecules using basis set optimization methods and iterative diagonalization techniques to solve the Schrodinger equation exactly (theoretical vibrational spectroscopy). He is also interested in using efficient electronic structure methods to calculate the electronic properties of molecules to help guide and elucidate experiments involving metal-organic-frameworks, catalysis, enantioenrichment and chiral catalysis, etc.
Education
- Postdoc, Argonne National Laboratory
- Ph.D., Chemistry, University of Chicago
- M.S., Chemical Physics, Texas Tech University
- B.S., Chemistry, Texas Tech University
Awards
- American Chemical Society, Florida Section, Chair 2013 – 2014
- Center for Nanoscale Materials User: Nanophotonics. Computer Resources on Carbon Cluster 2009 – 2010, 2014 – 2015
- National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center: Computational Nanophotonics. Computer Resource Allocations (2009 – 2019)
- Collaborative Research with Undergraduates Funding, Office of the Provost, ³Ô¹ÏÍø 2010 – 2013, 2015, 2019
Publications
Jason M. Montgomery, Ezra Alexander, and David A. Mazziotti, ‘Prediction of the Existence of LiCH: A Carbene-like Organometallic Molecule’, J. Phys. Chem. A, 124, 9562 (2020)Jason M. Montgomery and David A. Mazziotti, ‘Maple’s Quantum Chemistry Package in the Chemistry Classroom’, J. Chem. Educ., 97, 3658 (2020)
Suliman Ayad, Victoria Posey, Anjan Das, Jason M. Montgomery, and Kenneth Hanson, ‘Enantioenrichment of Racemic BINOL by way of Excited State Proton Transfer’, Chem. Comm., 55, 1263 (2019)
Jason M. Montgomery and David A. Mazziotti, ‘Strong Electron Correlation in the Nitrogenase Cofactor, FeMoco’, J. Phys. Chem. A, 122, 4988 (2018)
Alec Bigness and Jason M. Montgomery, ‘The Design and Optimization of Plasmonic Crystals for SERS using the FDTD Method’, Materials, 11, 672 (2018)
Alfred J. Baca, Joshua Baca, Jason M. Montgomery, Lee R. Cambrea, Peter Funcheon, Linda Johnson, Mark Moran, and Dan Connor, ‘Mosaic-like Silver Nanobowl Plasmonic Crystals as Highly Active Surface-Enhanced Raman Scattering Substrates,’ J. Phys. Chem. C, 119, 17790–17799 (2015)
Alfred J. Baca, Jason M. Montgomery, Lee R. Cambrea, Mark Moran, Linda Johnson and Jeanine Yacoub, ‘Nanopost Plasmonic Crystals Fabricated by Soft Imprint Lithography for Surface Enhanced Raman Scattering,’ J. Phys. Chem. C, 115, 7171–7178 (2011)
Lina Cao, Rene Nome, Jason M. Montgomery, Stephen K. Gray, and Norbert F. Scherer, ‘Controlling Plasmonic Wave Packets in Silver Nanowires,’ NanoLett, 10, 3389-3394 (2010)
Misun Min, Paul Fischer, Jason Montgomery, Stephen K. Gray, ‘Large-scale electromagnetic modeling based on high-order methods: Nanoscience applications,’ Journal of Physics: Conference Series, 180, 012016 (2009).
Jason M. Montgomery, Stephen K. Gray, Alexandra Imre, Ulrich Welp and Vitalii Vlasko-Vlasov.‘ Surface Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy Enhancements Via Periodic Gratings of Gold Nanospheres on Silver Films,’ Opt. Exp., 17, 8669 (2009)
Alfred Baca, Tu T. Truong, Jason M. Montgomery, Stephen Gray, Daner Abdula, Tony R. Banks, Jimin Yao, Ralph Nuzzo, and John Rogers, ‘Molded Plasmonic Crystals for Imaging Molecular Fingerprints by Surface-Enhanced Raman Scattering,’ Applied Physics Letters, 94, 243109 (2009)
John T. Bahns, Qiti Guo, Jason M. Montgomery, Stephen K. Gray, Heinrich M. Jaeger, and Liaohai Chen, ‘Nanohole Arrays for High Fidelity Hole Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy,’ J. Phys. Chem. C, 113, 11190 (2009).
Mathieu Juan, Jerome Plain, Renaud Bachelot, Alexandre Vial, Pascal Royer, Stephen Gray, Jason M. Montgomery, and Gary Wiederrecht, ‘Plasmonic electromagnetic hot spots temporally addressed by photoinduced molecular displacement,’ J. Phys. Chem. A 113, 4647 (2009)
Jason M. Montgomery, Tae-woo Lee, and Stephen K. Gray, ‘Theory and modeling of light interactions with metallic nanostructures,’ J. Phys.: Condens. Matter, 20, 323201 (2008)
Jason M. Montgomery and Stephen K. Gray, ‘Enhancing surface plasmon polariton propagation lengths via coupling to asymmetric waveguide structures,’ Phys. Rev. B, 77, 125407 (2008)
Jason M. Montgomery and Bill Poirier, ‘Eigenspectra calculations using Cartesian coordinates and a rotational symmetry adapted Lanczos method,’ J. Chem. Phys., 119, 6609 (2003)
Richard L. Redington, Theresa E. Redington, and Jason M. Montgomery, ‘IR spectra of tropolone (OH) and tropolone(OD),’ J. Chem. Phys., 113, 2304 (2000).