The Physical Chemistry started as a division of the Department of Chemistry at JilinUniversity in 1952. It was one of the first institutes offering Ph. D. program authorized by Ministry of Education.

It consists of 1 State Key Lab of Theoretical and Computational Chemistry (SKLTCC), 1 Department of Physical Chemistry and 1 Institute of Physical Chemistry. Among its 62 faculty members, 27 full professors and 25 associate professors are engaged in 10 core areas of research as follows:

　　1. Excited state theoretical method and design of photoelectric materials

　　2. Chemical dynamic processes and reaction controlling

　　3. The structures, chemical bonding and properties of clusters and nanosystems

　　4. Molecular mechanics and dynamics and application of multiple dimensional dissipative particles

　　5. Computer simulation of bio-systems and drug design

　　6. Physical chemistry of functional materials

　　7. Electrochemistry and electrochemical engineering

　　8. Heterogeneous catalysis

　　9. Photo-physical chemistry

　　10. Nanocrystal chemistry and biomedical nanomaterials