Novel Surface Phenomena

Abstract

Major Goals: The major goals in this research project are several-fold: (1) developing a mechano-chemical theory to treat different types of single molecule experiments on biomolecular motors, initially those on F1-ATPase involved in pumping protons and other ions across membranes, (2) extending the theory of sum frequency generation experiments for studying the effect of hydrogen bonding at water-organic interfaces on the rates of organic reactions, such as cycloaddition reactions, (3) understanding wasteful electron-hole recombination processes involved in photo-excited perovskite materials of solar cell interest, in particular Auger recombination, and (4) understanding fluorescence blinking of photoexcited CdSe and other semiconductor nanoparticles and the dependence of the rate of energy-wasteful nonradiative recombination of electrons and holes on the size of the nanoparticle. In topic (1) there are now, in addition to many bulk system experiments, different types of single molecule experiments, such as stalling experiments, in which the rotary biological motor is stalled at various angularpositions by magnetic tweezers and then after different times allowed to rotate forward or backward to stable positions and relevant rate constants are obtained from those data. There are also controlled rotation experiments, in which the motor is rotated at a constant angular velocity that is controlled by magnetic tweezers. To monitor the latter experiments the ATP (adenosine triphosphate) in F1-ATPase studies is replaced by a modified fluorescent ATP. The latter serves to determine whether a site in the ATPase is occupied (the attached dye in the ATP in the ATPase then fluoresces) or not occupied (the ATP and its attached dye are then in solution and there is no fluorescence). From the latter information one obtains rates of various processes occurring in this motor.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jul 30, 2018
Accession Number
AD1070319

Entities

People

  • Rudolph A. Marcus

Organizations

  • California Institute of Technology

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Energy and Power Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Charge Carriers
  • Chemical Reactions
  • Chemistry
  • Electric Fields
  • Electron Transfer
  • Electronic Structure Theory
  • Energy Bands
  • Equations
  • Experimental Data
  • Laser Beams
  • Phase Transformations
  • Quantum Dots
  • Quantum Mechanics
  • Semiconductors
  • Solar Cells
  • Solar Energy
  • Spectroscopy

Readers

  • Brain and Cognitive Science; Experimental Psychology; Cognitive Neuroscience
  • Molecular Photonics/Laser Physics
  • Quantum Dot Semiconductor Device Photonics and Graphene Optoelectronic Materials and THz Physics.

Technology Areas

  • Biotechnology
  • Microelectronics
  • Microelectronics - Microelectromechanical Systems