Ytkänslig laserspektroskopi från två till tre dimensioner
- Diarienummer
- I06-0261
- Start- och slutdatum
- 070901-120229
- Beviljat belopp
- 3 000 000 kr
- Förvaltande organisation
- KTH - Royal Institute of Technology
- Forskningsområde
- Bioteknik, medicinsk teknik och teknik för livsvetenskaperna
Summary
The goal of my project is to study the structure of various interfaces of biological relevance. I will utilize the laser technique “Vibrational Sum Frequency Spectroscopy, VSFS”, which has the unique property of only probing molecules at the surface, despite a vast excess of the same molecules in the bulk material. The project consists of two parts, where the first will focus on the water structure in the proximity of biologically relevant molecules at flat surfaces. Water is the most important and most examined liquid on earth, yet both the surface and bulk structure remain mysterious, and therefore further studies of water are crucial. The interfacial water structure is of importance in biological membrane formation, in interactions with proteins at surfaces of bio-implants in human bodies, and in artificial micellar nanoreactors, for example. The second part extends the conventional two-dimensional VSFS at flat surfaces to the novel technique “three-dimensional VSFS scattering”. The advantage of VSFS scattering is the possibility of obtaining molecular properties of curved surfaces, such as the structure and orientation of molecules at particle surfaces (even when the particles are surrounded by bulk media), in addition to the shape and size of the particles. This technique is absolutely at the cutting edge and of great value in key areas of bioengineering and chemistry, since many surfaces in the real world are curved, such as vesicles, micelles, and nano-particles.