Photoionization dynamics of glycine adsorbed on a silicon cluster: "on-the-fly" simulations

Dynamics of glycine chemisorbed on the surface of a silicon cluster is studied for a process that involves single-photon ionization, followed by recombination with the electron after a selected time delay. The process is studied by "on-the-fly" molecular dynamics simulations, using the semiempirical parametric method number 3 (PM3) potential energy surface. The system is taken to be in the ground state prior to photoionization, and time delays from 5 to 50 fs before the recombination are considered. The time evolution is computed over 10 ps. The main findings are (1) the positive charge after ionization is initially mostly distributed on the silicon cluster. (2) After ionization the major structural changes are on the silicon cluster. These include Si-Si bond breaking and formation and hydrogen transfer between different silicon atoms. (3) The transient ionization event gives rise to dynamical behavior that depends sensitively on the ion state lifetime. Subsequent to 45 fs evolution in the charged state, the glycine molecule starts to rotate on the silicon cluster. Implications of the results to various processes that are induced by transient transition to a charged state are discussed. These include inelastic tunneling in molecular devices, photochemistry on conducting surfaces, and electron-molecule scattering.     

Controlling Metallophilic Interactions in Chiral Gold(I) Double Salts towards Excitation Wavelength‐Tunable Circularly Polarized Luminescence

Materials exhibiting excitation wavelength‐dependent photoluminescence (Ex‐De PL) in the visible region have potential applications in bioimaging, optoelectronics and anti‐counterfeiting. Two multifunctional, chiral [Au(NHC)₂][Au(CN)₂] (NHC=(4R,5R)/(4S,5S)‐1,3‐dimethyl‐4,5‐diphenyl‐4,5‐dihydro‐imidazolin‐2‐ylidene) complex double salts display Ex‐De circularly polarized luminescence (CPL) in doped polymer films and in ground powder. Emission maxima can be dynamically tuned from 440 to 530 nm by changing the excitation wavelength. The continuously tunable photoluminescence is proposed to originate from multiple emissive excited states as a result of the existence of varied Au^I???Au^I distances in ground state. The steric properties of the NHC ligand are crucial to the tuning of Au^I???Au^I distances. An anti‐counterfeiting application using these two salts is demonstrated.     

Infrared Spectroscopy of Size-Selected Hydrated Carbon Dioxide Radical Anions CO2.−(H2O)n (n=2–61) in the C−O Stretch Region

Understanding the intrinsic properties of the hydrated carbon dioxide radical anions CO₂^.−(H₂O)_n is relevant for electrochemical carbon dioxide functionalization. CO₂^.−(H₂O)_n (n=2–61) is investigated by using infrared action spectroscopy in the 1150–2220 cm⁻¹ region in an ICR (ion cyclotron resonance) cell cooled to T=80 K. The spectra show an absorption band around 1280 cm⁻¹, which is assigned to the symmetric C−O stretching vibration ν_s. It blueshifts with increasing cluster size, reaching the bulk value, within the experimental linewidth, for n=20. The antisymmetric C−O vibration ν_as is strongly coupled with the water bending mode ν₂, causing a broad feature at approximately 1650 cm⁻¹. For larger clusters, an additional broad and weak band appears above 1900 cm⁻¹ similar to bulk water, which is assigned to a combination band of water bending and libration modes. Quantum chemical calculations provide insight into the interaction of CO₂^.− with the hydrogen-bonding network.     

Ratiometric Detection of microRNA Using Hybridization Chain Reaction and Fluorogenic Silver Nanoclusters

miRNA (miR)-155 is a potential biomarker for breast cancers. We aimed at developing a nanosensor for miR-155 detection by integrating hybridization chain reaction (HCR) and silver nanoclusters (AgNCs). HCR serves as an enzyme-free and isothermal amplification method, whereas AgNCs provide a built-in fluorogenic detection probe that could simplify the downstream analysis. The two components were integrated by adding a nucleation sequence of AgNCs to the hairpin of HCR. The working principle was based on the influence of microenvironment towards the hosted AgNCs, whereby unfolding of hairpin upon HCR has manipulated the distance between the hosted AgNCs and cytosine-rich toehold region of hairpin. As such, the dominant emission of AgNCs changed from red to yellow in the absence and presence of miR-155, enabling a ratiometric measurement of miR with high sensitivity. The limit of detection (LOD) of our HCR-AgNCs nanosensor is 1.13 fM in buffered solution. We have also tested the assay in diluted serum samples, with comparable LOD of 1.58 fM obtained. This shows the great promise of our HCR-AgNCs nanosensor for clinical application.     

Ab initio studies on Al(+)(H(2)O)(n), HAlOH(+)(H(2)O)(n-1), and the size-dependent H(2) elimination reaction

We report computational studies on Al(+)(H(2)O)(n), and HAlOH(+)(H(2)O)(n-1), n = 6-14, by the density functional theory based ab initio molecular dynamics method, employing a planewave basis set with pseudopotentials, and also by conventional methods with Gaussian basis sets. The mechanism for the intracluster H(2) elimination reaction is explored. First, a new size-dependent insertion reaction for the transformation of Al(+)(H(2)O)(n), into HAlOH(+)(H(2)O)(n-1) is discovered for n > or = 8. This is because of the presence of a fairly stable six-water-ring structure in Al(+)(H(2)O)(n) with 12 members, including the Al(+). This structure promotes acidic dissociation and, for n > or = 8, leads to the insertion reaction. Gaussian based BPW91 and MP2 calculations with 6-31G* and 6-31G** basis sets confirmed the existence of such structures and located the transition structures for the insertion reaction. The calculated transition barrier is 10.0 kcal/mol for n = 9 and 7.1 kcal/mol for n = 8 at the MP2/6-31G** level, with zero-point energy corrections. Second, the experimentally observed size-dependent H(2) elimination reaction is related to the conformation of HAlOH(+)(H(2)O)(n-1), instead of Al(+)(H(2)O)(n). As n increases from 6 to 14, the structure of the HAlOH(+)(H(2)O)(n-1) cluster changes into a caged structure, with the Al-H bond buried inside, and protons produced in acidic dissociation could then travel through the H(2)O network to the vicinity of the Al-H bond and react with the hydride H to produce H(2). The structural transformation is completed at n = 13, coincident approximately with the onset of the H(2) elimination reaction. From constrained ab initio MD simulations, we estimated the free energy barrier for the H(2) elimination reaction to be 0.7 eV (16 kcal/mol) at n = 13, 1.5 eV (35 kcal/mol) at n = 12, and 4.5 eV (100 kcal/mol) at n = 8. The existence of transition structures for the H(2) elimination has also been verified by ab initio calculations at the MP2/6-31G** level. Finally, the switch-off of the H(2) elimination for n > 24 is explored and attributed to the diffusion of protons through enlarged hydrogen bonded H(2)O networks, which reduces the probability of finding a proton near the Al-H bond.     

On the Value of a Random Minimum Weight Steiner Tree

Consider a complete graph on n vertices with edge weights chosen randomly and independently from an exponential distribution with parameter 1. Fix k vertices and consider the minimum weight Steiner tree which contains these vertices. We prove that with high probability the weight of this tree is (1+o(1))(k-1)(log n-log k)/n when k =o(n) and n.* Research supported in part by NSF grant DSM9971788 Research supported in part by NSF grants DMS-0106589, CCR-9987845 and by the State of New Jersey. Part of this research was done while visiting IBM T. J. Watson Research Center.     

The Number of Edge Colorings with no Monochromatic Cliques

Let F(n,r,k) denote the maximum possible number of distinctedge-colorings of a simple graph on n vertices with r colorswhich contain no monochromatic copy of K_k. It is shown thatfor every fixed k and all n>n₀(k), and , where t_k–1(n)is the maximum possible number of edges of a graph on n verticeswith no K_k (determined by Turán's theorem). The caser=2 settles an old conjecture of Erds and Rothschild, whichwas also independently raised later by Yuster. On the otherhand, for every fixed r>3 and k>2, the function F(n,r,k)is exponentially bigger than . The proofs are based on Szemerédi's regularity lemmatogether with some additional tools in extremal graph theory,and provide one of the rare examples of a precise result provedby applying this lemma.     

Nonexistence of abelian difference sets: Lander's conjecture for prime power orders

In 1963 Ryser conjectured that there are no circulant Hadamard matrices of order 4$"> and no cyclic difference sets whose order is not coprime to the group order. These conjectures are special cases of Lander's conjecture which asserts that there is no abelian group with a cyclic Sylow -subgroup containing a difference set of order divisible by . We verify Lander's conjecture for all difference sets whose order is a power of a prime greater than 3.