The promise of a clean, renewable, and abundant energy supply make the efficient conversion of solar energy to electricity a compelling scientific and societal goal. In the following chapters, I will describe my efforts to advance one class of photovoltaic technology, dye-sensitized solar cells, by demonstration and characterization of unexplored...
The biological antagonism between copper and molybdenum, first observed when cattle developed copper deficiencies after ingesting high levels of plant-born molybdenum, is currently being used in humans to treat two conditions: Wilson's Disease as well as several forms of metastatic cancer. There is surprisingly little known about the interaction of...
The need for readily synthesized scaffold architectures to build monodisperse, high molar mass mobility modifiers or "drag-tags" in end-labeled free solution electrophoresis (ELFSE) led to the development of a novel class of multivalent molecular tools. Poly-N-substituted glycines (peptoids) were created with evenly spaced amino groups as branching points along the...
My thesis focuses on the design and synthesis of lanthanide coordination complexes as Zn(II)-responsive magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) contrast agents. These agents produce an increase in MR intensity upon binding of Zn(II) through water modulation to Gd(III) chelates. To this end, several Zn(II)-responsive contrast agents have been synthesized and studied...
Nanoscale materials are demonstrating new properties and promising applications with each passing day. The fabrication of ever more complex and precise nanomaterials represents a continuing drive in the fields of physics, chemistry, and biology. Template-based approaches provide an attractive method of producing new inaccessible materials by modifying and confining older...
Particulate methane monooxygenase (pMMO) is a membrane-bound metalloenzyme that oxidizes methane to methanol in methanotrophic bacteria. The nature of the pMMO active site and the overall metal content are controversial, with spectroscopic and crystallographic data suggesting the presence of a mononuclear copper center, a dinuclear copper center, a trinuclear center,...
The work presented here describes investigations into the interaction of resonant molecules with metallic nanoparticles by localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) spectroscopy. The contents of this thesis include the study of the coupling mechanism between molecular resonance and plasmon resonance from experimental and theoretical perspectives and applications of this mechanism...
The early transition metal oxide fluoride molecular anions with the general formula [MOxF6-x]n- with x = 1 for M = V5+, Nb5+, Ta5+ (n = 2) and x = 2 for M = Mo6+, W6+ (n = 2) feature distorted octahedral coordinations, that arise from electronic dπ pπ metal oxide...
Copper serves as a cofactor for many proteins and enzymes involved in important biological processes, but at the same time, excessive copper is toxic to cell. Thus, the intracellular copper concentration must be tightly controlled such that copper is provided to essential enzymes but does not accumulate to toxic levels....
The work of this dissertation was aimed at synthesizing new types of nanoparticle-DNA conjugates, investigating their chemical and physical properties, and exploring their biodiagnostic applications. Chapters Two and Three describe the synthesis of new types of nanoparticle-DNA conjugates: (1) silver nanoparticle-DNA conjugates (DNA-Ag NPs) and (2) 2-nm gold nanoparticle-DNA conjugates...