The properties of crystalline materials are controlled by their composition and by their structure, however, the structure of a crystal is only partly controlled by its composition. Development of specifically directed inorganic syntheses will require an understanding of the dynamics of crystal phase forming processes, especially those processes involved in...
The FDA approvals of afatinib and ibrutinib in 2013 led to a heightened interest in cysteine-reactive covalent inhibitors. However, there are few methods to discover new cysteine-reactive inhibitors for enzymes for which reversible binding scaffolds are not known. To this end, we rationally designed a chemical system to attach a...
Metalloporphyrins fulfill incredibly diverse chemical roles in biology and photocatalysis, where they act as photosensitizers, redox sites, substrate binding sites, and facilitators of long range electron transfer. Metalloporphyrin chemistry is uniquely tuneable through conformation and functionalization of the porphyrin ring, choice of metal, and interaction with the environment as these...
Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) is a powerful technique for characterizing molecular systems. It combines the chemical selectivity of vibrational spectroscopy with plasmonic signal enhancement to achieve the ultimate limit of detection--a single molecule. By overcoming the effects of ensemble averaging, single molecule SERS (SMSERS) probes distributions in molecular interactions and...
Interprotein electron transfer (ET) occupies a central role in both chemistry and biology, as it is important in a variety of functions including cellular respiration, metabolism, and energy transduction during photosynthesis. Consequently, understanding the protein-protein recognition and docking that controls interprotein ET is an important field of scientific research.
One...
Raman spectroscopy is an established and versatile molecular sensing technique, but it is limited by its modest chemical sensitivity. Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) can amplify otherwise weak normal Raman signals up to nine to ten orders of magnitude, giving rise to its application in many molecular sensing problems, including those...
Organic photovoltaics (OPVs) are an attractive solar energy technology for low-current applications. Herein is described the supramolecular design and methodology to manipulate intermolecular interactions in order to create an active layer in OPVs devices composed of crystalline and amorphous donor-acceptor domains, which has been proposed as the ideal morphology for...
With the dual challenges of meeting global energy demand and mitigating anthropogenic climate change, significant effort is being applied to generating power from renewable sources. The dye-sensitized solar cell (DSC) is a photovoltaic technology capable of generating electricity from sunlight, but suffers losses in efficiency due to deleterious electron transfer...
Halide perovskites, AMX3 (A = monocation, B = Ge, Sn, or Pb, and X = halogen), present a versatile class of solution-processable semiconductors made from earth abundant materials with outstanding electrical and optical properties. Their solar cell efficiencies have dramatically increased from ~9% to ~22% in less than five years...
Ultrafast spectroscopy offers an unprecedented view on the dynamic nature of chemical reactions. From charge transfer in semiconductors to folding and isomerization of proteins, these all important processes can now be monitored and in some instances even controlled on real, physical timescales. One of the biggest challenges of ultrafast science...