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Full-Text Articles in Physics

Helium Nanodroplets As An Efficient Tool To Investigate Hydrogen Attachment To Alkali Cations, Siegfried Kollotzek, José Campos-Martínez, Massimiliano Bartolomei, Fernando Pirani, Lukas Tiefenthaler, Marta I. Hernández, Teresa Lázaro, Eva Zunzunegui-Bru, Tomás González-Lezana, José Bretón, Javier Hernández-Rojas, Olof E. Echt, Paul Scheier Nov 2022

Helium Nanodroplets As An Efficient Tool To Investigate Hydrogen Attachment To Alkali Cations, Siegfried Kollotzek, José Campos-Martínez, Massimiliano Bartolomei, Fernando Pirani, Lukas Tiefenthaler, Marta I. Hernández, Teresa Lázaro, Eva Zunzunegui-Bru, Tomás González-Lezana, José Bretón, Javier Hernández-Rojas, Olof E. Echt, Paul Scheier

Faculty Publications

We report a novel method to reversibly attach and detach hydrogen molecules to positively charged sodium clusters formed inside a helium nanodroplet host matrix. It is based on the controlled production of multiply charged helium droplets which, after picking up sodium atoms and exposure to H2 vapor, lead to the formation of Nam+(H2)n clusters, whose population was accurately measured using a time-of-flight mass spectrometer. The mass spectra reveal particularly favorable Na+(H2)n and Na2+(H2)n clusters for specific “magic” numbers of attached hydrogen molecules. …


Solvation Of Large Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons In Helium: Cationic And Anionic Hexabenzocoronene, Miriam Kappe, Florent Calvo, Johannes Schöntag, Holger F. Bettinger, Serge Krasnokutski, Martin Kuhn, Elisabeth Gruber, Fabio Zappa, Paul Scheier, Olof E. Echt Oct 2022

Solvation Of Large Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons In Helium: Cationic And Anionic Hexabenzocoronene, Miriam Kappe, Florent Calvo, Johannes Schöntag, Holger F. Bettinger, Serge Krasnokutski, Martin Kuhn, Elisabeth Gruber, Fabio Zappa, Paul Scheier, Olof E. Echt

Faculty Publications

The adsorption of helium on charged hexabenzocoronene (Hbc, C42H18), a planar polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) molecule of D6h symmetry, is investigated by a combination of high-resolution mass spectrometry and classical and quantum computational methods. The ion abundance of HenHbc+ complexes versus size n features prominent local anomalies at n = 14, 38, 68, 82, and a weak one at 26, indicating that for these “magic” sizes the helium evaporation energies are relatively large. Surprisingly, mass spectra of anionic HenHbc complexes feature a different set of anomalies, namely at …


Adsorption Of Helium And Hydrogen On Triphenylene And 1,3,5-Triphenylbenzene, Bergmeister Bergmeister, Kollotzek Kollotzek, Florent Calvo, Elisabeth Gruber, Fabio Zappa, Paul Scheier, Olof E. Echt Aug 2022

Adsorption Of Helium And Hydrogen On Triphenylene And 1,3,5-Triphenylbenzene, Bergmeister Bergmeister, Kollotzek Kollotzek, Florent Calvo, Elisabeth Gruber, Fabio Zappa, Paul Scheier, Olof E. Echt

Faculty Publications

The adsorption of helium or hydrogen on cationic triphenylene (TPL, C18H12), a planar polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) molecule, and of helium on cationic 1,3,5-triphenylbenzene (TPB, C24H18), a propeller-shaped PAH, is studied by a combination of high-resolution mass spectrometry and classical and quantum computational methods. Mass spectra indicate that HenTPL+ complexes are particularly stable if n = 2 or 6, in good agreement with the quantum calculations which show that for these sizes the helium atoms are strongly localized on either side of the central carbon ring for n = …


Stabilization Of Phenanthrene Anions In Helium Nanodroplets, Siegfried Kollotzek, Farhad Izadi, Miriam Meyer, Stefan Bergmeister, Fabio Zappa, Stephan Denifl, Olof E. Echt, Paul Scheier, Elisabeth Gruber May 2022

Stabilization Of Phenanthrene Anions In Helium Nanodroplets, Siegfried Kollotzek, Farhad Izadi, Miriam Meyer, Stefan Bergmeister, Fabio Zappa, Stephan Denifl, Olof E. Echt, Paul Scheier, Elisabeth Gruber

Faculty Publications

It has been debated for years if the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon phenanthrene exists in its anionic form, or, in other words, if its electron affinity (EA) is positive or negative. In this contribution we confirm that the bare phenanthrene anion Ph- created in a binary collision with an electron at room temperature has a lifetime shorter than microseconds. However, the embedding of neutral phenanthrene molecules in negatively charged helium nanodroplets enables the formation of phenanthrene anions by charge transfer processes and the stabilization of the latter in the ultracold environment. Gentle shrinking of the helium matrix of phenanthrene-doped HNDs …


Phenanthrene: Establishing Lower And Upper Bounds To The Binding Energy Of A Very Weakly Bound Anion, Elisabeth Gruber, Siegfried Kollotzek, Stefan Bergmeister, Fabio Zappa, Milan Ončák, Paul Scheier, Olof E. Echt Feb 2022

Phenanthrene: Establishing Lower And Upper Bounds To The Binding Energy Of A Very Weakly Bound Anion, Elisabeth Gruber, Siegfried Kollotzek, Stefan Bergmeister, Fabio Zappa, Milan Ončák, Paul Scheier, Olof E. Echt

Faculty Publications

Quite a few molecules do not form stable anions that survive the time needed for their detection; their electron affinities (EA) are either very small or negative. How does one measure the EA if the anion cannot be observed? Or, at least, can one establish lower and upper bounds to their EA? We propose two approaches that provide lower and upper bounds. We choose the phenanthrene (Ph) molecule whose EA is controversial. Through competition between helium evaporation and electron detachment in HenPh- clusters, formed in helium nanodroplets, we estimate the lower bound of the vertical detachment energy …


A Microfluidic Approach For Synthesis And Kinetic Profiling Of Branched Gold Nanostructures, Qi Cai, Valentina Castagnola, Luca Boselli, Alirio Moura, Hender Lopez, Wei Zhang, João M. De Araújo, Kenneth A. Dawson Feb 2022

A Microfluidic Approach For Synthesis And Kinetic Profiling Of Branched Gold Nanostructures, Qi Cai, Valentina Castagnola, Luca Boselli, Alirio Moura, Hender Lopez, Wei Zhang, João M. De Araújo, Kenneth A. Dawson

Articles

Automatized approaches for nanoparticle synthesis and characterization represent a great asset to their applicability in the biomedical field by improving reproducibility and standardization, which help to meet the selection criteria of regulatory authorities. The scaled-up production of nanoparticles with carefully defined characteristics, including intrinsic morphological features, and minimal intra-batch, batch-to-batch, and operator variability, is an urgent requirement to elevate nanotechnology towards more trustable biological and technological applications. In this work, microfluidic approaches were employed to achieve fast mixing and good reproducibility in synthesizing a variety of gold nanostructures. The microfluidic setup allowed exploiting spatial resolution to investigate the growth evolution …


Resolving The Three-Dimensional Rotational And Translational Dynamics Of Single Molecules Using Radially And Azimuthally Polarized Fluorescence, Oumeng Zhang, Weiyan Zhou, Jin Lu, Tingting Wu, Matthew D. Lew Jan 2022

Resolving The Three-Dimensional Rotational And Translational Dynamics Of Single Molecules Using Radially And Azimuthally Polarized Fluorescence, Oumeng Zhang, Weiyan Zhou, Jin Lu, Tingting Wu, Matthew D. Lew

Electrical & Systems Engineering Publications and Presentations

We report a radially and azimuthally polarized (raPol) microscope for high detection and estimation performance in single-molecule orientation-localization microscopy (SMOLM). With 5000 photons detected from Nile red (NR) transiently bound within supported lipid bilayers (SLBs), raPol SMOLM achieves 2.9 nm localization precision, 1.5° orientation precision, and 0.17 sr precision in estimating rotational wobble. Within DPPC SLBs, SMOLM imaging reveals the existence of randomly oriented binding pockets that prevent NR from freely exploring all orientations. Treating the SLBs with cholesterol-loaded methyl-β-cyclodextrin (MβCD-chol) causes NR’s orientational diffusion to be dramatically reduced, but curiously NR’s median lateral displacements drastically increase from 20.8 to …