No description available.

Mid-Infrared thermal emission sources based on graphene were investigated both experimentally and simulated using the finite element method modelling software package COMSOL. Devices were fabricated by transferring graphene onto various substrates. The thermal emission of few-layer and single graphene on SiO2/Si, under a pulsed square wave drive current, was characterised using spatially resolved thermal emission measurements. It was determined that the devices with single-layer graphene maintained characteristic properties of graphene, while few-layer graphene displayed properties typical of a semi-metal. The effect of thermal management on the emission was investigated by comparing simulations to the emission from these devices and a hexagonal boron nitride encapsulated few-layer graphene device. Limiting the vertical heat dissipation was shown to improve device modulation speed. The emission from the graphene devices was determined to be grey-body in nature. Metamaterial structures, including ring resonators and split ring resonators, were integrated with the encapsulated devices in order to narrow the emission spectra. The emission and reflectance of the devices was characterised using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. A tuneable electromagnetically induced transparency like spectral response was observed for devices with metamaterial structures. The resonance peaks were shifted by altering the unit cell parameters. Finally, gallium nitride nano-rod arrays were investigated for the potential to incorporate both spectral control and thermal management into the underlying substrate, in addition to the possibility of the optical generation of graphene plasmons. It was determined that the conventional wet transfer technique was inadequate to transfer the graphene onto the nano-rods. Therefore, a modified transfer technique was utilised, with a significant improvement in the graphene coverage observed. Optical characterisation of the nano-rods using Fourier transform infrared reflectance spectroscopy indicated the excitation of localised surface phonon polaritons, while no evidence was observed in the graphene reflectance spectra of the generation of graphene plasmons.

Thesis advisor: Matthias M. Waegele / Studying the visible light-driven photoredox catalysis coupled with transition-metal complexes is of overriding importance in the development of synthetic strategy. Comparing to conventional thermal catalysis, reactions catalyzed and/ or initiated by photon energy are not only attractive for establishing a more sustainable system, but also for their unique reactivity that has previously been inaccessible. However, one issue draws our attention is that such photoredox catalytic schemes often suffer from a limited substrate scope. To develop more efficient and effective synthetic strategies applicable to broader range of substrates, it is of our interest to construct an functional and reliable instrument to identify the critical mechanistic steps that lead to low product yield. To this end, we designed a time-resolved visible-pump/ infrared-probe spectroscopic measurement technique to monitor reaction dynamics in-situ. Using our transmission infrared setup, we effectively demonstrated in-situ photoexcitation and decay process of Tris(2,2′-bipyridyl)dichlororuthenium(II) hexahydrate in deuterated acetonitrile. In addition, to optimize signal resolution, an electronic filter was installed in one of the data-collecting channels to allow for concurrent AC-coupled and DC-coupled signal recording. A series of chopper wheel experiments was conducted to assure the functionality of the system and reliability of obtained data. / Thesis (MS) — Boston College, 2020. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Chemistry.

The human society of today has a significantly negative impact on the environment and needs to change its way of living towards a more sustainable path if to continue to live on a healthy planet. One path is believed to be an increased usage of naturally degradable and renewable raw materials and, therefore, attention has been focused on the highly abundant biopolymer cellulose. However, a large drawback with cellulose-based materials is the significant change of their mechanical properties when in contact with water. Despite more than a century of research, the extensively investigated interaction between water and cellulose still possesses many unsettled questions, and if the answer to those were known, cellulose-based materials could be more efficiently utilized. It is well understood that one interaction between cellulose and water is through hydrogen bonds, established between water and the hydroxyl groups of the cellulose. Due to the very similar properties of the hydroxyl groups in water and the hydroxyl groups of the cellulose, the specific interaction-induced effect on the hydroxyl groups at a cellulose surface is difficult to investigate.  Therefore, a method based on 2H MAS NMR spectroscopy has been developed and validated in this work. Due to the verified ability of the methodology to provide site-selective information regarding the molecular dynamics of the cellulose deuteroxyl groups (i.e. deuterium-exchanged hydroxyl groups), it was shown by investigating 1H-2H exchanged cellulose samples that only two of the three accessible hydroxyl groups (on the surface of cellulose fibrils) exchange with water. This finding was also verified by FT-IR spectroscopy, and together with MD simulations we could establish that it is O(2)H and O(6)H hydroxyl groups (of the constituting glucose units) that exchange with water. From the MD simulations additional conclusion could be drawn regarding the molecular interactions required for hydrogen exchange; an exchanging hydroxyl group needs to donate its hydrogen in a hydrogen bond to water. Exchange kinetics of thin cellulose films were investigated by monitoring two different exchange processes with FT-IR spectroscopy. Specific information about the two exchanging hydroxyl/deuteroxyl groups was then extracted by deconvoluting the changing intensities of the recorded IR spectra. It was recognized that the exchange of the hydroxyl groups were well described by a two-region model, which was assessed to correspond to two fibrillary surfaces differentiated by their respective positions in the fibril aggregate. From the detailed deconvolution it was also possible to estimate the fraction of these two surfaces, which indicated that the average aggregate of cotton cellulose is built up by three to four fibrils.                       2H MAS NMR spectroscopy was used to examine different states of water in cellulose samples, hydrated at different relative humidities of heavy water. The results showed that there exist two states of water adsorbed onto the cellulose, differentiated by distinct different mobilities. These two states of water are well separated and had negligible exchange on the time scale of the experiments. It was suggested that they are located at the internal and external surfaces of the fibril aggregates. By letting cellulose nanofibrils undergo an epoxidation reaction with a mono epoxide some indicative results regarding how to protect the cellulose material from the negative impact of water were presented. The protecting effect of the epoxidation were examined by mechanically testing and NMR spectroscopy. It was proposed that by changing the dominant interaction between the fibril aggregates from hydrophilic hydrogen bonds to hydrophobic π-interactions the sensitivity to moisture was much reduced. The results also indicated that the relative reduction in moisture sensitivity was largest for the samples with highest moisture content. / <p>QC 20161229</p>

Nitrogenase is a metalloenzyme that plays a key role in biological nitrogen fixation by catalysing the reduction of dinitrogen to ammonia. Study of nitrogenase is particularly challenging because of its unique electron transfer and catalytic components. This Thesis describes the development of a mediated electron transfer system for the MoFe protein of nitrogenase, in order to overcome the complexity of electron transfer by the native reductant Fe protein coupled to hydrolysis of ATP. A series of redox mediators was employed including Eu^III/II-polyaminocarboxylate complexes, which have reduction potentials in a very negative range. In the presence of the redox mediators, the wild type MoFe protein exhibits a catalytic current due to protein-catalysed proton reduction. With this mediated electron transfer method, the potential of proton reduction by nitrogenase was determined for the first time. The redox mediator system was also applied in an infrared (IR) spectroelectrochemical study of CO binding to the wild type and &beta;-98^His variant MoFe protein. The first IR evidence was provided for ATP-independent CO binding to the active site of the MoFe protein, in both the wild type and the variant. The peak wavenumbers and time-dependent changes in intensity found in this study are consistent with the result of previous CO coordination with nitrogenase obtained by electron transfer from the Fe protein driven by ATP. This strongly suggests that this mediated electron transfer approach can deliver low potential electrons into the MoFe protein and reduce the active site FeMoco to the substrate binding level. Moreover, this technique allows electrocatalytic activity of the protein to be monitored and the change in redox activity can be correlated directly to the potential. With the same technique, a study of cyanide binding was performed on different variant MoFe proteins of nitrogenase. The redox properties of the isolated cofactor of Mo- and V-dependent nitrogenase were investigated in parallel to the study of the protein-bound cofactors. It was found that FeVco, the active site from V-nitrogenase, exhibited different redox properties compared to that of Mo-nitrogenase. This might account for the unexpected activity in CO reduction that was reported previously for V-nitrogenase.

Two-dimensional infrared spectroscopy (2D IR) is a powerful tool to investigate molecular structures and dynamics on femtosecond to picosecond time scales and is applied to diverse systems. Current technologies allow for the acquisition of a single 2D IR spectrum in a few hundreds of milliseconds using a pulse shaper and an array detector, but demanding applications require spectra for many waiting times and involve considerable signal averaging, resulting in data acquisition times that can be many days of laboratory measurement time. Compressive sampling is an emerging signal processing technique to reduce data acquisition time in diverse fields by requiring only a fraction of the traditional number of measurements while yielding much of the same information as the fully-sampled data. Here we combine cutting-edge 2D IR methodology with a novel compressive sampling reconstruction algorithm to reduce the data acquisition time of 2D IR spectroscopy without distorting lineshapes. We introduce the Generic Iteratively Reweighted Annihilating Filter (GIRAF) algorithm re-engineered to the specific problem of 2D IR reconstruction and show its effectiveness applied to various systems, including those with low signal, with multiple peaks, and with differing amounts of frequency shifting. Additionally, we lay the groundwork for 2D IR microscopic imaging using compressive sampling in the spatial image domain. The first instance of a single-pixel camera in the infrared is introduced.

Actuellement le criblage en vue de la recherche de nouveaux agents antitumoraux se base principalement sur la qualité cytotoxique d’une molécule. Le principal défaut de cette approche est qu’aucune sélection n’est faite sur le mode d’action du médicament. L’objectif de ce travail est la mise au point d’une méthode permettant un classement rapide et objectif du mode d’action de molécules à visée thérapeutique par spectroscopie infrarouge. La spectroscopie infrarouge est une technique d’absorption de la lumière fournit la signature chimique d’un échantillon. L’excellente qualité du signal rend possible son utilisation comme outil discriminant. En outre, cette technique d’analyse se démarque des autres par son caractère non destructif et la rapidité d’acquisition des données. Elle se révèlerait donc une méthode de choix pour effectuer du criblage de molécules en vue de la recherche de nouveaux agents thérapeutiques. Dans un premier temps nous avons voulu évaluer la possibilité d’utiliser la spectroscopie infrarouge pour isoler la signature spectrale du mode d’action induit par des concentrations sub-létales de ouabaïne, un composé de la famille des cardénolides, sur une lignée tumorale de prostate. Nous avons montré que cette signature évolue au cours du temps et peut-être corrélée aux données biologiques décrites dans la littérature. Nous avons également mis en évidence pour la première fois une modification de la composition lipidique de la cellule. Cette altération a été caractérisée au cours du temps par spectrométrie de masse. Nous avons ensuite voulu définir les limites de la méthode. La littérature souligne la diversité des modes d’action que peut induire un agent thérapeutique selon sa concentration. Nous avons montré que cette diversité se reflète sur le spectre infrarouge de cellules tumorales traitées à la ouabaïne en distinguant au moins deux modes d’action distincts, dépendant de la concentration en ouabaïne. Par ailleurs, nous avons montré que la confluence pouvait modifier significativement le spectre infrarouge d’une cellule. Neanmoins cette signature est unique et orthogonale à celle induite par la ouabaïne. Finalement, nous avons évalué le potentiel de la spectroscopie infrarouge à distinguer des modes d’action induits par des molécules à la structure chimique proche. Nous avons montré qu’il était possible de caractériser spécifiquement chacun des modes d’action. D’autre part nous avons mis en évidence que les modes d’action de molécules issues d’une même classe d’agent thérapeutique conduisaient à des signatures spectrales similaires. Cette partie du travail souligne la possibilité d’utilisation de la spectroscopie infrarouge pour un classement objectif, uniquement basé sur leur mode d’action d’agents thérapeutiques potentiels.

Protein based biopharmaceuticals are becoming increasingly popular therapeutic agents. Recent changes to the legislation governing stem cell technologies will allow many further developments in this field. Characterisation of these therapeutic proteins poses numerous analytical challenges. In this work we address several of the key characterisation problems; detecting glycosylation, monitoring conformational changes, and identifying contamination, using vibrational spectroscopy. Raman and infrared spectroscopies are ideal techniques for the in situ monitoring of bioprocesses as they are non-destructive, inexpensive, rapid and quantitative. We unequivocally demonstrate that Raman spectroscopy is capable of detecting glycosylation in three independent systems; ribonuclease (a model system), transferrin (a recombinant biopharmaceutical product), and GFP (a synthetically glycosylated system). Raman data, coupled with multivariate analysis, have allowed the discrimination of a glycoprotein and the equivalent protein, deglycosylated forms of the glycoprotein, and also different glycoforms of a glycoprotein. Further to this, through the use of PLSR, we have achieved quantification of glycosylation in a mixture of protein and glycoprotein. We have shown that the vibrational modes which are discriminatory in the monitoring of glycosylation are relatively consistent over the three systems investigated and that these bands always include vibrations assigned to structural changes in the protein, and sugar vibrations that are arising from the glycan component. The sensitivity of Raman bands arising from vibrations of the protein backbone to changes in conformation is evident throughout the work presented in this thesis. We used these vibrations, specifically in the amide I region, to monitor chemically induced protein unfolding. By comparing these results to fluorescence spectroscopy and other regions of the Raman spectrum we have shown that this new method provides improved sensitivity to small structural changes. Finally, FT-IR spectroscopy, in tandem with supervised machine learning methods, has been applied to the detection of protein based contaminants in biopharmaceutical products. We present a high throughput vibrational spectroscopic method which, when combined with appropriate chemometric modelling, is able to reliably classify pure proteins and proteins ‘spiked’ with a protein contaminant, in some cases at contaminant concentrations as low as 0.25%.

No description available.

<p>The primary cell wall is a complex multipolymer system whose composite structure has been mostly determined from chemical and biochemical studies. Although the primary cell wall serves a central role, with regard to the connective properties of fibres, knowledge about the interactions among the polymers, when it comes to the mechanical properties, is very limited. The physical properties of the polymers, i.e. their elastic and viscous deformations, as well as the ultrastructure of the polymers, i.e. the interactions among the polymers in the outer fibre wall layers that lead to this behaviour, are still not fully understood.</p><p>The aim of this study was to examine how the different wood polymers, viz. lignin, protein, pectin, xyloglucan and cellulose, interact in the outer fibre wall layers of the spruce wood tracheid. The initial objective was to separate an enriched primary cell wall material from a first stage TMP, by means of screening and centri-cleaning. From this material, consisting of the primary cell wall (P) and outer secondary cell wall (S1) materials, thin sheets were prepared and analysed using a number of different analytical methods. The major measuring technique used was dynamic Fourier transform infra-red (FT-IR) spectroscopy in combination with dynamic 2D FT-IR spectroscopy. This technique is based on the detection of small changes in molecular absorption that occur when a sinusoidally stretched sample undergoes low strain. The molecular groups affected by the stretching respond in a specific way, depending on their environment, while the unaffected molecular groups provide no response to the dynamic spectra, by producing no elastic or viscous signals. Moreover, the dynamic 2D FT-IR spectroscopy provides useful information about various intermolecular and intramolecular interactions, which influence the reorientability of functional groups in a polymer material.</p><p>Measurements of the primary cell wall material, using dynamic FT-IR spectroscopy, indicated that strong interactions exist among lignin, protein and pectin, as well as among cellulose, xyloglucan and pectin in this particular layer. This was in contrast to the secondary cell wall, where interactions of cellulose with glucomannan and of xylan with lignin were dominant. It was also indicated that the most abundant crystalline cellulose in the primary cell wall of spruce wood fibres is the cellulose Iβ allomorph, which was also in contrast to the secondary cell wall, where the cellulose Iα allomorph is more dominant. The presence of strong interactions among the polymers in the primary cell wall and, especially, the relatively high content of pectin and protein, showed that there is a very good possibility of selectively attacking these polymers in the primary cell wall. The first selective reaction chosen was a low degree of sulphonation, applied by an impregnation pretreatment of chips with a very low charge of sodium sulfite (Na2SO3). This selective reaction caused some structural modification of the lignin, a weakening of the interactions between lignin;pectin, lignin;protein and pectin;protein, as well as an increased softening of the sulphonated primary cell wall material, when compared to the unsulphonated primary cell wall material. All this resulted in an increased swelling ability of the material.</p>