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Earth-abundant MoS2 is widely reported as a promising HER electrocatalyst in acidic solutions, but it exhibits extremely poor HER activities in alkaline media due to the slow water dissociation process. Here we present a combined theoretical and experimental approach to improve the sluggish HER kinetics of MoS2 electrocatalysts through engineering the water dissociation sites by doping Ni atoms into MoS2 nanosheets. The Ni sites thus introduced can effectively reduce the kinetic energy barrier of the initial water-dissociation step and facilitate the desorption of the −OH that are formed. As a result, the developed Ni-doped MoS2 nanosheets (Ni-MoS2) show an extremely low HER overpotential of ∼98 mV at 10 mA cm−2 in 1 M KOH aqueous solution, which is superior to those (>220 mV at 10 mA cm−2) of reported MoS2 electrocatalysts.

Earth-abundant MoS2 is widely reported as a promising HER electrocatalyst in acidic solutions, but it exhibits extremely poor HER activities in alkaline media due to the slow water dissociation process. Here we present a combined theoretical and experimental approach to improve the sluggish HER kinetics of MoS2 electrocatalysts through engineering the water dissociation sites by doping Ni atoms into MoS2 nanosheets. The Ni sites thus introduced can effectively reduce the kinetic energy barrier of the initial water-dissociation step and facilitate the desorption of the −OH that are formed. As a result, the developed Ni-doped MoS2 nanosheets (Ni-MoS2) show an extremely low HER overpotential of ∼98 mV at 10 mA cm−2 in 1 M KOH aqueous solution, which is superior to those (>220 mV at 10 mA cm−2) of reported MoS2 electrocatalysts.

Protein (mis)folding into highly ordered, fibrillar structures, amyloid fibrils, is a hallmark of several, mainly neurodegenerative, disorders. The mechanism of this supra-molecular self-assembly reaction, as well as its relationship to protein folding are not well understood. In particular, the molecular origin of the metastability of the soluble state of proteins with respect to the aggregated states has not been clearly established. In this dissertation, it is demonstrated, that highly accurate kinetic experiments, using a novel biosensing method, can yield fundamental insight into the dynamics of proteins in the region of the free energy landscape corresponding to protein aggregation. First, a section on Method development describes the extension and elaboration of the previously established kinetic assay relying on quartz crystal microbalance measurements for the study of amyloid fibril elongation (Chapter 3). This methodology is then applied in order to study in great detail the origin of the various contributions to the free energy barriers separating the soluble state of a protein from its aggregated state. In particular, the relative importance of residual structure, hydrophobicity (Chapter 4) and electrostatic interactions (Chapter 5) for the total free energy of activation are discussed. In the last part of this thesis (Chapter 6), it is demonstrated that this biosensing method can also be used to study the binding of small molecules to amyloid fibrils, a very useful feature in the framework of the quest for potential inhibitors of amyloid formation. In addition, it is shown that Thioflavin T, to-date the most frequently employed fluorescent label molecule for bulk solution kinetic studies, can in the presence of potential amyloid inhibitor candidates be highly unreliable as a means to quantify the effect of the inhibitor on amyloid formation kinetics. In summary, the work in this thesis contributes to both the fundamental and the applied aspects of the field of protein aggregation.

L’objectif principal de cette thèse est d’utiliser le calcul ab initio fondé sur la théorie de la densité fonctionnelle (DFT) pour calculer et comprendre la transition HS-BS de la molécule FePhen adsorbée sur un substrat métallique. Il s’agit d’abord de décrire les interactions entre FePhen et un substrat métallique ferromagnétique, comme le Co, ou un substrat paramagnétique comme l’or ou le cuivre. Nous avons calculé la barrière de potentiel nécessaire pour basculer la molécule de l’état BS à l’état HS en utilisant la méthode ’Nudged Elastic Band’ (NEB) et développé une méthode basée sur les principes de la méthode NEB, pour déterminer la trajectoire d’énergie minimale (TEM) de la molécule adsorbée sur un substrat métallique. Nous avons calculé le couplage ferromagnétique entre la molécule et le cobalt en fonction du nombre de couches intermédiaires de cuivre. Nous avons étudié en particulier (1) le rôle joué par les interactions van der Waals, (2) la modélisation de la microscopie à effet tunnel (STM) et (3) les propriétés de transport. Nous avons calculé les images STM en utilisant l’approximation de Tersoff et Hamann, qui montrent un bon accord avec les résultats expérimentaux. Nous vons étudié les propriétés de transport de la molécule FePhen adsorbée sur une surface métallique, en utilisant le code Smeagol basé sur la méthode des fonctions de Green hors-équilibre, et le formalisme de Landauer. / The main objective of this PhD thesis is to use ab initio methods based on DFT to calculate and understand the mechanism of spin crossover phenomena in FePhen molecule adsorbed on a metallic substrate. We studied the structural, electronic and magnetic properties of the free and adsorbed FePhen molecule on a ferromagnetic metal substrate, such as cobalt, or a paramagnetic substrate such as gold or copper. We calculated the energy barrier required for the molecule to switch from low-spin to high-spin states using the ’Nudged Elastic Band’ (NEB) method. We also computed the ferromagnetic coupling between two magnetic layers, the magnetic FePhen molecule and the cobalt substrate according to the number of non-magnetic intermediate layer of copper. The focus is mainly on (1) the role played by van der Waals interactions, (2) the modeling of scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) and (3) the transport properties. We calculated the STM images using the Tersoff-Hamann approximation, which showed a good agreement with recent experimental STM images. We studied the transport properties of the adsorbed molecule FePhen on a metallic surface, using the Smeagol code which is based on the non-equilibrium Green’s function and Landauer formalism.