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    Pyrimidinone: Versatile Trojan horse in DNA photodamage?
    (Heidelberg : Springer, 2015) Micheel, Mathias; Torres Ziegenbein, Christian; Gilch, Peter; Ryseck, Gerald
    (6-4) Photolesions between adjacent pyrimidine DNA bases are prone to secondary photochemistry. It has been shown that singlet excited (6-4) moieties form Dewar valence isomers as well as triplet excitations. We here report on the triplet state of a minimal model for the (6-4) photolesion, 1-methyl-2(1H)-pyrimidinone. Emphasis is laid on its ability to abstract hydrogen atoms from alcohols and carbohydrates. Steady-state and time-resolved experiments consistently yield bimolecular rate constants of ∼104 M−1 s−1 for the hydrogen abstraction. The process also occurs intramolecularly as experiments on zebularine (1-(β-D-ribofuranosyl)-2(1H)-pyrimidinone) show.
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    The Other Dimension—Tuning Hole Extraction via Nanorod Width
    (Basel : MDPI, 2022) Rosner, Tal; Pavlopoulos, Nicholas G.; Shoyhet, Hagit; Micheel, Mathias; Wächtler, Maria; Adir, Noam; Amirav, Lilac
    Solar-to-hydrogen generation is a promising approach to generate clean and renewable fuel. Nanohybrid structures such as CdSe@CdS-Pt nanorods were found favorable for this task (attaining 100% photon-to-hydrogen production efficiency); yet the rods cannot support overall water splitting. The key limitation seems to be the rate of hole extraction from the semiconductor, jeopardizing both activity and stability. It is suggested that hole extraction might be improved via tuning the rod’s dimensions, specifically the width of the CdS shell around the CdSe seed in which the holes reside. In this contribution, we successfully attain atomic-scale control over the width of CdSe@CdS nanorods, which enables us to verify this hypothesis and explore the intricate influence of shell diameter over hole quenching and photocatalytic activity towards H2 production. A non-monotonic effect of the rod’s diameter is revealed, and the underlying mechanism for this observation is discussed, alongside implications towards the future design of nanoscale photocatalysts.