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End date: 2024 × Start date: 2020 × DDC: 530 × DDC: 540 × Publisher: Washington, DC : Soc. ×

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Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
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    In Situ Transmission Electron Microscopy of Disorder–Order Transition in Epitaxially Stabilized FeGe2
    (Washington, DC : Soc., 2021) Terker, Markus; Nicolai, Lars; Gaucher, Samuel; Herfort, Jens; Trampert, Achim
    Isothermal crystallization of amorphous Ge deposited on a cubic Fe3Si/GaAs(001) substrate is performed by in situ annealing within a transmission electron microscope. It was found that the formation of epitaxially aligned tetragonal FeGe2 is associated with a disorder–order phase transition mainly consisting of a rearrangement of the Fe/vacancy sublattice from a random distribution to alternating filled and empty layers. Additionally, atomically resolved high-angle annular dark-field scanning transmission electron microscopy and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy demonstrated that the vertical lattice spacing of the Ge sublattice reduces across vacancy layers, indicating that strain minimization plays a role in the phase transition process. Crystallization and ordering are both found to proceed layer-by-layer and with square-root-shaped kinetics with a smaller transition rate for the latter.
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    Revealing Fast Proton Transport in Condensed Matter by Means of Density Scaling Concept
    (Washington, DC : Soc., 2020) Wojnarowska, Zaneta; Musiał, Małgorzata; Cheng, Shinian; Gapinski, Jacek; Patkowski, Adam; Pionteck, Jürgen; Paluch, Marian
    Herein, we investigate the charge transport and structural dynamics in the supercooled and glassy state of protic ionic material with an efficient interionic Grotthuss mechanism. We found that superprotonic properties of studied acebutolol hydrochloride (ACB-HCl) depend on thermodynamic conditions with the most favorable regions being close to the glass-transition temperature (Tg) and glass-transition pressure (Pg). To quantify the contribution of fast proton hopping to overall charge transport over a broad T–P space, we employed the density scaling concept, one of the most important experimental findings in the field of condensed matter physics. We found that isothermal and isobaric dc-conductivity (σdc) and dynamic light scattering (τα) data of ACB-HCl plotted as a function of (TVγ)−1 satisfy the thermodynamic scaling criterion with the ratio γσ/γα appearing as a new measure of fast charge transport in protic ionic glass-formers in the T–P plane. Such a universal factor becomes an alternative to the well-known Walden rule being limited to ambient pressure conditions.
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    Magnesium Contact Ions Stabilize the Tertiary Structure of Transfer RNA: Electrostatics Mapped by Two-Dimensional Infrared Spectra and Theoretical Simulations
    (Washington, DC : Soc., 2021) Schauss, Jakob; Kundu, Achintya; Fingerhut, Benjamin P.; Elsaesser, Thomas
    Ions interacting with hydrated RNA play a central role in defining its secondary and tertiary structure. While spatial arrangements of ions, water molecules, and phosphate groups have been inferred from X-ray studies, the role of electrostatic and other noncovalent interactions in stabilizing compact folded RNA structures is not fully understood at the molecular level. Here, we demonstrate that contact ion pairs of magnesium (Mg2+) and phosphate groups embedded in local water shells stabilize the tertiary equilibrium structure of transfer RNA (tRNA). Employing dialyzed tRNAPhe from yeast and tRNA from Escherichia coli, we follow the population of Mg2+ sites close to phosphate groups of the ribose-phosphodiester backbone step by step, combining linear and nonlinear infrared spectroscopy of phosphate vibrations with molecular dynamics simulations and ab initio vibrational frequency calculations. The formation of up to six Mg2+/phosphate contact pairs per tRNA and local field-induced reorientations of water molecules balance the phosphate-phosphate repulsion in nonhelical parts of tRNA, thus stabilizing the folded structure electrostatically. Such geometries display limited sub-picosecond fluctuations in the arrangement of water molecules and ion residence times longer than 1 µs. At higher Mg2+ excess, the number of contact ion pairs per tRNA saturates around 6 and weakly interacting ions prevail. Our results suggest a predominance of contact ion pairs over long-range coupling of the ion atmosphere and the biomolecule in defining and stabilizing the tertiary structure of tRNA. © 2020 American Chemical Society.