Biomolecules identified at the nanoscale

New method for measuring amino acids

22-Feb-2024 - For the first time, a team of scientists has been able to identify individual amino acids in a peptide, a combination of several amino acids, on the surface of a single molecule. This means that one of the basic building blocks of life can now be studied down to the nanometre level. Led by ...

Watching a Bimetallic Catalytic Surface in Action

Such insight on working catalysts is only possible to obtain using state-of-the-art experimental techniques under reaction conditions

01-Sep-2023 - A team of researchers from the Department of Interface Science at the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society addressed the question: what happens to a Ga-promoted Cu surface under reaction conditions required for the synthesis of methanol? They found complex structural transformations of ...

A New Tool for Cryo-Electron Microscopy

New method that combines cryo-EM with a method otherwise used in materials research

12-Sep-2022 - Researchers at Forschungszentrum Jülich and Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf led by Prof. Dr. Carsten Sachse are using cryo-electron microscopy, or cryo-EM for short, to make biomolecules visible at the atomic level. In a paper now published in the journal Nature Methods, they present a new ...

Chemical hotspots

Scanning tunneling microscopy measurements identify active sites on catalysts

11-Sep-2017 - Chemistry live: Using a scanning tunneling microscope, researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) were able for the very first time to witness in detail the activity of catalysts during an electro-chemical reaction. The measurements show how the surface structure of the catalysts ...

Scanning Tunnelling Microscopy: Computer Simulations Sharpen Insights into Molecules

01-Dec-2014 - The resolution of scanning tunnelling microscopes can be improved dramatically by attaching small molecules or atoms to their tip. The resulting images were the first to show the geometric structure of molecules and have generated a lot of interest among scientists over the last few years. ...

The smallest conceivable switch

Targeted proton transfer within a molecule

15-Dec-2011 - For a long time miniaturization has been the magic word in electronics. Dr. Willi Auwaerter and Professor Johannes Barth, together with their team of physicists at the Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM), have now presented a novel molecular switch in the journal Nature Nanotechnology. ...

Tunnel view of how electrons play

Scanning tunnelling microscopes provide insights into mysterious electronic effects in some metals

24-Jun-2011 - Electrons behave like football teams: the match becomes interesting when the teamwork is as good as that conjured up by the players of FC Barcelona. Electrons which interact strongly with each other give rise to superconductivity, the lossless transport of current, for example. A team headed by ...