| 1. |
- Wang, Yan, 1987-
(författare)
-
Exploring Biopolymer-Clay Nanocomposite Materials by Molecular Modelling
- 2015
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In this thesis, bio-nanocomposites made from two alternative biopolymers and montmorillonite (Mnt) clay have been investigated by molecular modelling. These biopolymers are xyloglucan (XG) and chitosan (CHS), both of which are abundant, renewable, and cost-effective. After being reinforced by Mnt clay nanoparticles, the polymer nanocomposites gains in multifunctionality and in the possibility to register unique combinations of properties, like mechanical, biodegradable, electrical, thermal and gas barrier properties. I apply molecular dynamics (MD) simulations to study the interfacial mechanisms of the adhesion of these biopolymers to the Mnt nanoplatelets at an atomic level.For the XG-Mnt system, a strong binding affinity of XG to a fully hydrated Mnt interface was demonstrated. It was concluded that the dominant driving force for the interfacing is the enthalpy, i.e. the potential energy of the XG-Mnt interacting system. The adsorbed XG favors a flat conformation with a galactose residue in its side chain that facilitates the adsorption of the polymer to the nanoclay. The XG adsorption was found do depend strongly on the hydration ability of counterions. The binding affinity of XG to Mnt was found to be strongest in the K-Mnt/XG system, followed by, in decreasing order, Na-Mnt/XG, Li-Mnt/XG, and Ca-Mnt/XG. The competing mechanism between ions, water and the XG in the interlayer region was shown to play an important role.The dimensional stability upon moisture exposure, i.e. the ability of a material to resist swelling, is an important parameter for biopolymer-clay nanocomposites. While pure clay swells significantly even at low hydration levels, it is here shown that for the XG-Mnt system, at a hydration level below 50%, the inter-lamellar spacing is well preserved, suggesting a stable material performance. However, at higher hydration levels, the XG-Mnt composite was found to exhibit swelling at the same rate as the pure hydrated Mnt clay.For the CHS-Mnt system, the significant electrostatic interactions from the direct charge-charge attraction between the polymer and the Mnt clay play a key role in the composite formation. Varying the degree of acetylation (DA) and the degree of protonation (DPr) resulted in different effects on the polymer-clay interaction. For the heavily acetylated CHS (DA > 50%, also known as chitin), the strong adhesion of the neutral chitin to the Mnt clay was attributed to strong correlation between the acetyl functional groups and the counterions which act as an electrostatic “glue”. Similarly, the poor adhesion of the fully deprotonated (DPr = 0%) neutral CHS to the clay is attributed to a weak correlation between the amino functional group and the counterions.The stress-strain behavior of the CHS-Mnt composite shows that the mechanical properties are highly affected by the volume fraction of the Mnt clay and the degree of exfoliation of the composite. The material structure has a close relationship to the material properties.Biopolymer-clay nanocomposites hold a bright future to replace petroleum-derived polymer plastics and will become widely used in common life. The theme of the thesis is that further critical improvements of these materials can be accomplished by development of the experimental methods in conjunction with increased understanding of the interactions between polymer, clay, water, ions, solutions in the polymer-clay mixtures provided by molecular modelling.
|
|
| 2. |
- Wang, Yan, 1987-, et al.
(författare)
-
Hydration and dimensional stability of the intercalated galleries in xyloglucan/montmorillonite nanocomposites studied by molecular dynamics simulations
-
Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The outstanding properties of biological composite nacre materials have for a long time inspired research and development of man-made bionanocomposites. One of the most recent nacre-mimetic bionanocomposites comprising xygloglucan (XG) and montmorillonite (Mnt) clay has been investigated by related model systems through Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. The expansion of the inter-gallery of the XG-Mnt composites when exposed to water, has been found to be a key issue for the material property. In order to shed light on the mechanism for this swelling behavior we have investigated the relation between the hydration and the dimensional stability of the inter-gallery in XG-Mnt composites, exploring also the role of the dynamic state of the polymer XG for the dimensional change. We find that at a hydration level below 50%, XG-Mnt possesses good dimensional stability, suggesting a constant performance of the material, while at a hydration level of 75%, the expansion ratio of the composite is found to be slightly smaller than the swelling of Mnt clay. At the four-layer hydrate formation with a hydration level of 100%, the swelling ratios of clay and the2composite reach the same value, suggesting a critical point of losing dimensional stability. We conclude that the strong adhesion between the polymer XG and the Mnt clay is the main driving force for the preservation of the stability at lower hydration conditions, while the dynamics of the XG polymer is related to the losing of dimensional stability for the composite at higher hydration levels. The ramification of these results in terms of moisture sensitivity of the material is briefly discussed.
|
|
| 3. |
- Wang, Yan, 1987-, et al.
(författare)
-
Molecular mechanisms for the adhesion of chitin and chitosan to montmorillonite clay
-
Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Molecular dynamics simulations have been performed to investigate molecular adhesion of chitin and chitosan oligomers to montmorillonite (Mnt) clay at different degrees of acetylation (DA, 0%, 20%, 40%, 60%, 80% and 100%) and different degree of protonation (DPr, 0%, 50%, 100% mimicking pH > 6.5, pH = 6.5, pH < 4, respectively) under fully hydrated conditions. Although the Mnt surface is negatively charged and a variation in DA also implies going from a positively charged oligomer at DA = 0% to a neutral oligomer at DA = 100%, the simulations show unexpectedly variation of the total molecular adhesion as a function of DA. From our analysis we propose that this quantitatively similar adhesion arise from two different mechanisms. At low DA, the oligomer is rich in positively charged amino groups interacting strongly with the negatively charged surface by direct electrostatic interaction. On the other hand, at high DA, electrically neutral acetyl groups are strongly correlated with the Na+ counter ions, which are in all cases stuck at the surface and the counter ions seem to act as ‘glue’ between the acetyl groups and the Mnt. However, when protonation was decreased, adhesion was significantly lowered. The reason is conclued by differences in charge distributions of the respective functional groups. A further investigation on the intramolecular hydrogen bonds formed in CHT or CHS shows that the adsorbed conformation of the polymer is also highly affected by DA. This work provides fundamental insights into adhesion mechanisms and is, of potential importance for the development of polymer-clay based composite materials.
|
|
| 4. |
- Li, Xin, et al.
(författare)
-
Glycine in aerosol water droplets : a critical assessment of Köhler theory by predicting surface tension from molecular dynamics simulations
- 2011
-
Ingår i: Atmospheric Chemistry And Physics. - : Copernicus GmbH. - 1680-7316 .- 1680-7324. ; 11:2, s. 519-527
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Aerosol particles in the atmosphere are important participants in the formation of cloud droplets and have significant impact on cloud albedo and global climate. According to the Kohler theory which describes the nucleation and the equilibrium growth of cloud droplets, the surface tension of an aerosol droplet is one of the most important factors that determine the critical supersaturation of droplet activation. In this paper, with specific interest to remote marine aerosol, we predict the surface tension of aerosol droplets by performing molecular dynamics simulations on two model systems, the pure water droplets and glycine in water droplets. The curvature dependence of the surface tension is interpolated by a quadratic polynomial over the nano-sized droplets and the limiting case of a planar interface, so that the so-called Aitken mode particles which are critical for droplet formation could be covered and the Kohler equation could be improved by incorporating surface tension corrections.
|
|
| 5. |
- Renier, Olivier, et al.
(författare)
-
Shape Preserving Single Crystal to Amorphous to Single Crystal Polymorphic Transformation Is Possible
- 2021
-
Ingår i: Journal of the American Chemical Society. - : American Chemical Society (ACS). - 0002-7863 .- 1520-5126. ; 143:48, s. 20202-20206
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Many crystalline materials form polymorphs and undergo solid–solid transitions between different forms as a function of temperature or pressure. However, there is still a poor understanding of the mechanism of transformation. Conclusions about the transformation process are typically drawn by comparing the crystal structures before and after the conversion, but gaining detailed mechanistic knowledge is strongly impeded by the generally fast rate of these transitions. When the crystal morphology does not change, it is assumed that crystallinity is maintained throughout the process. Here we report transformation between polymorphs of ZnCl2(1,3-diethylimidazole-2-thione)2 which are sufficiently slow to allow unambiguous assignment of single crystal to single crystal transformation with shape preservation proceeding through an amorphous intermediate phase. This result fundamentally challenges the commonly accepted views of polymorphic phase transition mechanisms.
|
|
| 6. |
- Hammar, Peter, 1980-
(författare)
-
Quantum Chemical Studies of Mechanisms and Stereoselectivities of Organocatalytic Reactions
- 2009
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- As the field of organocatalysis is growing, it is becoming more important to understand the specific modes of action of these new organic catalysts. Quantum chemistry, in particular density functional theory, has proven very powerful in exploring reaction mechanisms as well as selectivities in organocatalytic reactions, and is the tool used in this thesis. Different reaction mechanisms of several organocatalytic reactions have been examined, and we have been able to exclude various reaction pathways based on the calculated reaction barriers. The origins of stereoselection in a number of reactions have been rationalized. The computational method has generally reproduced the experimental stereoselectivities satisfactorily. The amino acid-catalyzed aldol reaction has previously been established to go through an enamine intermediate. In the first study of this thesis the understanding of this kind of reactions has been expanded to the dipeptide-catalyzed aldol reaction. The factors governing the enantioselection have been studied, showing how the chirality of the amino acids controls the conformation of the transition state, thereby determining the configuration of the product. In the cinchona thiourea-catalyzed Henry reaction two reaction modes regarding substrate binding to the two sites of the catalyst have been investigated, showing the optimal arrangement for this reaction. This enabled the rationalization of the observed stereoselectivity. The hydrophosphination of α,β-unsaturated aldehydes was studied. The bulky substituent of the chiral prolinol-derived catalyst was shown to effectively shield one face of the reactive iminium intermediate, thereby inducing the stereoselectivity. The transfer hydrogenation of imines using Hantzsch esters as hydride source and axially chiral phosphoric acid catalyst has also been explored. A reaction mode where both the Hantzsch ester and the protonated imine are hydrogen bonded to the phosphoric acid is demonstrated to be the preferred mode of action. The different arrangements leading to the two enantiomers of the product are evaluated for several cases, including the hydride transfer step in the reductive amination of α-branched aldehydes via dynamic kinetic resolution. Finally, the intramolecular aldol reaction of ketoaldehydes catalyzed by guanidinebased triazabicyclodecene (TBD) has been studied. Different mechanistic proposals have been assessed computationally, showing that the favoured reaction pathway is catalyzed by proton shuttling. The ability of a range of guanidines to catalyze this reaction has been investigated. The calculated reaction barriers reproduced the experimental reactivities quite well.
|
|
| 7. |
- Li, Xin, et al.
(författare)
-
Paramagnetic Perturbation of the F-19 NMR Chemical Shift in Fluorinated Cysteine by O-2 : A Theoretical Study
- 2009
-
Ingår i: Journal of Physical Chemistry B. - Washington, D. C. : American Chemical Society (ACS). - 1520-6106 .- 1520-5207. ; 113:31, s. 10916-10922
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We present a combined molecular dynamics and density functional theory study of dioxygen-induced perturbation of the F-19 NMR chemical shifts in an aqueous solution of fluorinated cysteine under 100 atm of O-2 partial pressure. Molecular dynamics Simulations are carried out to determine the dominant structures of O-2 and the fluorinated cysteine complexes in water, and the collected structural information is exploited in computation of F-19 chemical shifts using density functional theory. The obtained results indicate that the density redistribution of the O-2 unpaired electrons between the dioxygen and fluorinated cysteine is responsible for the experimentally observed perturbation of the F-19 NMR chemical shifts, where the Fermi contact interaction plays the key role. The O-2-induced paramagnetic F-19 chemical shift, averaged over the simulation trajectory, is comparable with the reported experimental values, proving the availability of the developed strategy for modeling F-19 NMR chemical shifts in the presence of paramagnetic agents in ail aqueous solution. The applicability of the combined molecular dynamics/density functional theory approach for dioxygen NMR perturbation to all resonating nuclei including H-1, C-13, N-15, and F-19 is emphasized, and the ramification of this for investigations of membrane protein structures is discussed.
|
|
| 8. |
- Zhang, Qiong, et al.
(författare)
-
A molecular dynamics study of the thermal response of crystalline cellulose I beta
- 2011
-
Ingår i: Cellulose. - : Springer. - 0969-0239 .- 1572-882X. ; 18:2, s. 207-221
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Molecular dynamics simulations were performed to better understand the atomic details of thermal induced transitions in cellulose I beta. The latest version of the GLYCAM force field series (GLYCAM06) was used for the simulations. The unit cell parameters, density, torsion angles and hydrogen-bonding network of the crystalline polymer were carefully analyzed. The simulated data were validated against the experimental results obtained by X-ray diffraction for the crystal structure of cellulose I beta at room and high temperatures, as well as against the temperature-dependent IR measurements describing the variation of hydrogen bonding patterns. Distinct low and high temperature structures were identified, with a phase transition temperature of 475-500 K. In the high-temperature structure, all the origin chains rotated around the helix axis by about 30A degrees and the conformation of all hydroxymethyl groups changed from tg to either gt on origin chains or gg on center chains. The hydrogen-bonding network was reorganized along with the phase transition. Compared to the previously employed GROMOS 45a4 force field, GLYCAM06 yields data in much better agreement with experimental observations, which reflects that a cautious parameterization of the nonbonded interaction terms in a force field is critical for the correct prediction of the thermal response in cellulose crystals.
|
|
| 9. |
- Zhang, Qiong, et al.
(författare)
-
Working mechanism for a redox switchable molecular machine based on cyclodextrin : a free energy profiles approach
- 2010
-
Ingår i: Journal of Physical Chemistry B. - Washington DC, USA : American Chemical Society (ACS). - 1520-6106 .- 1520-5207. ; 114:19, s. 6561-6566
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper reports the working mechanism for a redox-responsive bistable [2]rotaxane incorporating an alpha-cyclodextrin (alpha-CD) ring (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2008, 130, 11294-11296), based on free energy profiles obtained from all-atom molecular dynamics simulations. Employing an umbrella sampling technique, the free energy profiles (potential of mean force, PMF) were calculated for the shuttling motion of the alpha-CD ring between a tetrathiafulvalene (TTF) recognition site and a triazole (TZ) unit on the dumbbell of the rotaxane for three oxidation states (0, +1, +2) of the TTF unit. These calculated free energy profiles verified the experimentally observed binding preference for each state. Analysis of the free energy components reveals that, for these alpha-CD-based rotaxanes with charged TTF units, the real driving force for the shuttling in the oxidized states is actually the interactions between water and the rotaxane components, which overwhelms the attractive interactions between the alpha-CD ring and the charged dumbbell. In this work, we put forward a feasible approach to correctly describe the complexation behavior of CD with charged species, that is, free energy profiles obtained from all-atom molecular dynamics simulation.
|
|
| 10. |
- da Cruz, Vinicius Vaz, et al.
(författare)
-
Nuclear dynamics in resonant inelastic X-ray scattering and X-ray absorption of methanol
- 2019
-
Ingår i: Journal of Chemical Physics. - : American Institute of Physics (AIP). - 0021-9606 .- 1089-7690. ; 150:23
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We report on a combined theoretical and experimental study of core-excitation spectra of gas and liquid phase methanol as obtained with the use of X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) and resonant inelastic X-ray scattering (RIXS). The electronic transitions are studied with computational methods that include strict and extended second-order algebraic diagrammatic construction [ADC(2) and ADC(2)-x], restricted active space second-order perturbation theory, and time-dependent density functional theory-providing a complete assignment of the near oxygen K-edge XAS. We show that multimode nuclear dynamics is of crucial importance for explaining the available experimental XAS and RIXS spectra. The multimode nuclear motion was considered in a recently developed "mixed representation" where dissociative states and highly excited vibrational modes are accurately treated with a time-dependent wave packet technique, while the remaining active vibrational modes are described using Franck-Condon amplitudes. Particular attention is paid to the polarization dependence of RIXS and the effects of the isotopic substitution on the RIXS profile in the case of dissociative core-excited states. Our approach predicts the splitting of the 2a RIXS peak to be due to an interplay between molecular and pseudo-atomic features arising in the course of transitions between dissociative core- and valence-excited states. The dynamical nature of the splitting of the 2a peak in RIXS of liquid methanol near pre-edge core excitation is shown. The theoretical results are in good agreement with our liquid phase measurements and gas phase experimental data available from the literature. (C) 2019 Author(s).
|
|
