Periodic Reporting for period 2 - AQUACHIRAL (Chiral aqueous-phase chemistry)
Berichtszeitraum: 2022-07-01 bis 2023-12-31
AQUACHIRAL is all about the molecules that make up all of us, and any other living being. To function they have to exist in an aqueous environment, and this is where we probe them. Our team has pioneered a novel method to probe the electronic structure of these solvated molecules: Liquid jet photoelectron spectroscopy (LJ-PES). But for the molecules in living beings, electronic structure is not enough to understand their reactivity. Equally important is their handedness, a structure property that divides most biologically important molecules into one of two forms, that relate like mirror images to each other. While techniques exist to probe the handedness or ‘chirality’, we aim to combine sensitivity to electronic structure and to chirality of liquid samples in one novel method that significantly extends the capabilities of existing LJ-PES. Eventually, this will allow new insights into functioning and control of biologically important reactions depending on molecular chirality.
In the first half of this action, we have demonstrated that chiral-sensitive LJ-PES is indeed feasible. Equally important, we have completed a prototype of a new instrument that will enable to perform such experiments in a time-efficient manner (liquid jet velocity map imaging spectrometer, or LJ-VMI).
In the second half of this action, full functionality of the LJ-VMI will be achieved, thus revolutionizing LJ-PES and research on biochemical asymmetric reactions.