The physical boundary layer, or interface, between two different phases of matter is the site of chemical and physical processes that are critical to many research fields. Many of these interfaces contain electric charge, which influences the structure and composition of the interfacial region and the interactions between the interface...
Polyolefins are the most versatile and widely used polymers worldwide. Depending on the polymer microstructure, polyolefins can exhibit a wide range of useful and tailored properties and applications. Metal-catalyzed coordinative olefin polymerization plays a center role in advancing polyolefin synthesis. This dissertation explores two strategies to modulate the polymer microstructures...
Spherical Nucleic Acids (SNAs) are unique class of nanomaterial characterized by a dense nucleic acid shell conjugated to a nanoparticle core. This radial orientation of oligonucleotides and architecture distinguishes SNAs from the components from which they are comprised. Specifically, unique chemical and biological properties emerge that are not observed with...
Oxide/aqueous and metal/metal oxide interfaces are essential for environmental remediation, catalysis, and corrosion inhibition, in addition to their potential implementation as energy transducers, consumer electronics, and coating products. While these interfaces are critically important, they are difficult to access experimentally under aqueous flow conditions. This thesis describes results obtained with...
Harnessing the metabolic potential of methanotrophic bacteria is a compelling strategy for the bioremediation of environmentally harmful methane gas. Methanotrophs can activate a 105 kcal/mol C-H bond in methane at ambient conditions using metalloenzymes called methane monooxygenases (MMOs). Particulate methane monooxygenase (pMMO) is a copper-dependent, membrane-bound enzyme that is the...
This introductory chemistry textbook was compiled by Shelby Hatch at Northwestern University and is adapted from the following sources:
"Introductory Chemistry" by David W. Ball, The Saylor Foundation, Cleveland State University, is licensed
under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 and is available at https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/textbooks/introductory-chemistry ; "Chemistry of Cooking" by Sorangel Rodriguez-Velazquez, American...
Human skin oils are significant scavengers of atmospheric oxidants in occupied indoor environments. Many techniques used to study gas-phase transformations of surface films indoors have been limited to off-line bulk analysis, although more surface-selective methodologies are emerging. Here, we present a multi-prong analytical approach to characterizing skin oil ozonolysis. Skin...
Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are porous, crystalline materials synthesized by combining metal nodes and organic linkers through self-assembly. The diverse range of building blocks available allows for extensive tunability of MOFs, enabling the optimization of these materials for various applications, such as gas storage, separations, and catalysis. This study aimed to...
Metal–Organic Frameworks (MOFs) is a class of material comprising organic linkers and inorganic, metal-ion-containing nodes, with diverse functionalities and wide-range of applications. Because of their porous nature and functional nodes and linkers, they are competent candidates for gas storage, separation, catalysis, and so on. Most MOFs, however, are intrinsically insulating,...
This thesis document is comprised of three research projects. The first investigates the active vibrational modes involved in twisted intramolecular charge transfer in a Julolidine-BODIPY dyad using two-dimensional electronic spectroscopy along with DFT calculations. We identified two types of vibrations, compression and torsional motion, as playing an important role in...