Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A
January 2018
Desolvation barriers are present for solute-solvent exchange events, such as ligand binding to an enzyme active site, during protein folding, and at battery electrodes. For solution-grown crystals, desolvation at kink sites can be the rate-limiting step for growth. However, desolvation and the associated kinetic barriers are poorly understood.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOne-dimensional (1D) nucleation is important in crystal growth, amyloid fibril formation, and supramolecular polymerization. The nucleation rate can be readily calculated, but there is no consensus on the critical length. In this work, we employ a splitting probability to derive an analytical expression for the critical length, which corresponds to a 50% survival probability.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe surface free energy of a droplet is approximately γ(R)=γ(∞)(1-2δ/R), with R being the droplet radius and δ being the Tolman length. Here we use the mitosis method to compute δ=-0.56±0.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFClassical nucleation theory is notoriously inaccurate when using the macroscopic surface free energy for a planar interface. We examine the size dependence of the surface free energy for TIP4P/2005 water nanodroplets (radii ranging from 0.7 to 1.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe DNA nanofilter is a microfabricated electrophoretic separation device consisting of a periodic array of thin slits (circa 60 nm) separated by deeper wells (circa 320 nm). We demonstrate that this device can act as a tuneable, clog-free filter when operating in a low frequency, asymmetric field inversion mode. This filtration occurs by using asymmetric field inversion to achieve bi-directional migration of short (less than 1000 bp) DNA.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe present experimental results for the collision of a single λ-DNA molecule with isolated cylindrical nanoposts whose radii range from 350 nm to 1.37 μm. The experimental apparatus was fabricated in oxidized silicon using a plasma-thinning method.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF