28 ASMSD

Category : Conferences Group News

The 28th edition of the Austin Symposium on Molecular Structure and Dynamics took place in Dallas (USA) the days 17-20 February, chaired by Prof. Elfi Kraka (SMU). The conference permits the interaction between researchers and students working in structural chemistry, molecular spectroscopy, molecular dynamics and computational chemistry, establising bridges between experimentalists and theoreticians. Alberto Lesarri joined the conference with an invited talk entitled “Addressing non covalent interactions with broadband chirped-pulse microwave spectroscopy”.

INFRARED-JCyL infrastructure

Category : Group News

Our group received funding from the 2021 Call of Regional Infrastructure program sponsored by the Junta de Castilla y León – FEDER, to acquire a chirped-pulse millimeter-wave Fourier transform spectrometer operanting in the W band (75-110 GHz). The instrument was installed in December 2022 and is now fully operational. This spectrometer is open to other groups in the region or at national or international level, permitting investigation on gas-phase molecules of structural, atmospheric or astrophysical interest.

J2IFAM 2023

Category : Conferences Group News

Our Ph.D. student Wenqin Li attended the XIV Conference of Young Researchers in Atomic and Molecular Physics, which took place in Madrid the days 1-3 February, 2023. The Conference is sponsored by the Group of Atomic and Molecular Physics (GEFAM) of the Spanish societies of Physics and Chemistry, and was oganized by an active group of young researchers from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. The conference had a very good attendance and will be organized in 2024 in Valencia.

Dissertation of Rizalina T. Saragi

Category : Group News

Rizalina Tama Saragi passed her doctoral dissertation last March, 11, 2022, following an stay in our lab which started at the end of 2017. The evaluation committee included Melanie Schnell (Kiel + DESY), Luca Evangelisti (Bologna) and Emilio Cocinero (Bilbao). Rizalina will start a postdoc later this year.

Rizalina after the dissertation with a nice bunch of flowers

Symmetry and Molecules

Category : Talks

Alberto Lesarri gave a talk to secondary school students at the “Diego de Praves” High School in Valladolid last January, 25, 2022. The talks discussed the implications of symmetry in Chemistry, Physics and life.

What is the influence of molecular symmetry?
The students checked the different smell of samples of (+)-limonene and (-)-limonene, an easy test of how chirality can have distinct biological effects.

Dissertation of Marcos Juanes

Category : Group News

Marcos Juanes passed his dissertation on September, 2, 2022. The committee members included (left to right in the picture): Pascal Dréan (Lille), Jens-Uwe Grabow (Hannover) and José Andrés Fernández (Bilbao). Marcos started later a postdoc stay at the Institut of Ion Physics and Applied Physics of the University of Innsbruck.

Marcos chose a bow tie for his dissertation.

Thiophenol stacking motions

Category : Dispersive interactions Hydrogen Bonding Intermolecular Clusters Molecular Structure New Results! Non-covalent Interactions Publications Weak Hydrogen Bonds

An investigation on the thiophenol dimer and trimer was published in the Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters. The weakly-bound dimer adopts a stacked structure, while simultaneously maintaining a weak S-H···S hydrogen bond. Two isomers were detected for the dimer in the gas-phase. Notoriously, a large-amplitude motion was observed in one of the dimers, exchanging the proton donor and aceptor thiol groups.

 

Cracking DNA for students

Category : Molecular Structure Talks

Alberto Lesarri gave a talk at the “Diego de Praves” Secondary School in Valladolid last February 2, replicating the 1950’s DNA X-ray diffraction experiment with a laser pointer and a light bulb. This demonstration experiment basically shows the diffraction of an helix, giving opportunity to talk of the experimental work of Rosalind Franklin, as explained in 2018 in the American Journal of Physics.

You can compare the pointer diffraction, with the real pattern below:

Matrine isomerism

Category : Alkaloids Molecular Structure MW Spectroscopy New Results! Publications

An investigation on matrine , a tetracyclic bis-quinolizidine alkaloid from the Sephora plants, was published in January 2021 in Journal  of Organic Chemistry. The molecule showed two (trans and cis) isomers in the gas-phase, confirming conformational rearrangements in matrine alkaloids. Matrine alkaloids have four stereogenic carbon centers, producing a large family of 16 stereoisomers in 8 enantiomeric pairs.

Serendipitous experiment

Category : General News Non-covalent Interactions

Chemistry World has informed that the group of Prof. Jens-Uwe Grabow in Hannover (Germany) recently reported a serendipitous experiment in which they observed a rare non-covalent interaction between a molecule of OCS and a Xe atom. The group was checking a microwave spectrometer when they noticed the rotational transitions from the OCS···Xe heterodimer. The original work is published in PCCP.

The PCCP TOC graphic (PCCP, 2020, 22, 5615)

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