Berlin 2012 – scientific programme
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O: Fachverband Oberflächenphysik
O 35: Poster Session II (Polymeric biomolecular films; Nanostructures; Electronic structure; Spin-orbit interaction; Phase transitions; Surface chemical reactions; Heterogeneous catalysis; Particles and clusters; Surface magnetism; Electron and spin dynamics; Surface dynamics; Methods; Electronic structure theory; Functional molecules)
O 35.4: Poster
Tuesday, March 27, 2012, 18:15–21:45, Poster B
Inelastic tunnelling spectroscopy of protein monolayers — •Robert Lovrincic1, Lior Sepunaru1, Israel Pecht2, and David Cahen1 — 1Department of Materials and Interfaces, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel — 2Department of Immunology, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel
Electron transfer (ET) through proteins has been studied intensively in aqueous solutions. Based on our previous work on temperature-dependent current-voltage measurements across proteins in a solid-state configuration1, we tried to gain deeper insight to the ET mechanism through macroscopic solid-state protein junctions, using inelastic tunnelling spectroscopy (IETS). IETS is a is an all-electronic spectroscopy that measures the vibronic structure of non-equilibrium molecular transport, where even Raman- and IR-forbidden transitions may be observed as strong bands. By assigning the observed peaks to known vibrations of the protein, we prove that at least some of the electrons actually pass through the proteins, a finding that presents a first step towards tracing the electron transport pathways through complex biomolecules.
1 L. Sepunaru, I. Pecht, M. Sheves, and D. Cahen, Journal of the American Chemical Society 133, 2421-2423 (2011).