U.S.-France Cooperative Research: Dynamics of Water in Supercooled States in Bulk, in Reverse Micelles and in Proteins

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This award will support collaborative research between Professor Sow-Hsin Chen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Dr. Jose Teixeira of the Laboratoire Leon-Brillouin of the Centre d'Etudes Nucleaires, Saclay, France. The objective of this work is to study the microscopic structural and dynamic properties of bulk supercooled water, which differ from those of normal water, using techniques of thermal neutron and X-ray diffraction, and quasi-elastic and inelastic neutron spectroscopy. In addition, the dynamics of water in confined geometries, as in the interior of reverse micelles and in certain types of molecules at low temperatures, will be studied. In these systems, the interaction of the water with the proximate surfaces is important in understanding the folding and enzymatic activity of water and similar macromolecules. The study will also be extended to include other super-cooled liquids near their freezing or transition-to-glass temperatures. The instruments for the high resolution neutron spectroscopy measurements are available only in France. This research may have important applications in the fields of chemical reactions and cooling-system behavior.