Microscopic Probing of Silica Surfaces

特拉华大学的Mary Wirth教授得到了分析和表面化学计划的支持，利用单分子光谱和原子力显微镜(AFM)的组合技术来探索作为分离技术核心的材料的吸附过程和动力学。特别是，研究集中在多肽的吸附作为研究蛋白质吸附的先决条件。探针染料分子DiI被用来光谱分析硅胶上吸附位置的物理和化学性质。原子力显微镜被用来测量纳米级的粗糙度，并将粗糙度与化学吸附之间可能的联系联系起来。这项工作解决了为什么地形促进活性硅烷醇的问题。它还讨论了平滑是否可以充分减少活性硅烷醇，从而影响多肽和蛋白质的分离。现代液相色谱在全球范围内是一个每年约20亿美元的行业，对制药、生物技术和许多其他行业至关重要。发展高效可靠的多肽和蛋白质分离技术是蛋白质组学的基本兴趣，从这个意义上讲，也是进一步发展疾病诊断和治疗的基础。仍然存在未解决的问题，其中最大的问题之一是由于用于分离混合物中化合物的硅胶相上残留的硅烷醇而造成的不受欢迎的分辨率损失。这项工作试图解释有关残留硅烷醇的基本问题，最终实现更好的分离。

Professor Mary Wirth of the University of Delaware is supported by the Analytical and Surface Chemistry Program to utilize the combined techniques of single molecule spectroscopy and atomic force microscopy (AFM) to probe adsorption processes and kinetics of materials central to separation technology. In particular, studies focus on the adsorption of peptides as a prerequisite for studying protein adsorption. The probe dye molecule DiI is used to spectroscopically report on the physical and chemical nature of adsorption sites on silica gel. AFM is used to measure nanoscale roughness and to relate possible connections between roughness and chemical adsorption. The work addresses why topography promotes active silanols. It also addresses whether smoothing can reduce active silanols sufficiently to impact peptide and protein separations. Modern liquid chromatography is approximately a two billion dollar per year worldwide industry, and is crucial to pharmaceutical, biotechnology and many other industries. Developing efficient and reliable techniques for peptide and protein separation is of basic interest for proteomics, and in this sense, for further developments in diagnosis and treatment of disease. There remain unresolved issues, with one of the most problematic being the undesirable loss of resolution due to residual silanols on the silica phases used to separate compounds in mixtures. This work attempts to explain the fundamental issues about the residual silanols, eventually enabling improved separations.