CAREER: Instrument Development of Plasmonic-Assisted Nanomechanical Detection for Polarized Spectroscopy and Imaging

这个项目由化学学部的化学测量和成像项目支持，Laurene Tetard教授和她在中佛罗里达大学物理系和纳米科学技术中心的学生们正在纳米尺度上研究生命系统的重要分子结构。Tetard团队利用偏振红外光增强原子力显微镜（AFM）的能力，能够观察到单个分子及其组合的化学和结构特性。新方法可以评估传统工具无法研究的体系的取向和结晶度，使人们能够更深入地了解化学、食品科学、催化、环境科学、法医学和生物学中的重要过程。该小组还制作了教育材料，通过一系列提供实践和基于项目的活动的讲习班来传达其研究活动的概念和相关性。不同的学生群体参与了讲习班的构思和执行，目的是激励参与者（包括女性和代表性不足的少数民族学生）从事STEM职业。生命系统及其组成部分，如核酸和氨基酸，可以呈现复杂的结构安排，如手性。尽管这些独特的自组装结构的结构和功能之间存在重要的关系，但标准的分析工具在探测低浓度、单分子过程或罕见事件方面存在缺陷。Tetard博士正在开发和评估一种纳米级偏振红外光谱的新方法，以识别复杂系统中的分子手性，并进一步建立监测与这些系统相关的特定动态结构-活性关系的方法。该方法利用光偏振和场增强技术进行纳米AFM检测。该平台的性能正在生命科学中几种重要分子上进行测试。额外的努力目标是时间分辨监测分子扭曲的变化。教育部分包括在美国和国外的一系列研讨会中，以丰富的项目为基础的活动，在纳米科学的前沿发展。由此产生的动手和基于项目的活动将公开提供给教学实验室。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

With this project, supported by the Chemical Measurement and Imaging program in the Chemistry Division, Professor Laurene Tetard and her students in the Department of Physics and the NanoScience Technology Center at the University of Central Florida are studying important molecular structures of living systems at the nanoscale. Using polarized infrared light to enhance the capabilities of a method known as Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM), the Tetard group is able to observe the chemical and structural properties of single molecules and their assemblies. The new approach can evaluate the orientations and crystallinity of systems which cannot be studied with conventional tools, enabling deeper understanding of important processes in chemistry, food science, catalysis, environmental science, forensics, and biology. The team is also generating educational materials to communicate the concepts and relevance of its research activities through a series of workshops offering hands-on and project-based activities. A diverse group of students is engaged in the conception and execution of the workshops, with an aim of inspiring participants (including women and underrepresented minority students) to pursue careers in STEM. Living systems and their components, such as nucleic and amino acids, can present complex structural arrangements, such as chirality. Despite the important relationship between the structure and function of these unique self-assembled structures, standard analytical tools are deficient in probing low concentration, single molecular processes or rare events. Dr. Tetard is developing and evaluating a new approach to nanoscale polarized infrared spectroscopy to enable identification of molecular chirality in complex systems, and to further establish means to monitor specific dynamic structure-activity relationships associated with these systems. The approach utilizes light polarization and field enhancement for nanomechanical AFM detection. The performance of the platform is being tested on several molecules of importance in life sciences. Additional efforts target time-resolved monitoring of changes in molecular twists. The educational component involves developments at the forefront of nanoscale science in rich project-based activities for a series of workshops in the US and abroad. Resulting hands-on and project-based activities will be made publicly available for teaching laboratories.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.