Phys Chem/Chem Phys Seminar

Abstract: Proteins operate within an aqueous environment that influences their folding, stability, and activity. Membrane proteins have the added complication of being embedded in lipid bilayers that play an equally critical, yet significantly less understood, role. Much like solvent conditions modulate enzyme kinetics and protein interactions in solution, the lipid composition of the membrane performs regulatory functions for membrane proteins, affecting their organization, conformational dynamics, and catalytic output.

Abstract: While the properties of soft materials are ultimately dictated by their electronic structure, exploiting this knowledge for the design of non-crystalline materials has long been a formidable computational challenge. I will define conceptual and practical barriers that limit quantum mechanical design in soft materials and discuss recent work aimed at removing these barriers. First, I will describe the development of electronic structure models that leverage AI to operate at coarse-grained resolutions, enabling electronic design in non-crystalline molecular solids and polymers.

Abstract: Achieving ballistic, coherent charge and energy flow in materials at room temperature is a long-standing goal that could unlock ultrafast, lossless energy and information technologies. The key obstacle to overcome is short-range scattering between electronic particles and lattice vibrations (phonons). I will describe two promising avenues for realizing ballistic transport in two-dimensional (2D) semiconductors by harnessing hybridization between electronic particles and long-wavelength excitations.

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New tools of light for increasingly refined observation and control of molecules are providing new opportunities to study complex structure and emergent quantum properties, to set new bounds for fundamental symmetry, to probe real-time reaction kinetics, and to apply molecular sensing for medical diagnosis. Meanwhile, quantum gases of molecules constitutes an outstanding experimental platform for precise quantum state engineering and control of inter-molecular interactions, enabling exploration of novel chemical reactions and quantum magnetism.

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Future electronic and quantum devices will require near-atomically-precise nanofabrication processes, but present plasma processing methods create a variety of imperfections that limit device performance. In this talk, I will present atomic layer etching processing for materials including superconducting titanium nitride, lithium niobate, and compound semiconductors which enable etching with Angstrom-scale precision. I will also describe our efforts to validate the process improvements at the device level.

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