Electrostatics at the molecular level

Electrostatics at the nanoscale.

Electrostatic forces are amongst the most versatile interactions to mediate the assembly of nanostructured materials. Depending on experimental conditions, these forces can be long- or short-ranged, can be either attractive or repulsive, and their directionality can be controlled by the shapes of the charged nano-objects. This Review is intended to serve as a primer for experimentalists curious...

Ferroelectricity at molecular level

Electrostatics of inter-Landau-level diodes.

We present exact solution of an electrostatic problem in terms of the potential distribution and density profile of an incompletely depleted two-dimensional electron gas in a heterostructure covered by a half-infinite gate. Using this solution, we calculate configurations of compressible and incompressible (insulating) strips that are formed in the presence of a quantizing magnetic field. We di...

Automated Metabolic Reconstruction at the Molecular Level

The analysis of metabolism in bacteria facilitates a new application area such as drug synthesis or toxin degradation, using genetically engineered bacteria. However, the understanding of bacterial metabolism is still premature, because in a newly sequenced bacterium, gene functions are determined for half its total ORFs. Only from sequence similarity, it is impossible to decide functions of th...

Asymmetry at the molecular level in biology

Naturally occurring biological molecules are made of homochiral building blocks. Proteins are composed of L-amino acids (and not D-amino acids); nucleic acids such as DNA have D-ribose sugars (and not L-ribose sugars). It is not clear why nature selected a particular chirality. Selection could have occurred by chance or as a consequence of basic physical chemistry. Possible proposals, including...