The interplay between geometry and electrostatics contributes significantly to hydrophobic interactions of biomolecules in an aqueous solution. With an implicit solvent, such a system can be described macroscopically by the dielectric boundary that separates the high-dielectric solvent from low-dielectric solutes. This work concerns the motion of a model cylindrical dielectric boundary as the s...

This paper introduces a self-consistent computational protocol for modeling protein electrostatic potentials according to static point-charge model distributions. The protocol involves a simple space-domain decomposition scheme where individual molecular domains are modeled as Quantum-Mechanical (QM) layers embedded in the otherwise classical Molecular-Mechanics (MM) protein environment. Electr...

The Poisson-Boltzmann (PB) equation is an established multiscale model for electrostatic analysis of biomolecules and other dielectric systems. PB based molecular dynamics (MD) approach has a potential to tackle large biological systems. Obstacles that hinder the current development of PB based MD methods are concerns in accuracy, stability, efficiency and reliability. The presence of complex s...

Interaction force-distance profiles between substrate-supported membranes composed of equimolar ternary mixtures of unsaturated phosphotidylcholine (PC) lipid, saturated PC lipid, and cholesterol were determined using the surface force apparatus. Both double and single unsaturated PC lipids were studied. In all cases, the membranes were slightly negatively charged, resulting in a weak, long-ran...

Electrostatics is one of the fundamental driving forces of the interaction between biomolecules in solution. In particular, the recognition events between viruses and host cells are dominated by both specific and non-specific interactions and the electric charge of viral particles determines the electrostatic force component of the latter. Here we probe the charge of individual viruses in liqui...

Hyperconjugative, steric, and electrostatic effects were evaluated as possible sources of the helicity in linear perfluorinated alkanes through analysis of natural bond orbitals and classical electrostatics. Contrary to previous rationalizations, which indicate dominating steric or electrostatic effects, this analysis indicates that hyperconjugative stabilization through σCC →σ*CF interactions ...

Current limitations in piezoelectric and electrostatic transducers are discussed. A force-feedback electrostatic transducer capable of operating at bandwidths up to 20 kHz is described. Advantages of the proposed design are a linearised operation which simplifies the feedback control aspects and robustness of the performance characteristics to environmental perturbations. Applications in nanote...

INTRODUCTION The comb-drive actuator is one of the main building blocks of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). Its working principle is based on an electrostatic force that is generated between biased conductor plates as one moves relative to the other. Because of its capability of force generation, it finds wide application in micro-mechanical systems. Sample applications include polysilico...

A single 210-nm Teflon nanoparticle (sTNP) was attached to the vertex of a silicon nitride (Si3N4) atomic force microscope tip and charged via contact electrification. The charged sTNP can then be considered a point charge and used to measure the electrostatic field adjacent to a parallel plate condenser using 30-nm gold/20-nm titanium as electrodes. This technique can provide a measurement res...

The force field used was MMF94s, without any solvent treatment. A constant dielectric of 1.0 was employed for the electrostatic treatment, whereas the charges were assigned by the force field (Fig. 1). Moreover, an extended non-bonded cut-off was set, for taking into account the best maximum distances over which hydrogen bonding, Van der Waals and electrostatic contributions to the molecular po...