Crystal structure of self-assembled materials. Blue dots represent strongly bound water. The variation of the number of water molecules reflects the potential heterogeneity of the strongly bound water numbers in each site. [Image courtesy of Haoyuan Wang, UC San Diego]
The researchers recently published their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Wei Xiong and other members of the Xiong Group at UC San Diego developed a transient vibrational sum-frequency generation microscope to inspect hydrogen bond interactions that are critical for self-assembled soft materials — an important area of research for synthetic biology/biomimetics. The delicate H-bond interactions balance electrostatic interactions needed for synthetic lattice self-assemblies that resemble the form and function of their biological analogs (e.g., cells).
