Postdoctoral researcher | University of Oxford, Dept. of Biochemistry| nc-AFM, STM and biophysics on surfaces | Google Scholar: https://teapaw.org/t.co/DtdLTJsgyD
Oxford
Joined March 2013
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🧵 Using nc-AFM, we've visualized #cyclodextrins (CDs) with submolecular resolution— molecules made of glucose units with the remarkable ability to "trap" other molecules. 1/10 (paper in Nat Comm: rdcu.be/dYWOL)
Beautiful result
Near-100% spontaneous rolling up of polar van der Waals materials @NatureMaterials. Congrats Prof Li Zejun @SoutheastUni and his team! Grateful to be part of this collaboration @NUSResearch rdcu.be/eKKAv & nature.com/articles/s41563-0…
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Imagine the potential N layered sandwiches of materials wildly differing in their electronic properties...
Huge 3D Printing Breakthrough!
Caltech is printing metal atom by atom. A hydrogel scaffold soaked in metal salts becomes the blueprint, the gel burns away, and oxygen is stripped in a hydrogen-rich chamber, leaving alloys crafted with surgical precision.
They can change metal ratios on the fly. Flip from a copper-heavy mix to a Cu12Ni88 alloy nearly four times stronger, without altering shape or tooling. Every property, from strength to density, is now designed, not guessed.
This is metallurgy reinvented. Also a game changer for Aerospace applications.
caltech.edu/about/news/bring…
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Congratulations to @HLAGroupOx (!) On surfaces, we have seen cyclocarbon rings created with clever tip-induced strategies (tldr: removing atoms from a precursor) Now…48 carbons stabilized with catenates in solution.
phys.org/news/2025-08-chemis…
![Solution synthesis of a c[48] ring stabilized by three catenates.](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GyX32wcWAAY0frO.jpg?name=orig)
ALT Solution synthesis of a c[48] ring stabilized by three catenates.
![Tip induced synthesis of c[16] by cleavage of Br and CO groups](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GyX32w-WUAEMgVi.jpg?name=orig)
ALT Tip induced synthesis of c[16] by cleavage of Br and CO groups
Sometimes intuition is enough, but steric repulsion was hard to visualize for me. I used to eyeball it from simulations, and now it’s right there to see...cool work!
Just published in @ChemRxiv:
A Practicable Measure and Spatial Visualization of Steric repulsion with Atomic Resolution
==> chemrxiv.org/engage/chemrxiv…
We successfully present a method to hunt one of the unicorn of #Chemistry: steric repulsion!
#compchem @khartab
Great read! Mass selection + landing energy control is crucial to avoid any fragments on surfaces that interrupt or hinder interesting reactions on surfaces. But also enables using gigantic precursors or biomolecules into surfaces. Maybe I'll show soon some examples of this...
Excited to share a primer* my team and I wrote for ACS as an entry piece to the field of ion soft landing + single molecule imaging!
pubs.acs.org/doi/book/10.102…
* A pedagogical piece bridging a complete stranger to review papers in the field!
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Maybe the shortest introduction to the Ising model I have ever seen
Renormalisation is a central concept in modern physics. It describes how the dynamics of a system change at different scales. A great way to understand and visualise renormalisation is the Ising model
(some math, but one can follow without it )
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These analog systems are always full of ingenuity 'how to embody mechanical computation into 3D printed objects, i.e., without electronic sensors, actuators, or controller'. The video in the thread is really cool.
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This paper is mind-blowing. I'll have to read it several times I think, msybe on holiday. It's one of those refreshing speculative ones.
Curious to see what people think about this, we had quite a debate at the Editorial Board. After the reviews came in, the conclusion was that, on the great wide spectrum that stretches from bonkers to brilliant, this is closer to brilliant. science.org/doi/full/10.1126…
Quite feverish and with cancelled flights, but still the dpg was decent enough. Thanks for the braves one staying till Friday mid-day
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Very nice to see this result from @Campana_Lab and
@MOR_Fun_Group! I remember @FedeVillaLobo visiting us back in the day in Olomouc trying a related precursor (an unlucky one though... sometimes it happens). This one just worked nice
Diastereomeric Configuration Drives an On-Surface Specific Rearrangement into Low Bandgap Non-Benzenoid Graphene Nanoribbons | Journal of the American Chemical Society @CanalUGR
@icmm_csic pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/jac…
Getting closer to a molecular Aharonov-Bohm interferometer...Vitek et al show that a completely cycled ring of porphyrins could contain quantum behavior up to a length scale of 18 nm. Very cool.
(5/5) The presence of a global ring current shows that the molecule behaves as a quantum object instead of a classical one. We predict such currents in rings with a circumference of almost 20 nm, which makes the molecular quantum world much bigger than previously thought (~5 nm).
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nature.com/articles/s41467-0…
I remember seeing PTCDA molecules working as antennas on surfaces in 2018 (Niklas also involved). Now, it is cool to see their electrostatic field enabling them to emit fluorescence light. Fascinating work @ARoslawska and all (only tag I have!)
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Beautiful example of Pyrene vs Acepleiadylene from @GottfriedGroup. Non-alternant structures show again that they like to be way closer to the surfaces, to the point of chemisorptive bond in the case of acepleiadylene.
sciencedirect.com/science/ar…
Aside from seeing the #cyclodextrin up and down on the surface, one curious case is when some of the glucose units twist and form this intermediate configuration. The molecular dynamics simulations (left) explains beautifully the "absence" of lobes in the experimental images.
🧵 Using nc-AFM, we've visualized #cyclodextrins (CDs) with submolecular resolution— molecules made of glucose units with the remarkable ability to "trap" other molecules. 1/10 (paper in Nat Comm: rdcu.be/dYWOL)
Nice thread on a very fundamental science result: detecting and counting IR photons, 1 per hour in a mK device, but pushed to have response up to 1.2 K. The classic scenario familiar to anybody doing LT STM/ncAFM...not useful "yet"
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Finishing my quick visit to the University of Granada as first time member of a PhD panel(!). I have learnt quit a bit from Alvaro Martínez Pinel (@MOR_Fun_Group). He did a great job in the synthesis of molecules containing birradicals and even showing preliminary STS data.
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Engineering at the atomic scale, removing single H atoms from pentacene-based polymers. We have several dozens of similar animations in long experimental sessions @jimmarale...in this one you can see the how the H dissapear from the backbone, one every second more or less.
Today I'm very happy to share our lastest article in @acsnano! See how we can atomically manipulate the hybridization level of edge states in pentacene-based polymers by using tip-induced dehydrogenation. @CatrinUP @nanosurflab
Check it out here: pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs…
