Detection of scorpion venom by optical circular dichroism method

Various efforts have been made to detect minimum amounts of any toxic materials in water or the neurotoxic effect of venom (Odontobuthus Doriae Scorpion) in the human’s blood serum nerve by high-sensitivity, accurate, and low-cost sensors in order to enhance life style. Therefore, the present study was done to investigate reliability of two-dimensional plasmonic structure and circular dichroism (CD) in toxic samples in order to measure and determine venom concentrations and its neurotoxic effect on humans҆ blood serum Neurotransmitter analytes. Our results confirmed dependency of CD signal to neurotoxic effect of venom concentrations and good sensitivity of this sensor with the help of achiral plasmonic structure.

Crystalline chirality and interlocked double hourglass Weyl fermion in polyhedra-intercalated transition metal dichalcogenides

Introducing crystalline chirality into transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) has attracted much attention due to its modulation effect on optical properties and the potential to reveal new forms of electronic states. Here, we predict a number of chiral materials by intercalating polyhedra into TMD lattices, finding a type of double hourglass Weyl fermion interlocked with crystalline chirality. The best candidate RhV3S6 (P6322) possesses the largest hourglass energy window of ~380 meV, as well as strong optical circular dichroism (CD) in the infrared regime, both of which are tunable by external strains. The chirality is originally induced by the configuration of intercalated polyhedra and then reduced by the rotational atomic displacements triggered by intercalation, as indicated by CD calculations. Our study opens the way of designing chiral materials with spin-split double hourglass Weyl fermions via structural unit intercalation in achiral crystals for future chiral-functionalized optoelectronic and spintronic devices.

Circular Dichroism in the Second Harmonic Field Evidenced by Asymmetric Au Coated GaAs Nanowires

Optical circular dichroism (CD) is an important phenomenon in nanophotonics, that addresses top level applications such as circular polarized photon generation in optics, enantiomeric recognition in biophotonics and so on. Chiral nanostructures can lead to high CD, but the fabrication process usually requires a large effort, and extrinsic chiral samples can be produced by simpler techniques. Glancing angle deposition of gold on GaAs nanowires can (NWs) induces a symmetry breaking that leads to an optical CD response that mimics chiral behavior. The GaAs NWs have been fabricated by a self-catalyzed, bottom-up approach, leading to large surfaces and high-quality samples at a relatively low cost. Here, we investigate the second harmonic generation circular dichroism (SHG-CD) signal on GaAs nanowires partially covered with Au. SHG is a nonlinear process of even order, and thus extremely sensitive to symmetry breaking. Therefore, the visibility of the signal is very high when the fabricated samples present resonances at first and second harmonic frequencies (i.e., 800 and 400 nm, in our case).

Structural characterization of imidazole adducts of heme-DNA complexes

Ternary complexes composed of protoheme (heme( Fe 3+)) or 13,17-bis(2-carboxylatoethyl)-3,7-diethyl-12,18-trimethyl-2,8-ditrifluoromethylporphyrinatoiron(III) (2,8-DPF( Fe 3+)), a parallel G-quadruplex DNA formed from a single repeat sequence of the human telomere, d(TTAGGG), and imidazole (Im), in a ratio of 1:1:1, were prepared and their structures were characterized using optical, circular dichroism, and NMR spectroscopies. The study revealed that heme( Fe 3+) and 2,8-DPF( Fe 3+) stack onto the 3′-terminal G-quartet of the G-quadruplex DNA, ~0.4 nm apart, and that Im is coordinated to the Fe atom on the side of the heme opposite to the G-quartet in the complex. The stacking of the pseudo-C2 symmetric heme( Fe 3+) onto the C4 symmetric G-quartet in the complex resulted in the formation of two isomers with heme orientations differing by 180° about the pseudo-C2 axis, with respect to the DNA. The Im affinity of the 2,8-DPF( Fe 3+)-DNA complex was higher by a factor of ~2 than that of the heme( Fe 3+)-DNA one, which is possibly due to the stronger ligand-to-metal π donation in the 2,8-DPF( Fe 3+) as a result of a decrease in the electron density of the heme Fe atom caused by substitution of the two strongly electron-withdrawing trifluoromethyl groups.