Molecular-level studies of water and water-mediated interactions at aqueous interfaces
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Authors
Vembanur Ranganathan, Srivathsan
Issue Date
2013-12
Type
Electronic thesis
Thesis
Thesis
Language
ENG
Keywords
Chemical and biological engineering
Alternative Title
Abstract
This thesis aims at obtaining a molecular-level understanding of water behavior and water-mediated interactions at interfaces. Aqueous interfaces are ubiquitous in biological systems and are also encountered in a myriad of technological applications. Although past research has focused on water and water-mediated interactions in the bulk, molecular-level modeling and simulations of interfacial environments have been performed only recently. Theoretical and simulation studies have shown that water near a hydrophobic surface is soft, compressible, and vapor-liquid-like, and the interface is characterized by enhanced water-density fluctuations and favorable binding of hydrophobic solutes. Since water behavior is fundamentally different near the hydrophobic interface compared to that in the bulk or at the hydrophilic interface, water-mediated interactions are also expected to be different at hydrophobic interfaces. In this thesis, we follow a bottom-up approach, by starting with primitive hydrophobic and charge-charge interactions between small solutes in the vicinity of hydrophobic and hydrophilic interfaces and then proceed on to more complex interactions, involving polymers and peptides at interfaces. The results presented in this thesis offer fundamental understanding of inter-molecular interactions at interfaces and have implications for the structure, stability and dynamics of biomolecules in interfacial environments.
Description
December 2013
School of Engineering
School of Engineering
Full Citation
Publisher
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY