Direct Evidence for a Surface and Bulk Specific Response in the Sum-Frequency Generation Spectrum of the Water Bend Vibration.

We study the bending mode of pure water and charged aqueous surfaces using heterodyne-detected vibrational sum-frequency generation spectroscopy. We observe a low (1626 cm^{-1}) and a high (1656 cm^{-1}) frequency component that can be unambiguously assigned to an interfacial dipole and a bulk quadrupolar response, respectively. We thus demonstrate that probing the bending mode provides structural and quantitative information on both the surface and the bulk.

Molecular structure of a hyperactive antifreeze protein adsorbed to ice.

Antifreeze proteins (AFPs) are a unique class of proteins that bind to ice crystal surfaces and arrest their growth. The working mechanism of AFPs is not well understood because, as of yet, it was not possible to perform molecular-scale studies of AFPs adsorbed to the surface of ice. Here, we study the structural properties of an AFP from the insect Rhagium mordax (RmAFP) adsorbed to ice with surface specific heterodyne-detected vibrational sum-frequency generation spectroscopy and molecular dynamic simulations. We find that RmAFP, unlike other proteins, retains its hydrating water molecules upon adsorption to the ice surface. This hydration water has an orientation and hydrogen-bond structure different from the ice surface, thereby inhibiting the insertion of water layers in between the protein and the ice surface.

Surface Structure of Solutions of Poly(vinyl alcohol) in Water.

We use surface-specific heterodyne-detected vibrational sum-frequency generation spectroscopy (HD-VSFG) and surface tension measurements to investigate the molecular structure of the surface of aqueous solutions of poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) polymers with average molecular weights of 10000 and 125000 g/mol. We find that the interfacial water molecules have a preferred orientation with their hydrogen-bonded O-H groups pointing away from the bulk, for both PVA10000 and PVA125000. This observation is explained from the ongoing hydrolysis of the acetyl impurities on the PVA polymer chains. This hydrolysis yields negatively charged acetate ions that have a relatively high surface propensity. For both PVA10000 and PVA125000 the strong positive signal vanishes when the pH is decreased, due to the neutralization of the acetate ions. For solutions with a high concentration of PVA10000 the interfacial water signal becomes very small, indicating that the surface gets completely covered with a disordered PVA polymer film. In contrast, for high concentrations of PVA125000, the strong positive water signal persists at high pH, which shows that the water surface does not get completely covered. The HD-VSFG data combined with surface tension data indicate that concentrated PVA125000 solutions form a structured surface layer with pores containing a high density of interfacial water.

Molecular Structure of Hydrophobins Studied with Site-Directed Mutagenesis and Vibrational Sum-Frequency Generation Spectroscopy.

Hydrophobins are surface-active fungal proteins that adsorb to the water-air interface and self-assemble into amphiphilic, water-repelling films that have a surface elasticity that is an order of magnitude higher than other molecular films. Here we use surface-specific sum-frequency generation spectroscopy (VSFG) and site-directed mutagenesis to study the properties of class I hydrophobin (HFBI) films from Trichoderma reesei at the molecular level. We identify protein specific HFBI signals in the frequency region 1200-1700 cm-1 that have not been observed in previous VSFG studies on proteins. We find evidence that the aspartic acid residue (D30) next to the hydrophobic patch is involved in lateral intermolecular protein interactions, while the two aspartic acid residues (D40, D43) opposite to the hydrophobic patch are primarily interacting with the water solvent.

Identification of the response of protein N-H vibrations in vibrational sum-frequency generation spectroscopy of aqueous protein films.

The N-H stretching vibration is an important probe for investigating structural and functional properties of proteins but is often difficult to analyze as it overlaps with the O-H stretching vibration of water molecules. In this work we investigate the N-H signals of hydrophobins using conventional (VSFG) and heterodyne-detected vibrational sum-frequency generation spectroscopy (HD-VSDG). Hydrophobins represent a group of surface active proteins that form highly-ordered protein films at the water-air interface and that give rise to prominent vibrational modes. We find that in conventional VSFG spectra N-H specific signals show significant changes in shape and intensity upon altering the pH values. These changes can easily be misinterpreted for conformational changes of the protein. Using HD-VSFG experiments, we demonstrate, that for hydrophobin films the change of the N-H response with pH can be well explained from the interference of the N-H response with the broad interfacial water O-H stretch band.

Freezing effects of oil-in-water emulsions studied by sum-frequency scattering spectroscopy.

Temperature-dependent sum-frequency scattering spectroscopy is used to study the properties of hexadecane and dodecane oil droplets in water. The sum-frequency scattering spectra contain vibrational bands that correspond to the symmetric and antisymmetric CH stretching vibrations of the methylene (CH2) and methyl (CH3) groups of the alkane molecules. The relative amplitudes of the vibrational bands provide information on the surface structure and the shape of the oil droplets. We study the sum-frequency scattering spectra over a temperature range of -48 to 24 °C, including the freezing transitions of the water matrix and the oil droplets. Hexadecane oil droplets freeze at a higher temperature than the surrounding water, whereas dodecane oil droplets freeze at a lower temperature than the surrounding water. This allows us to independently study the freezing effect of oil and water on the surface structure of the oil droplets. In both cases, freezing leads to a change in the polarization dependencies that are valid in the case of the spherical-symmetric shapes that the oil droplets assume when both water and oil are liquid. We find that the freezing of water leads to a strong distortion of the liquid dodecane surface but has little effect on the surface of already solidified hexadecane. For completely frozen emulsions a further decrease in temperature is observed to lead to a further distortion of the surface of the solid oil particles, which might be caused by increasing hardness of the ice matrix encapsulating the particles.

Vibrational Relaxation of the Aqueous Proton in Acetonitrile: Ultrafast Cluster Cooling and Vibrational Predissociation.

We study the ultrafast O-H stretch vibrational relaxation dynamics of protonated water clusters embedded in a matrix of deuterated acetonitrile, using polarization-resolved mid-IR femtosecond spectroscopy. The clusters are produced by mixing triflic (trifluoromethanesulfonic) acid and H2O in molar ratios of 1:1, 1:2, and 1:3, thus varying the degree of hydration of the proton. At all hydration levels the excited O-H stretch vibration of the hydrated proton shows an ultrafast vibrational relaxation with a time constant T1 < 100 fs, leading to an ultrafast local heating of the protonated water cluster. This excess thermal energy, initially highly localized to the region of the excited proton, first re-distributes over the aqueous cluster and then dissipates into the surrounding acetonitrile matrix. For clusters with a triflic acid to H2O ratio of 1:3 these processes occur with time constants of 320 ± 20 fs and 1.4 ± 0.1 ps, respectively. The cooling of the clusters reveals a long-living, underlying transient absorption change with high anisotropy. We argue that this feature stems from the vibrational predissociation of a small fraction of the proton hydration structures, directly following the ultrafast infrared excitation.

Dynamics of Hydration Water around Native and Misfolded α-Lactalbumin.

As water is an essential ingredient in protein structure, dynamics, and functioning, knowledge of its behavior near proteins is crucial. We investigate water dynamics around bovine α-lactalbumin by combining molecular dynamics simulations with polarization-resolved femtosecond infrared (fs-IR) spectroscopy. We identify slowly reorienting surface waters and establish their hydrogen-bond lifetime and reorientation dynamics, which we compare to the experimentally measured anisotropy decay. The calculated number of slow surface waters is in reasonable agreement with the results of fs-IR experiments. While surface waters form fewer hydrogen bonds than the bulk, within the hydration layer water is slower when donating more hydrogen bonds. At concave sites the protein-water hydrogen bonds break preferably via translational diffusion rather than via a hydrogen-bond jump mechanism. Water molecules reorient slower near these sites than at convex water-exposed sites. Protein misfolding leads to an increased exposure of hydrophobic groups, inducing relatively faster surface water dynamics. Nevertheless, the larger exposed surface slows down a larger amount of water. While for native proteins hydrating water is slower near hydrophobic than near hydrophilic residues, mainly due to stronger confinement, misfolding causes hydrophobic water to reorient relatively faster because exposure of hydrophobic groups destroys concave protein cavities with a large excluded volume.

Structure and dynamics of a salt-bridge model system in water and DMSO.

We study the interaction between the ions methylguanidinium and trifluoroacetate dissolved in D2O and dimethylsulfoxide with linear infrared spectroscopy and femtosecond two-dimensional infrared spectroscopy. These ions constitute model systems for the side chains of arginine and glutamic and aspartic acid that are known to form salt bridges in proteins. We find that the salt-bridge formation of methylguanidinium and trifluoroacetate leads to a significant acceleration of the vibrational relaxation dynamics of the antisymmetric COO stretching vibration of the carboxyl moiety of trifluoroacetate. Salt-bridge formation has little effect on the rate of the spectral fluctuations of the CN stretching vibrations of methylguanidinium. The anisotropy of the cross peaks between the antisymmetric COO stretching vibration of trifluoroacetate and the CN stretching vibrations of methylguanidinium reveals that the salt-bridge is preferentially formed in a bidentate end-on configuration in which the two C=O groups of the carboxylate moiety form strong hydrogen bonds with the two -NH2 groups of methylguanidinium.

Femtosecond mid-infrared study of the dynamics of water molecules in water-acetone and water-dimethyl sulfoxide mixtures.

We study the vibrational relaxation dynamics and the reorientation dynamics of HDO molecules in binary water-dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) and water-acetone mixtures with polarization-resolved femtosecond mid-infrared spectroscopy. For low solute concentrations we observe a slowing down of the reorientation of part of the water molecules that hydrate the hydrophobic methyl groups of DMSO and acetone. For water-DMSO mixtures the fraction of slowed-down water molecules rises much steeper with solute concentration than for water-acetone mixtures, showing that acetone molecules show significant aggregation already at low concentrations. At high solute concentrations, the vibrational and reorientation dynamics of both water-DMSO and water-acetone mixtures show a clear distinction between the dynamics of water molecules donating hydrogen bonds to other water molecules and the dynamics of water donating a hydrogen bond to the S═O/C═O group of the solute. For water-DMSO mixtures both types of water molecules show a very slow reorientation. The water molecules forming hydrogen bonds to the S═O group reorient with a time constant that decreases from 46 ± 14 ps at XDMSO = 0.33 to 13 ± 2 ps at XDMSO = 0.95. The water molecules forming hydrogen bonds to the C═O group of acetone show a much faster reorientation with a time constant that decreases from 6.1 ± 0.2 ps at Xacet = 0.3 to 2.96 ± 0.05 ps at Xacet = 0.9. The large difference in reorientation time constant of the solute-bound water for DMSO and acetone can be explained from the fact that the hydrogen bond between water and the S═O group of DMSO is much stronger than the hydrogen bond between water and the C═O group of acetone. We attribute the strongly different behavior of water in DMSO-rich and acetone-rich mixtures to their difference in molecular shape.

A femtosecond mid-infrared study of the dynamics of water in aqueous sugar solutions.

We study the effect of the sugars glucose, trehalose and sorbitol on the reorientation dynamics of water molecules, using polarization-resolved femtosecond infrared spectroscopy. We find that at all sugar concentrations the water dynamics can be described by a single reorientation time constant. With increasing carbohydrate concentration, the water reorientation time constant increases from 2.5 picoseconds to a value of about 15 picoseconds. The slowing down of the water dynamics is strongest for trehalose, followed by glucose and sorbitol.

Observation of vibrational energy exchange in a type-III antifreeze protein.

We performed time- and polarization-resolved pump-probe and two-dimensional infrared (2D-IR) experiments to study the dynamics of the amide I vibration of a 7 kDa type-III antifreeze protein. In the pump-probe experiments, we used femtosecond mid-infrared pulses to investigate the vibrational relaxation dynamics of the amide mode. The transient spectra show the presence of two spectral components that decay with different lifetimes, indicative of the presence of two distinct amide subbands. The 2D-IR experiments reveal the coupling between the two bands in the form of cross-peaks. On the basis of previous work by Demirdöven et al. ( J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2004 , 126 , 7981 - 7990 ), we assign the observed bands to the two infrared-active modes α(-) and α(+) found in protein ß-sheets. The amplitudes of the cross-peak were found to increase with delay time, indicating that the cross-peaks originate from population transfer between the coupled amide oscillators. The time constant of the energy transfer was found to be 6-7 ps.

Hydration dynamics of aqueous glucose probed with polarization-resolved fs-IR spectroscopy.

The dynamics of water in aqueous solutions of glucose have been investigated using polarization-resolved femtosecond infrared spectroscopy of the hydroxyl stretch vibrations of water and glucose. Using reference measurements on solutions of glucose in dimethylsulfoxide and a spectral decomposition model, we are able to distinguish the reorientation dynamics of the glucose and water hydroxyl groups. We find that the water reorientation dynamics strongly slow down in the presence of glucose.

Anomalous temperature dependence of the vibrational lifetime of the OD stretch vibration in ice and liquid water.

The temperature dependence of the vibrational T1 lifetime of the OD stretch vibration of HDO in H2O ice was measured with femtosecond mid-IR pump-probe spectroscopy. We found an increase of T1 from 480 ± 40 fs at 25 K to 860 ± 60 fs at 265 K. These lifetimes are remarkably shorter than the vibrational lifetime of the OD stretch vibration of HDO in H2O in the liquid phase, which has a value of 1.7 ± 0.1 ps at 274 K and increases to 2.24 ± 0.09 at 343 K. The observed temperature dependence of T1 can be well explained from a relaxation mechanism in which the OD vibration relaxes via energy transfer to the bend-libration combination tones of H2O and HDO.

Vibrational relaxation pathways of amide I and amide II modes in N-methylacetamide.

We studied the vibrational energy relaxation mechanisms of the amide I and amide II modes of N-methylacetamide (NMA) monomers dissolved in bromoform using polarization-resolved femtosecond two-color vibrational spectroscopy. The results show that the excited amide I vibration transfers its excitation energy to the amide II vibration with a time constant of 8.3 ± 1 ps. In addition to this energy exchange process, we observe that the excited amide I and amide II vibrations both relax to a final thermal state. For the amide I mode this latter process dominates the vibrational relaxation of this mode. We find that the vibrational relaxation of the amide I mode depends on frequency which can be well explained from the presence of two subbands with different vibrational lifetimes (~1.1 ps on the low frequency side and ~2.7 ps on the high frequency side) in the amide I absorption spectrum.

Vibrational dynamics of the bending mode of water interacting with ions.

We studied the vibrational relaxation dynamics of the bending mode (ν(2)) of the H(2)O water molecules in the presence of different salts (LiCl, LiBr, LiI, NaI, CsI, NaClO(4), and NaBF(4)). The linear and nonlinear spectra of the bending mode show distinct responses of water molecules hydrating the anions. We observe that the bending mode of water molecules that are hydrogen-bonded to an anion exhibits much slower relaxation rates (T(1)~1ps) than water molecules that are hydrogen-bonded to other water molecules (T(1)=400 fs). We find that the effect of the anion on the absorption spectrum and relaxation time constant of the water bending mode is not only determined by the strength of the hydrogen-bond interaction but also by the shape of the anion.

Precision waveguide system for measurement of complex permittivity of liquids at frequencies from 60 to 90 GHz.

We describe a variable path length waveguide setup developed to accurately measure the complex dielectric permittivity of liquids. This is achieved by measuring the complex scattering parameter of the liquid in a waveguide section with a vector network analyzer in combination with an E-band frequency converter. The automated measurement procedure allows fast acquisition at closely spaced intervals over the entire measurement bandwidth: 60-90 GHz. The presented technique is an absolute method and as such is not prone to calibration errors. The technique is suited to investigate low-loss as well as high-loss liquids in contrast to similar setups described previously. We present measurements for a high-loss liquid (water), an intermediate-loss sample (ethanol), and for nearly loss-less n-octane. Due to the available phase information, the present data have an improved accuracy in comparison with literature data.

Anisotropic water reorientation around ions.

We study the reorientation dynamics of water molecules around ions using terahertz dielectric relaxation spectroscopy and polarization-resolved femtosecond infrared pump-probe spectroscopy. The results are discussed in relation to the ion-specific Hofmeister series and the concomitant "structure-making" and "structure-breaking" effects of ions on water. We show that when a dissolved salt consists of a strongly hydrated ion with a weakly hydrated counterion the reorientation of water molecules around the strongly hydrated ion is anisotropic, in the sense that differently charged ions affect reorientation along different molecular axes: cations mainly slow the reorientation dynamics of the water dipole vectors, and anions mainly slow down the reorientation dynamics of the hydroxyl group that points toward the anion. In both cases, motion along only one molecular axis is impeded, so that the hydration shell is best described as semirigid. In this semirigid hydration picture, water molecules in the first hydration shell show anisotropic reorientation, whereas water molecules outside the first hydration shell remain unaffected. The inferred anisotropy in molecular motion explains why terahertz dielectric relaxation spectroscopy, which probes dipolar relaxation, is more sensitive to cation hydration effects while femtosecond infrared pump-probe spectroscopy, which is sensitive to reorientation of hydroxyl groups, is more sensitive to anion hydration effects. We also show that dissolution of CsI-a salt for which both cation and anion are weakly hydrated-has little effect on water reorientation dynamics, with hydration water displaying dynamics that are similar to those in bulk water.

Vibrational relaxation pathways of AI and AII modes in N-methylacetamide clusters.

We studied the pathways of vibrational energy relaxation of the amide I (~1660 cm⁻¹) and amide II (~1560 cm⁻¹) vibrational modes of N-methylacetamide (NMA) in CCl4 solution using two-color femtosecond vibrational spectroscopy. We measured the transient spectral dynamics upon excitation of each of these amide modes. The results show that there is no energy transfer between the amide I (AI) and amide II (AII) modes. Instead we find that the vibrational energy is transferred on a picosecond time scale to a common combination tone of lower-frequency modes. By use of polarization-resolved femtosecond pump-probe measurements we also study the reorientation dynamics of the NMA molecules and the relative angle between the transition dipole moments of the AI and AII vibrations. The spectral dynamics at later times after the excitation (>40 ps) reveal the presence of a dissociation process of the NMA aggregates, trimers, and higher order structures into dimers and monomers. By measuring the dissociation kinetics at different temperatures, we determined the activation energy of this dissociation E(a) = 35 ± 3 kJ mol⁻¹.

Femtosecond study of the deuteron-transfer dynamics of naphtol salts in water.

We study the rate and mechanism of deuteron transfer from the photoacids 1-naphtol-4-sulfonate (1-NPS) and 2-naphtol-3,7-disulphonate (2-NPS) to acetate base in aqueous (D(2)O) solution. The photoacids are activated by excitation with 100 fs laser pulses at 267 nm. The electronic absorption and stimulated emission spectra of the photoacid and the conjugate photobase and the vibrational absorption spectra of the hydrated deuteron and the acetate base are probed with broad-band delayed 100 fs pulses at visible and mid-infrared wavelengths, respectively. A significant fraction of the deuteron transfer events are observed to occur on a timescale of <1 ps within hydrogen-bonded contact photoacid-acetate complexes. For 1-NPS, this fraction is much higher than for 2-NPS. At later delay times, the reaction is dominated by deuteron transfer through short-living water wires of different lengths that connect the photoacid and the acetate base.