Nanowerk January 10, 2022 Understanding the relationship between protein structural dynamics and function is crucial for both basic research and biotechnology. However, methods for studying the fast dynamics of structural changes are limited. Researchers in Canada have developed fluorescent nanoantennas as a spectroscopic technique to sense and report protein conformational changes through noncovalent dye-protein interactions. Using experiments and molecular simulations, they detected and characterized five distinct conformational states of intestinal alkaline phosphatase, including the transient enzyme–substrate complex. They explored the universality of the nanoantenna strategy with another model protein, Protein G and its interaction with antibodies, and demonstrated a rapid […]
Tag Archives: Nanoantenna
A nanoantenna for long-distance, ultra-secure communication
Phys.org November 16, 2021 Converting photon-based information to electron-based information are highly inefficient. To increase the efficiency of converting single photons into single electrons in gallium arsenide quantum dots an international team of researchers (Japan, Germany) designed a nanoantenna, consisting of ultra-small concentric rings of gold, to focus light onto a single quantum dot. It resulted in a voltage readout from their device enhancing photon absorption by a factor of up to 9. After illuminating a single quantum dot, most of the photogenerated electrons weren’t trapped there, instead accumulated in impurities or other locations in the device. Nevertheless, these excess […]
Novel thermoelectric nanoantenna design for use in solar energy harvesting
Nanowerk May 3, 2019 Researchers in Mexico fabricated and compared bimetallic Ni-Pt nanoantennas for a classic and evolutive dipole configuration. Observing the thermoelectric voltage dependence associated with classic and evolutive dipole configuration they found that the evolutive dipole nanoantennas (EDN) generate up to three times more voltage in contrast with the classic dipole nanoantenna (CDN). The evolutive configuration is 1.3 times more efficient than its classical counterpart. The results are corroborated by absorbance of these nanoantennas in the 20 to 36 THz range, where EDN is 40% more efficient than CDN and 30% in the range of 36.1 to 90 […]