Molekulares Design Stickstoffdotierter, Nanoporöser, und Edler Kohlenstoffmaterialien für Gasadsorption

In den modernen Gesellschaften führt ein stetig steigender Energiebedarf zu dem zunehmenden Verbrauch fossiler Brennstoffe wie Kohle, Öl, und Gas. Die Verbrennung dieser kohlenstoffbasierten Brennstoffe führt unweigerlich zur Freisetzung von Treibhausgasen, vor allem von CO2. Die CO2 Aufnahme unmittelbar bei den Verbrennungsanlagen oder direkt aus der Luft, zusammen mit Regulierung von CO2 produzierenden Energiesektoren (z.B. Kühlanlagen), können den CO2 Ausstoß reduzieren. Allerdings führen insbesondere bei der CO2 Aufnahme die geringen CO2 Konzentrationen und die Aufnahme konkurrierender Gase zu niedrigen CO2 Kapazitäten und Selektivitäten. Das Zusammenspiel der Gastmoleküle mit porösen Materialien ist dabei essentiell. Poröse Kohlenstoffmaterialien besitzen attraktive Eigenschaften, unter anderem elektrische Leitfähigkeit, einstellbare Porosität, als auch chemische und thermische Stabilität. Allerdings führt die zu geringe Polarisierbarkeit dieser Materialien zu einer geringen Affinität zu polaren Molekülen (z.B. CO2, H2O, oder NH3). Diese Affinität kann durch den Einbau von Stickstoff erhöht werden. Solche Materialien sind oft „edler“ als reine Kohlenstoffe, dies bedeutet, dass sie eher oxidierend wirken, als selbst oxidiert zu werden. Die Problematik besteht darin, einen hohen und gleichmäßig verteilten Stickstoffgehalt in das Kohlenstoffgerüst einzubauen. Die Zielsetzung dieser Dissertation ist die Erforschung neuer Synthesewege für stickstoffdotierte edle Kohlenstoffmaterialien und die Entwicklung eines grundlegenden Verständnisses für deren Anwendung in Gasadsorption und elektrochemischer Energiespeicherung. Es wurde eine templatfreie Synthese für stickstoffreiche, edle, und mikroporöse Kohlenstoffmaterialien durch direkte Kondensation eines stickstoffreichen organischen Moleküls als Vorläufer erarbeitet. Dadurch konnten Materialien mit hohen Adsorptionskapazitäten für H2O und CO2 bei niedrigen Konzentrationen und moderate CO2/N2 Selektivitäten erzielt werden. Um die CO2/N2 Selektivitäten zu verbessern, wurden mittels der Einstellung des Kondensationsgrades die molekulare Struktur und Porosität der Kohlenstoffmaterialien kontrolliert. Diese Materialien besitzen die Eigenschaften eines molekularen Siebs für CO2 über N2, das zu herausragenden CO2/N2 Selektivitäten führt. Der ultrahydrophile Charakter der Porenoberflächen und die kleinen Mikroporen dieser Kohlenstoffmaterialien ermöglichen grundlegende Untersuchungen für die Wechselwirkungen mit Molekülen die polarer sind als CO2, nämlich H2O und NH3. Eine weitere Reihe stickstoffdotierter Kohlenstoffmaterialien wurde durch Kondensation eines konjugierten mikroporösen Polymers synthetisiert und deren strukturelle Besonderheiten als Anodenmaterial für die Natriumionen Batterie untersucht. Diese Dissertation leistet einen Beitrag zur Erforschung stickstoffdotierter Kohlenstoffmaterialien und deren Wechselwirkungen mit verschiedenen Gastmolekülen. The growing energy demand of the modern economies leads to the increased consumption of fossil fuels in form of coal, oil, and natural gases, as the mains sources. The combustion of these carbon-based fossil fuels is inevitably producing greenhouse gases, especially CO2. Approaches to tackle the CO2 problem are to capture it from the combustion sources or directly from air, as well as to avoid CO2 production in energy consuming sources (e.g., in the refrigeration sector). In the former, relatively low CO2 concentrations and competitive adsorption of other gases is often leading to low CO2 capacities and selectivities. In both approaches, the interaction of gas molecules with porous materials plays a key role. Porous carbon materials possess unique properties including electric conductivity, tunable porosity, as well as thermal and chemical stability. Nevertheless, pristine carbon materials offer weak polarity and thus low CO2 affinity. This can be overcome by nitrogen doping, which enhances the affinity of carbon materials towards acidic or polar guest molecules (e.g., CO2, H2O, or NH3). In contrast to heteroatom-free materials, such carbon materials are in most cases “noble”, that is, they oxidize other matter rather than being oxidized due to the very positive working potential of their electrons. The challenging task here is to achieve homogenous distribution of significant nitrogen content with similar bonding motives throughout the carbon framework and a uniform pore size/distribution to maximize host-guest interactions. The aim of this thesis is the development of novel synthesis pathways towards nitrogen-doped nanoporous noble carbon materials with precise design on a molecular level and understanding of their structure-related performance in energy and environmental applications, namely gas adsorption and electrochemical energy storage. A template-free synthesis approach towards nitrogen-doped noble microporous carbon materials with high pyrazinic nitrogen content and C2N-type stoichiometry was established via thermal condensation of a hexaazatriphenylene derivative. The materials exhibited high uptake of guest molecules, such as H2O and CO2 at low concentrations, as well as moderate CO2/N2 selectivities. In the following step, the CO2/N2 selectivity was enhanced towards molecular sieving of CO2 via kinetic size exclusion of N2. The precise control over the condensation degree, and thus, atomic construction and porosity of the resulting materials led to remarkable CO2/N2 selectivities, CO2 capacities, and heat of CO2 adsorption. The ultrahydrophilic nature of the pore walls and the narrow microporosity of these carbon materials served as ideal basis for the investigation of interface effects with more polar guest molecules than CO2, namely H2O and NH3. H2O vapor physisorption measurements, as well as NH3-temperature programmed desorption and thermal response measurements showed exceptionally high affinity towards H2O vapor and NH3 gas. Another series of nitrogen-doped carbon materials was synthesized by direct condensation of a pyrazine-fused conjugated microporous polymer and their structure-related performance in electrochemical energy storage, namely as anode materials for sodium-ion battery, was investigated. All in all, the findings in this thesis exemplify the value of molecularly designed nitrogen-doped carbon materials with remarkable heteroatom content implemented as well-defined structure motives. The simultaneous adjustment of the porosity renders these materials suitable candidates for fundamental studies about the interactions between nitrogen-doped carbon materials and different guest species

Extending the dynamic range of transcription factor action by translational regulation

A crucial step in the regulation of gene expression is binding of transcription factor (TF) proteins to regulatory sites along the DNA. But transcription factors act at nanomolar concentrations, and noise due to random arrival of these molecules at their binding sites can severely limit the precision of regulation. Recent work on the optimization of information flow through regulatory networks indicates that the lower end of the dynamic range of concentrations is simply inaccessible, overwhelmed by the impact of this noise. Motivated by the behavior of homeodomain proteins, such as the maternal morphogen Bicoid in the fruit fly embryo, we suggest a scheme in which transcription factors also act as indirect translational regulators, binding to the mRNA of other transcription factors. Intuitively, each mRNA molecule acts as an independent sensor of the TF concentration, and averaging over these multiple sensors reduces the noise. We analyze information flow through this new scheme and identify conditions under which it outperforms direct transcriptional regulation. Our results suggest that the dual role of homeodomain proteins is not just a historical accident, but a solution to a crucial physics problem in the regulation of gene expression.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figure

Capturing coevolutionary signals in repeat proteins

The analysis of correlations of amino acid occurrences in globular proteins has led to the development of statistical tools that can identify native contacts -- portions of the chains that come to close distance in folded structural ensembles. Here we introduce a statistical coupling analysis for repeat proteins -- natural systems for which the identification of domains remains challenging. We show that the inherent translational symmetry of repeat protein sequences introduces a strong bias in the pair correlations at precisely the length scale of the repeat-unit. Equalizing for this bias reveals true co-evolutionary signals from which local native-contacts can be identified. Importantly, parameter values obtained for all other interactions are not significantly affected by the equalization. We quantify the robustness of the procedure and assign confidence levels to the interactions, identifying the minimum number of sequences needed to extract evolutionary information in several repeat protein families. The overall procedure can be used to reconstruct the interactions at long distances, identifying the characteristics of the strongest couplings in each family, and can be applied to any system that appears translationally symmetric

Back-reaction of perturbation wave packets on gray solitons

Within the Bogoliubov-de Gennes linearization theory of quantum or classical perturbations around a background solution to the one-dimensional nonlinear Schr\"odinger equation, we study the back-reaction of wave packet perturbations on a gray soliton background. From our recently published exact solutions, we determine that a wave packet effectively jumps ahead as it passes through a soliton, emerging with a wavelength-dependent forward translation in comparison to its motion in absence of the soliton. From this and from the full theory's exact momentum conservation, we deduce that post-Bogoliubov back-reaction must include a commensurate forward advance by the soliton itself. We quantify this effect with a simple theory, and confirm that it agrees with full numerical solution of the classical nonlinear Schr\"odinger equation. We briefly discuss the implications of this effect for quantum behavior of solitons in quasi-condensed dilute gases at finite temperature.Comment: 12 pages, 2 figure

Multi-Pulse Laser Wakefield Acceleration: A New Route to Efficient, High-Repetition-Rate Plasma Accelerators and High Flux Radiation Sources

Laser-driven plasma accelerators can generate accelerating gradients three orders of magnitude larger than radio-frequency accelerators and have achieved beam energies above 1 GeV in centimetre long stages. However, the pulse repetition rate and wall-plug efficiency of plasma accelerators is limited by the driving laser to less than approximately 1 Hz and 0.1% respectively. Here we investigate the prospects for exciting the plasma wave with trains of low-energy laser pulses rather than a single high-energy pulse. Resonantly exciting the wakefield in this way would enable the use of different technologies, such as fibre or thin-disc lasers, which are able to operate at multi-kilohertz pulse repetition rates and with wall-plug efficiencies two orders of magnitude higher than current laser systems. We outline the parameters of efficient, GeV-scale, 10-kHz plasma accelerators and show that they could drive compact X-ray sources with average photon fluxes comparable to those of third-generation light source but with significantly improved temporal resolution. Likewise FEL operation could be driven with comparable peak power but with significantly larger repetition rates than extant FELs