New Insights Into the Hydrogen Bonding of Hydrogen Sulphide

What do ice cubes in a drink have to do with the smell of grandma's famous egg salad?

15-Nov-2024 - Water and the bad smelling molecule hydrogen sulphide do not seem to have a lot in common at first sight. However, when investing a little energy, some differences disappear. At first glance, the ice cube in your soft drink and the smell of grandma’s famous egg salad don’t seem to have much in ...

Catalyst surface analysed at atomic resolution

Particles observed during the catalysis process

12-Jan-2022 - Catalyst surfaces have rarely been imaged in such detail before. And yet, every single atom can play a decisive role in catalytic activity. A German-Chinese research team has visualised the three-dimensional structure of the surface of catalyst nanoparticles at atomic resolution. This structure ...

Measuring pH locally with terahertz spectroscopy

New method to determine a local pH value near a specific site of a biomolecule

24-Nov-2020 - Nowadays, it is easy to determine an average pH for larger quantities of liquid. It is a challenge, however, to define a local pH value. Researchers at Ruhr-Universität Bochum have developed a new method to determine a local pH value near a specific site of a biomolecule. A reliable measurement ...

2018 WITec Paper Award for Outstanding Scientific Publications

31-May-2018 - Every year WITec, the Raman imaging company, recognizes three peer-reviewed publications that stand out in terms of originality and significance and feature data acquired with a WITec microscope. This year, scientists from universities and institutes in Bochum, Bayreuth and Minneapolis received ...

"Funnel" attracts bonding partners to biomolecule

Water movement as detection aid for molecules

26-Sep-2014 - Water is a ubiquitous solvent in all life sciences – sometimes referred to as the "matrix of life". Contrary to earlier assumptions, it is not a passive witness of biochemical processes; rather, it participates in them actively. By influencing the movement of water molecules surrounding their ...

Terahertz dance of amino acids

RUB chemists explain the fingerprint of dissolved glycine in the Terahertz range

01-Apr-2014 - Chemists at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) have, for the first time, completely analysed the fingerprint region of the Terahertz spectrum of a biologically relevant molecule in water, in this case, an amino acid. By combining spectroscopy and molecular-dynamics simulations, they rendered the ...

Processes at the Surface of Catalysts

Using Infrared Spectroscopy, Scientists Detect that Oxygen Defects Act as Active Centers

12-Apr-2012 - In chemical industry, heterogeneous catalysis is of crucial importance to the manufacture of basic or fine chemicals, in catalytic converters of exhaust gas, or for the chemical storage of solar energy. Scientists of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) have ...

Controlling magnetism with electric fields

RUB- researchers make high-precision measurement possible with X-ray scattering

25-Aug-2011 - An international team of researchers from France and Germany has developed a new material which is the first to react magnetically to electrical fields at room temperature. Previously this was only at all possible at extremely low and unpractical temperatures. Electric fields are technically much ...

Why fish don't freeze in the Arctic Ocean

Chemists unmask natural antifreeze

27-Aug-2010 - Together with cooperation partners from the U.S., the researchers surrounding Prof. Dr. Martina Havenith (Physical Chemistry II of the RUB) describe their discovery in a so-termed Rapid Communication in the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS). The journal's independent reviewers ...

How to count the messenger out

Mapping the structure of protonated water clusters

26-Aug-2010 - Water molecules are continuously forming short-lived networks called clusters. These can in turn bind positively charged protons, and such clusters can provide active functional groups in proteins. Using infrared spectroscopy, it is possible to determine the bond strengths, geometrical structures ...