Imaging Technique Accelerated to Capture Structures of Tiny Molecules, Enhancement of Daily Life Applications from Plastics to Pharmaceuticals

A research initiative has recently accelerated imaging techniques to visualize tiny molecules clearly, a previously believed impossible process.

The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign researchers' discovery unleashes the endless potential in enhancing daily life applications, from plastics to pharmaceuticals, a ScienceDaily report specified.

The Department of Materials Science and Engineering associate professor Pinshane Huang has teamed up with co-lead authors Blanka Janice and Priti Kharel, to prove the methodology that enables researchers to visualize tiny molecule structures and accelerate the present imaging approaches.

The team's initiatives expose the molecule's atomic structure, enabling the researchers to understand how it reacts, learn its chemical procedures and find out how to synthesize its chemical compounds.

'Thalidomide'

Additional co-authors of the study published in Nano Letters include graduate student Sang Hun Bae and undergraduates Amanda Loutris and Patrick Carmichael.

Describing their research, the study authors said the molecule's structure is fundamental to its function. Huang explained that what has been done in their work is to make it possible to see the structure directly.

In addition, the ability to see the structure of a tiny molecule is vital. Kharel shared just how essential by citing the example of a medication called "thalidomide."

Discovered in the 1960s, thalidomide served as a prescription for pregnant women to treat morning sickness and was later discovered to cause serious defects or, in some circumstances, even death.

Adverse Effects of the Drug

Thalidomide had mixed molecular structures, one accountable for treating morning sickness and another, unfortunately, causing devastating, adverse impacts to the fetus.

The necessity for proactive rather than reactive science has urged Huang and her students to pursue his study initiative that originally started with sheer curiosity.

Kharel said it is crucial to identify the structures of such molecules precisely. Usually, molecular structures are identified with indirect approaches, a time-consuming and quite challenging method that uses nuclear magnetic resonance or X-ray diffraction.

Even worse, indirect approaches can generate incorrect structures that offer scientists the wrong understanding of the structure of a molecule for decades.

The ambiguity that surrounds the structures of tiny molecules could be eliminated through the use of direct imaging approaches.

Determined, the students of Huang started to use the available large molecule methodology as a beginning point for creating imaging techniques to make the tiny molecules' structures appear.

Use of Graphene

A similar Mirage News report said that the molecule's environment could be tempered through graphene, a single layer of carbon atoms that form a "tight hexagon-shaped honeycomb lattice," dissipating damaging reactions during imaging.

Stabilizing the environment of a small molecule was just one issue the Illinois scientists needed to manage. They also needed to limit their electron use, as low as one-millionth the number of electrons typically used for the molecules to be illuminated.

Essentially, low doses of electrons guarantee that the molecules are still moving enough for the study authors to capture an image.

Huang described their work as "potentially life-changing, and we've made it exist." They haven't made it easy yet, continued the professor, although imaging techniques like this will alter so much of science and technology.

Related information about small molecules is shown on HORIBA Scientific's YouTube video below:

Check out news and information on Graphene Nanostructures in Science Times.