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Cryoadsorption on the inner surface of porous materials is a promising solution for safe, fast, and reversible hydrogen storage. Within the class of highly porous metal−organic frameworks, zeolitic imidazolate frameworks (ZIFs) show high thermal, chemical, and mechanical stability. In this study, we selected ZIF-8 synthesized mechanochemically by twin-screw extrusion as powder and pellets. The hydrogen storage capacity at 77 K and up to 100 bar has been analyzed in two laboratories applying three different measurement setups showing a high reproducibility. Pelletizing ZIF-8 increases the packing density close to the corresponding value for a single crystal without loss of porosity, resulting in an improved volumetric hydrogen storage capacity close to the upper limit for a single crystal. The high volumetric uptake combined with a low and constant heat of adsorption provides ca. 31 g of usable hydrogen per liter of pellet assuming a temperature−pressure swing adsorption process between 77 K − 100 bar and 117 K − 5 bar. Cycling experiments do not indicate any degradation in storage capacity. The excellent stability during preparation, handling, and operation of ZIF-8 pellets demonstrates its potential as a robust adsorbent material for technical application in pilot- and full-scale adsorption vessel prototypes.
Utilizing Aspergillus niger Fumonisin Amine Oxidase for the Electrochemical Detection of Fumonisin
(2023)
Fumonisins are a class of toxic secondary metabolites produced by various Fusarium species. The two most important producers of fumonisins are F. verticillioides and F. proliferatum but also Aspergillus niger is known to produce fumonisins. Most frequently they occur on maize, but also other grains can be contaminated with this group of mycotoxins. Exposure to fumonisins by dietary intake can have serious health effects on farm animals and also within humans. Thus, the European Commission sets legal limits for fumonisins in feed and foodstuffs. The detection of fumonisins is frequently performed in laboratories by chromatographic methods, which are costly and require trained personnel. Simplifying the analysis is therefore a major goal using portable detection systems. Electrochemical enzymatic biosensors offer great promise to meet this demand. Here we report for the first time an enzymatic fumonisin sensing approach with amperometric detection. For this purpose, an Aspergillus niger fumonisin amine oxidase (AnFAO) catalyzing the oxidative deamination of fumonisins, producing hydrogen peroxide, was recombinantly produced in E. coli. It was found that the specific activity of AnFAO using 20 μM Fumonisin B1 as substrate is higher than for 20 μM Fumonisin B2 with 0.122 U mg-1 and 0.058 U mg-1, respectively. It was possible to show a dependence of enzyme activity with enzyme – and substrate-concentration. For fumonisin B1 detection, the enzyme was coupled covalently to magnetic particles and the enzymatically produced H2O2 was detected amperometrically in a flow injection system using Prussian blue carbon electrodes. The developed method allows to quantify fumonisin B1 concentrations down to 1.5 µM and demonstrates that the recombinantly produced AnFAO was able to deaminate different concentrations of fumonisin even in immobilized form. Thus, this enzyme is well suited to develop an enzyme based electrochemical biosensor for fumonisin contaminated food and feed.
Gas Chromatography coupled with Electron Ionisation Mass Spectrometry (GC-EI-MS) is a well-established technique which, in combination with spectral libraries, has the potential to identify compounds in a sample. Nevertheless, most libraries are dominated by spectra with nominal mass resolution which does not allow to make full use of the data generated by modern high-resolution instruments. The production of high-resolution spectral library is time consuming and expensive, while in silico fragmentation tools that are capable of generating HR mass spectra are still too computationally intensive. We explored the alternative of using ML models to upscale existing spectral libraries. The models were trained with spectra from the RECETOX metabolome (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.5483564), RECETOX Exposome (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.4471216), and MassBank (10.5281/zenodo.7436394) HR-GC-MS libraries. The model was used to generate a synthetic library which was compared with a synthetic library simulated with CFM-ID (DOI: 10.1021/acs.analchem.6b01622).
Non-target (NT) mass spectrometry techniques play a crucial role in metabolomics applications, particularly in areas such as environmental safety. Soft ionization methods, such as electrospray ionization (ESI), are commonly employed due to their ability to generate spectra containing molecular ions, aiding in the identification of unknown peaks. However, ESI may fail to ionize certain compounds effectively, resulting in their absence in NT approaches. In contrast, hard ionization methods like electron impact (EI) can ionize a wide range of compounds but often lack information about the molecular ion. Although extensive databases of EI spectra exist, their nominal mass resolution (NR) limits their utility for modern high-resolution (HR) EI mass spectrometers. Here, the often-applied conversion of HR spectra to nominal mass leads to the loss of unique characteristics, i.e. by grouping distinct masses into more ambiguous nominal masses.
Our study aims to (i) quantify the negative impact of such a binning approach and (ii) develop a machine learning (ML) tool capable of enhancing existing nominal mass spectral libraries. In the initial phase, we employed the RECETOX Exposome HR-[EI+]-MS library to assess the influence of HR spectra on identification. We compared the dot product of each spectrum against all others, utilizing bin sizes of 0.001 and 1 Da. The difference in dot product between the second-best candidate and the query spectrum (the best candidate, with a score of 1) was calculated for both HR and nominal mass spectra. Subsequently, we explored the application of ML techniques to predict HR spectra from nominal mass spectra using the before mentioned dataset.
Preliminary findings demonstrate the potential of high-resolution spectral libraries. As anticipated, HR spectra consistently exhibited lower similarity scores for the second candidate. This observation likely stems from the high redundancy and resulting ambiguity associated with nominal masses. Even after eliminating spectra containing multiple HR masses mapped to the same nominal mass, the aforementioned trend persisted. Furthermore, initial investigations into ML have revealed its ability to predict up to 40% of HR masses within a 10 mDa precision window.
Counterfeiting of goods has serious economic implications worldwide and can be a threat to human health and safety. Upconversion nanoparticles (UCNPs)are ideal candidates for optical encoding of various materials. Particles with tailor-made emission patterns can be used as anti-counterfeiting markers and luminophores in security inks and to track material flows. Microenvironment-specific changes in the emission properties of the UCNP tags can be used to study, signal, and sense changes of physico-chemical parameters in different environments, e.g., building
materials.
Safety is a key parameter for the design and construction of buildings. The most widely used construction material to date is concrete that consists of about 15-20 wt.-% cement, which is responsible for the main concrete properties, i.e., strength and durability. Despite many standards regulating the quality of cement, at present, there exists no viable method to track the cement life cycle “from cradle to grave”. This led to an increasing interest in simple and robust methods for studying the processes and changes occurring during the life cycle of cement. In this context, we explored the applicability of fluorescence measurements which can be performed with relatively inexpensive and miniaturized instrumentation yet require robust optical probes which survive the harsh cement environment. Therefore, we developed a platform of lanthanide-based upconversion nanoparticles (UCNPs), consisting of a NaYF4 matrix doped with Yb3+ and Er3+ with sizes between 20 nm and 55 nm, which show characteristic multi-color emission patterns, composed of narrow bands of varying intensity in the ultraviolet, visible, near-infrared, and short-wave spectral region and examined their potential for cement probing and the non-invasive monitoring of the hydration processes occurring during cement formation.
UCNPs of different size and chemical composition were synthesized via a thermal decomposition approach under inert conditions. The tailor-made design of different emission patterns was achieved by tuning particle size and morphology, material composition, and particle surface chemistry in upscaleable syntheses. For cement probing, different types of UCNPs were added to cement and the evolution of the UCNP emission pattern was used to probe in-situ changes of physico-chemical parameters in the cementitious environment during hydration, utilizing a simple and portable custom-designed optical setup. The observed changes in the UCNP emission patterns are characteristic for a given particle size, surface chemistry, and cement composition. In addition to fluorescence measurements, conventional isothermal heat flow calorimetry was used to study the influence of UCNP addition on cement hydration kinetics. Subsequently, both sets of measurements were correlated. Our results underline the potential of our optical approach ad UCNPs for the non-invasive probing of cementitious systems and cement hydration. This can be also exploited for cutting-edge applications of construction materials such as 3D concrete printing.
Thermo-Desorption Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (TD-GC-MS) was used to investigate the thermal degradation of two different polyurethanes (PU). PU samples were heated at different heating rates and the desorbed products were collected in a cold injection system and thereafter submitted to GC-MS. Prospects and limitations of the detection and quantification of semi-volatile degradation products were investigated. A temperature dependent PU depolymerization was
found at temperatures above 200 °C proved by an increasing release of 1,4-butanediol and methylene diphenyl diisocyanate (MDI) representing the main building blocks of both polymers. Their release was monitored quantitatively based on external calibration with authentic compounds. Size Exclusion Chromatography (SEC) of the residues obtained after thermodesorption confirmed the initial competitive degradation mechanism indicating an equilibrium of crosslinking and depolymerization as previously suggested. Matrix-Assisted Laser Desorption Ionization (MALDI) mass spectrometry of SEC fractions of thermally degraded PUs provided additional hints on degradation mechanism.
Optical Thermometry is popular among researchers because of its non-contact, high sensitivity, and fast measurement properties. In the present experiment, Er3+/Yb3+/K+ co-doped NaYF4 nanoparticles with different K+ concentrations were synthesized by solvothermal method, and the samples showed bright upconversion green emission under the excitation of a 980 nm laser. The powder X-ray diffractometer and transmission electron microscope were used to characterize the crystal structure and its surface morphology, respectively. The spectral characteristics of nanoparticles with K+ doping concentration from 10% to 30% (Molar ratio) were investigated by fluorescence spectroscopy, and it was observed that the fluorescence intensity reached the maximum at the K+ concentration of 20%, after which the intensity weakened when the K+ content continued to increase. According to the dependence between the luminescence intensity of the sample and the laser power density and fluorescence lifetime, the intrinsic mechanism was carefully investigated. Temperature-dependent spectra of the samples were recorded in the temperature range of 315–495 K, and the maximum values of absolute sensitivity (Sa) and relative sensitivity (Sr) were measured at 0.0041 K−1 (455 K) and 0.9220%K−1 (315 K). The experimental results show that K+/Er3+/Yb3+ triple-doped NaYF4 green fluorescent nanoparticles (GFNs) have good prospects for applications in display devices, temperature sensing, and other fields.
At present, the field of research on nanostructures is actively developing, which is due to their unique physico-chemical properties compared to bulk materials. Many research activities are focused on obtaining nanocomposites, which combine various types of nanostructures with different properties and function. For example, the development of magneto-luminescent nanocomposites makes it possible to use their luminescence for optical imaging, and their magnetic properties for magnetic targeted delivery and as agents of hyperthermia and magnetic resonance imaging.
My master studies as part of the project Goszadanie 2019-1080 at ITMO were focused on the investigation of nanocomposites, consisting of semiconductor quantum dots (QDs) as luminescent component and superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPIONs) as magnetic one, in solution and during their incubation with HeLa cells. The spectrally resolved analysis of the QD photoluminescence (PL) kinetics of the free QDs and the QDs incorporated in these nanocomposites undergoing energy transfer processes allowed for (1) understanding the reasons for the quenching of QD luminescence in cells, (2) evaluating the average distance between the QDs and, based on this, concluding the degree of QD aggregation in cells, and (3) drawing conclusions about the QD-quencher composites integrity in cells. Overall, the analysis of the PL kinetics confirmed that QDs and SPIONs remain bound in the obtained nanocomposites during incubation with cells.
To ensure the successful advancement of nanomaterials in biomedicine and the transition from their laboratory preparation and studies to their use in different applications and in industry, it is crucial to develop reliable measurement methods and reference materials candidates for the characterization of functional nanomaterials and assessing the quality of the obtained nanostructures. My recently started project at BAM, which is part of the EU metrology project MeTrINo, will be devoted to this topic. There we will focus on the development of methodologies for the synthesis and characterization of iron oxide nanoparticles, already used in biomedicine, and multi-element lanthanide-based nanoparticles with attractive upconversion luminescence, as reference materials with high monodispersity and reproducibility. Also, these nanoparticles will be functionalized with organic dyes for optical imaging and, probably, the study of the energy transfer phenomena.