Atomic Force Microscopy - a remarkable technique in supramolecular chemistry and biophysics

Seminar

Title: Atomic Force Microscopy: a remarkable technique in supramolecular chemistry and biophysics

Speaker: David Olea

Affiliation: Instituto de Catalisis y Petroleoquímica, CSIC, Madrid

Host: Inês Cardoso Pereira

Abstract:

Atomic Force microscopy is a high-resolution type of scanning probe microscopy developed by Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer in the early 1980s. It allows a resolution of few amstrongs and is nowadays one of the most used techniques for imaging, measuring and manipulating materials at the nanoscale. AFM attracted quickly the interest of chemists since it allows molecular resolution, but also to probe a large variety of molecular and supra-molecular properties such as mechanical, electrical or magnetic characteristics. In the biophysical side, this microscopy has been used to image a broad range of biomolecules, like DNA and proteins, to probe DNA-protein interactions, to study lipidic membranes and even to image cells and bacterial biofilms. We are going to focus on showing some examples of applications that could be interesting for chemists and biologists, from molecular self-assembling to the study of electrode colonization by an acidiphilic bacteria.
 
Short cv :

David Olea got his doctorate in physical chemistry by the University of Bordeaux I, (Bordeaux, France). He performed two postdoctoral stances in the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, Spain where he worked on molecular nanowires, supramolecular chemistry, and molecule-DNA interactions. He currently works in the Instituto de Catalisis y Petroleoquímica in Madrid, in the field of biofuel cells.