Surface force analysis of glycine adsorption on different crystal surfaces of titanium dioxide (TiO2)

Narangerel Ganbaatar; Kanae Imai; Taka-Aki Yano; Masahiko Hara

doi:10.1186/s40580-017-0125-y

Surface force analysis of glycine adsorption on different crystal surfaces of titanium dioxide (TiO₂)

Nano Converg. 2017;4(1):38. doi: 10.1186/s40580-017-0125-y. Epub 2017 Dec 8.

Authors

Narangerel Ganbaatar^{1

2}, Kanae Imai², Taka-Aki Yano^{1

2

3}, Masahiko Hara^{1

2

3}

Affiliations

¹ Chemical Evolution Lab Unit, Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI), Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan.
² Department of Electronic Chemistry, Interdisciplinary Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Yokohama, Japan.
³ Department of Chemical Science and Engineering, School of Materials and Chemical Technology, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Yokohama, Japan.

Abstract

Surface force analysis with atomic force microscope (AFM) in which a single amino acid residue was mounted on the tip apex of AFM probe was carried out for the first time at the molecular level on titanium dioxide (TiO₂) as a representative mineral surface for prebiotic chemical evolution reactions. The force analyses on surfaces with three different crystal orientations revealed that the TiO₂ (110) surface has unique characteristics for adsorbing glycine molecules showing different features compared to those on TiO₂ (001) and (100). To examine this difference, we investigated thermal desorption spectroscopy (TDS) and the interaction between the PEG cross-linker and the three TiO₂ surfaces. Our data suggest that the different single crystal surfaces would provide different chemical evolution field for amino acid molecules.

Keywords: Atomic force microscopy (AFM); Chemical evolution; Glycine; Origins of life; Titanium dioxide (TiO2).