AMI seminar: Richard Sear

Room 170.048, Adolphe Merkle Institute, Marly

Thursday, January 21st, 2010  16:00 h

Nucleation of crystals: Experimental studies of protein crystallisation and computer simulations of simple models

Dr. Richard Sear

Department of Physics, Soft Condensed Matter Physics Group, University of Surrey, Guildford, UK

Crystallisation is both common and important, but many aspects of it are poorly understood. For example, undergraduate physical chemistry lab manuals recommend scratching the glass sides of a beaker to aid crystallisation from solution, but do not say why it works. I will present results that show that surfaces with nanoscale roughness can induce crystallisation of proteins in solution. Motivated by this I will present the results of computer simulations of nucleation on both flat surfaces and in wedges. These show that nucleation in wedges will dominate nucleation on the flat part of surfaces. We have also found that carefully engineering grooves on a surface can potentially control which crystal form (polymorph) forms.