Achievement

Trainee Lorraine Leon Gibbons, working with CCNY Chemical Engineering Professor Raymond Tu and Physics Professor Joel Koplik, has used Langmuir Blodgett methodologies with Brewster angle microscopy to characterize the self-assembly of beta-sheet forming peptides at the air-water interface. They have successfully developed an image analysis methodology to quantify the formation of a sheet-like fibrillar phase as a function of surface pressure, and they are simulating the interaction energies that drive the formation of assembled peptide structures. The goal is to understand both the phase behavior and the dynamics of assembly in order to control nucleation and growth processes of inorganic molecules from the subphase.