The Fritz Haber Center for Physical Chemistry

Lucio Frydman, Director

The Fritz Haber Center supports various scientific activities in the fields of Physical Chemistry and Chemical Physics. The support of the Center is given directly to research groups to help initiate new endeavors and for ongoing activities. The support is usually dedicated to the purchase of new scientific equipment, upgrade of operating laboratories and extension of existing experimental systems.

During the 2009/2010 period the Center supported the purchase of scientific equipment for the following projects:

• Fritz Haber Center support was used to launch a project on computational electromagnetics with the emphasis on modeling experiments on near-field optics and nanoplasmonics. With this, a high-performance workstation that allowed scientists to perform the above exploratory studies was purchased (Prof. Ilya Averbukh, Dept. Chemical Physics, PI)
• A new 12 channel peristaltic pump was purchased. This is a high-accuracy, high-resolution pump that was acquired to simulate realistic flow rates of key pharmaceutical and personal care products. Funding from the Fritz Haber Center will permit us to carry out investigations on the effects introduced by heavy metals present in laboratory columns containing natural soils or in aquifer materials, and how these affect market-oriented products. (Prof. Brian Berkowitz, Dept. Environmental Sciences, PI).
• An animal monitoring system was purchased for performing magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) research on animals. This device enabled a precise calibration of the anesthetic conditions needed to implement long-term experiments on small rodents; it also provided the triggering signals needed to synchronize complex single-scan multidimensional MRI experiments. (Prof. Lucio Frydman, Dept. Chemical Physics, PI).
• With partial funding from the Fritz Haber Center, an HPLC for purifying biological samples (proteins, peptides and RNAs) was purchased. This HPLC allows us to prepare suitable amounts of sample to carry out electron paramagnetic resonance studies on reaction mechanism of metal-containing enzymes; on the mechanism of how enzymes bind to RNA; peptide-membrane interactions using spin labels; and on the electronic structure of electron transfer mediating Cu–containing proteins. (Prof. Daniella Goldfarb, Dept. Chemical Physics, PI).
• A special Xenon lamp to implement light microscopy studies was purchased. This lamp is used as the illumination source in a dark-field microscopy /spectroscopy system. This system takes Mie scattering spectra of individual metal nanoparticle clusters. We correlate the measured spectra with electron microscopy-derived structural information and electromagnetic calculations. (Prof. Gilad Haran, Dept. Chemical Physics, PI).
• Fritz Haber Center support was used to purchase and install a special excimer laser. This system is used for studies focusing on the interactions between DNA and surfaces; using novel laser pulsing techniques the unique electronic nature of these interactions can be elucidated (Prof. Ron Naaman, Dept. of Chemical Physics, PI).
• With the Center's support, an atomic force microscopy controller and stage could be upgraded. This in turn enables state of the art AFM measurements on the nanometer scale. These measurements are integral parts of the 'bottom-up' construction of nanomaterials, as well as applications of the newly developed nanostructures being developed in a layer-by-layer fashion for chemical and biological applications. (Prof. I. Rubinstein, Dept. Materials and Interfaces, PI).
• Using support from the Fritz Haber center a blue diode laser for aerosol spectroscopy was purchased. This diode laser is used in a photoacoustic cell coupled to a cavity ring down spectrometer. The instrument is used to measure the absorption and total extinction by aerosol particles and to derive their complex refractive index. (Prof. Yinon Rudich, Dept. Environmental Sciences, PI).
• A Dual-Channel dynamic signal analyzer was purchased, as part of a new setup being installed to enable single-molecule electronic conductivity measurements. This analyzer is an integral part of new molecular electronic efforts being pursued in the search of the ultimate, single-molecule electronic device (Dr. Oren Tal, Dept. Chemical Physics, PI).
• A High-Speed Digitizer was purchased, to enable the direct detection of EPR signals at 95GHz. This digitizer is part of a brand new dynamic nuclear polarizer being built in the Institute to probe the nature of electron-to-nuclear polarization transfers at cryogenic temperatures (Prof. Shimon Vega, Dept. Chemical Physics, PI).