Dr. James Cowin
Pacific Northwest National Labs
EMSI Visiting Scholar
April 10 - 11, 2000

Seminar: "Proton Transport at the Oil/Water Interface"
Tuesday, April 11, 2000, 4:30pm, 415 Schapiro CEPSR

Proton motion at the interface between organic and aqueous media is a crucial step in many systems: fuel cells, multiphase industrial reactions and extractions, the function of biological cell membranes and enzymes. Solvation tends to keep the ion in the aqueous media, while electric fields, strategically placed polarizable groups and thermal motions can coax it into the organic media. We use a "chemist's ion beam," (a 1 eV mass selected hydronium ion source) to soft-land ions onto carefully constructed nanometer models aqueous/organic interfaces, to directly probe the competition between these forces.