This article creates a green strategy to fabricate a highly crystalline olefin-linked pyrazine-based covalent organic framework (COF) with high robustness and porosity under solvent-free conditions. This study opens up new possibilities for the green synthesis of advanced materials and provides important guidance for the rational design and synthesis of polymeric materials for proton-exchange membrane fuel cell applications.

Article reporting a nanofluidic membrane based on an ionic covalent organic framework (COF) that is capable of intelligently monitoring temperature variations and expressing it in the form of continuous potential differences. This article pioneers a way to explore COFs for mimicking the sophisticated signaling system observed in the nature.

This article describes the recent re-design of the code and the new features and improvements in performance of PAOFLOW, a software tool that constructs tight-binding Hamiltonians from self-consistent electronic wavefunctions by projecting onto a set of atomic orbitals.

Data management plan for the grant, "MRI: Acquisition of a High Performance Hybrid Computer Cluster for Computational Modeling." Research grant for the purchase, installation, and operation of a new high-performance computing (HPC) resource, called CRUNTCH4, to be deployed at the University of North Texas’ (UNT) Center for Advanced Scientific Computing and Modeling (CASCaM). This much needed HPC resource combines different computing architectures and significant amounts of data storage, all connected via a high-speed communications fabric. This computing resource will provide the means for CASCaM investigators to continue research on a broad range of topics including quantum chemistry, materials design, biomolecular simulations, machine-learning based chemical discovery, and bioinformatics, among others.

This article uses a molecularly imprinted polymer (MIP) to form a redox self-reporting MIP film-based chemosensor applied for p-synephrine determination.

Data management plan for the grant "Development of Novel Approaches to Earth-abundant Methane Catalysis." Research on catalytic cycles for C–H activation and functionalization of light alkanes based on the CMD (concerted metalation deprotonation) mechanism will be modeled for Earth-abundant metal dicarboxylates and related complexes. The impact of inner and outer coordination sphere effects upon catalytic cycles for light alkane functionalization will be assessed using computational chemistry techniques. The aforementioned studies will be leveraged to identify promising, synthetically feasible lead catalysts for experimental collaborators.

Data management plan for the grant "Metal Oxynitrides: Tuning Metal-N and Metal-O Interactions for Improved Electrocatalytic Properties at the Liquid/Solid Interface." Research investigating the fundamental chemical interactions relevant to the conversion of dinitrogen to ammonia via more energy-efficient routes. The studies will help in understanding the chemical and material factors that are most important for optimizing new materials for ammonia production from dinitrogen, and applications to other important industrial reactions.

This presentation introduces the possibility of using nanomaterials and optically active sensors in genomics research. The presenter shares the history and applications of nanomaterials, introduces their research into optical-luminescent sensors and optically active plasmonic nanoparticles, and explores how they might be used in genomics. It was presented at the UNT Transdisciplinary Conference on Ancestral Genomics Research which was held virtually on November 20-21, 2020.

Data management plan for the grant, "Developing a Biomanufacturing Platform for the Site-Selective Functionalization and Structural Diversification of Cytochalasan-Based Carbon Skeletons." This project will identify fungal enzymes that efficiently modify more than one substrate in a predictable way. Also, enzymes will be engineered to expand the range of substrates. A biomanufacturing platform to synthesize bioactive molecules at lower costs will be the end result. Fungi can synthesize small molecules with complex structures using a number of highly coordinated enzymes. These molecules are difficult to make synthetically, and they can aid in crop production or have beneficial human health effects. Cytochalasans are phytotoxic, cytotoxic and actin-binding natural products. Produced by fungi, over 400 variants have been described. The structural diversity is partly explained by the flexibility of the enzymes that introduce and modify functional groups. These enzymes structurally rearrange the core carbon skeleton in a site-selective manner, often on more than one substrate. Genome mining will be used to identify cytochalasan tailoring enzymes. Overproducing strains will be characterized chemically. Transcription factor over-expression will be investigated. Targeted gene knock-out will confirm the function and scope of the enzymes. The enzymes will be engineered to expand their substrate range. Synthetic biology and metabolic …

Data management plan for the grant "Functional Porous Organic Polymers as Advanced Decontamination Materials for Water Purification." This project seeks to develop and deploy a new class of porous organic polymers which have high capacity and selectivity to rapidly remove heavy metal contaminants well below parts per million level standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency. The project will engineer porosity and surface chemistry of porous organic polymers to clean inorganic heavy metal contaminants from both surface water and wastewater. Porous organic polymers are robust, chemically and thermally stable, scalable, and modular, with very high surface area. The modularity of these polymers allows for a molecular-level tuning of the pore structure and surface chemistry that allows for engineered site-specificity of binding sites that target the heavy metal contaminants. Recent data shows these new materials offer a significant increase in capacity relative to benchmark materials, with a rapid removal of mercury and other heavy metal ions. This project will advance the concept by exploring rational design of these porous polymers with different topologies by customizing the monomer with various binding groups. The objectives of the project include design, synthesis, and characterization, followed by assessment of these materials to remove inorganic contaminants …

This article looks at hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) which are potent greenhouse gases that are potential substitutes for ozone depleting substances. The Kigali amendment lists 17 HFCs that are currently in commercial use to be regulated under the Montreal Protocol. Future commercial applications may explore the use of other HFCs, most of which currently lack an evaluation of their climate metrics. In this work, atmospheric lifetimes, radiative efficiencies (REs), global warming potentials (GWPs), and global temperature change potentials (GTPs) for all saturated HFCs with fewer than 5 carbon atoms are estimated to help guide future usage and policy decisions.

Article describes the high-quality, 887-Mb genome of jojoba assembled into 26 chromosomes with 23,490 protein-coding genes.

Article describes the development of a physics-based molecular force field (PMFF) by integrating a set of potential energy functions in which each term in an intermolecular potential energy function is derived based on experimental values, such as the dipole moments, lattice energy, proton transfer energy, and X-ray crystal structures.

Article reports on singlet oxygen sensitization involving a class of hemiquinonoid-substituted resorcinarenes prepared from the corresponding 3,5-di-t-butyl-4-hydroxyphenyl-substituted resorcinarenes.

The articles is about a study of the response of six NIR aza-BODIPY-based and structurally similar fluorophores to polarity and viscosity for incorporation inside Pluronic nanoparticles as switchable fluorescent probes (SFPs). Based on their results, all of these fluorophores were moderately to strongly sensitive to the polarity of the microenvironment. They concluded that attaching amine groups to the fluorophore is not necessary for having strong polarity sensitive probes.