CHM 598 - Advanced Electrochemistry
Daniel Buttry
T-TH 9:00 AM – 10:15 AM
Overview: This is a graduate level analytical chemistry class designed to provide you with a fundamental understanding of electrochemistry and its applications in both routine use and the non-routine research setting. It will also provide you with an overview of electrochemical research as it is now being practiced, which will necessarily involve some other areas. The objective of the course is for you to be proficient enough with electrochemical methods to use them in your research and to understand others' use of them. The text is a newer edition of the classic book by Bard and Faulkner. It is much improved over the first version, especially in its discussions of selected specific electrochemical systems, surfaces, etc. We will discuss molecular aspects of electrochemistry even more than the text does. The topics we will cover include the following:
1. Basic notions of potentials and how to think about electrochemical cells
2. Mass transport, including diffusion, convection and transport driven by electric fields (migration)
3. Concentration profiles and their relation to currents at electrochemical interfaces
4. Electron transfer. The influence of electron transfer kinetics on electrochemical responses
5. Potential step methods (chronoamperometry and chronocoulometry)
6. Potential sweep methods, especially cyclic voltammetry, which is a widely used electrochemical method
7. A very brief discussion of pulse and other methods, including polarography (we may leave this out)
8. Hydrodynamic and microelectrode electrochemical experiments
9. Coupled chemical reactions
10. A brief introduction to electrochemical instrumentation
11. How surface characteristics influence electrochemical responses and how electrochemistry can be used to understand surface chemistry
12. Use of non-electrochemical measurements to study electrochemistry (IR, uv-vis, Raman, EQCM, scanning probe microscopies, etc.)
13. Simulation of electrochemical processes
14. Special topics (fuel cells and batteries, conducting polymers, electrochemistry of nanoscopic materials, etc.)
CHM 598 - Topics in Physical Organic Chemistry
Devens Gust
T Th 9:00 AM – 10:15 AM
This course will focus on a number of concepts and principles of physical organic chemistry that are often encountered in research in organic chemistry and related areas. Some of the topics to be discussed are organic structure and stereochemistry, organic photochemistry including energy and electron transfer, and the kinetics of organic reactions. Treatment will be at a practical, rather than highly theoretical, level.
CHM 598 – Nucleic Acids (See Flyer)
Sidney Hecht
T Th 9:00 AM – 10:15 AM
This course will consider current topics in the area of nucleic acids from the perspective of biological chemistry. Topics to be covered include:
• Chemical synthesis of RNA and DNA
• Enzymatic methods for the preparation and manipulation of nucleic acids
• RNA/DNA structure
• Classes of nucleic acids
• Transcription and RNA processing
• Translation: the ribosome
• Spectroscopic tools for reporting on RNA/DNA structure
• Reporter groups for the analysis of nucleic acid structure
• Small molecule-DNA interactions
• Protein-nucleic acid interactions
• Antisense/antigene oligonucleotides
• Catalytic RNA’s, riboswitches
• Selection methods: SELEX, mRNA display, aptamers
• RNAi, microRNAs
CHM 598 – Thermodynamics of Natural Systems (See Flyer)
Everett Shock
T Th 10:30 AM – 11:45 AM
The application of thermodynamics to understand geochemical transformations, bioenergetics, and environmental chemistry processes, as well as the energetic basis for sustainability
598 Advanced Analytical Chemistry Lab Workshop
Mark Hayes
M W 12:00 Noon – 1:15 PM W 2:00 PM– 4:30 PM
This is a ‘hands-on’ course for typical analytical and physical chemistry laboratory skills at the graduate level. Practical theory along with actual fabrication and testing of optics, basic electronics, analog and digital electronics (and their interfacing), spectroscopy (sources, detectors), sampling theory, signal processing, electrochemistry, and separations. At the end of this course the student will be competent and confident in all basic laboratory skills associated with instrumental-based chemical measurements needed for success in the laboratory.
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