2019 article
EPR studies of bionanomaterials
ELECTRON MAGNETIC RESONANCE - APPLICATIONS IN PHYSICAL SCIENCES AND BIOLOGY, Vol. 50, pp. 129–159.
Nanotechnology is broadly defined as the practical applications of nanoscale objects having dimensions from ca. 1 to 100 nm. At such atomic scale small clusters of atoms and molecules are exhibiting some rather intriguing physical, chemical, and biological properties that are absent in bulk materials of the same composition and the surface interactions become the dominant factors. Furthermore, one can combine manmade nanoobjects with genetically programmed self-assembled biomacromolecules to produce bionanomaterials – a fruitful avenue of research and technology development. The growth in bionanomaterials’ research creates additional demands for spectroscopic and analytical methods capable of characterizing the nanoscale objects and especially interfacial phenomena in a non-destructive way. Electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) is one of the techniques that could meet this challenge. This chapter discusses some recent applications of EPR in studies bionanomaterials with particular emphasis on the interfacial properties of the nanoobjects and their interactions with biomacromolecules.