Marsden Research Highlighted in Stuff News Feature
The Ennis lab Marsden Fund research project toward the synthesis of life-bearing organic molecules from co-crystals in Titan’s environment was featured in an article in Stuff News NZ; also touching on broader planetary chemistry and Courtney’s career path to Otago Chemistry. Check it out here:
Kiwi scientist looking for bits of life on Saturn’s moon Titan
Propanal Crystal Structure Now Solved
Just hitting the shelves in PCCP is our collaborative work with Helen Maynard-Casely at ANSTO and Sam Duyker at USyd where we have solved the solid structure of propanal ice absent from the literature. Based on Nick Yevstigneyev’s CHEM390 and Summer Scholarship project at Chemistry Otago, we now have data to look for this small astromolecule, and potential amino acid precursor, in planetary environments.
Read Here: Maynard-Casely, Yevstigneyev, Duyker & Ennis, PCCP, 2021
ODT feature on the Ennis lab
A short article and video of the Marsden Fund supported research project was featured in the Otago Daily Times this week. Please click to see Courtney at the controls of the astrochemistry surface experiment and discussing Dragonfly’s search for life’s molecular building blocks on Titan.
Marsden Success!!!
The Ennis group, in collaboration with Helen Maynard-Casely (ANSTO) and Morgan Cable and Robert Hodyss (NASA JPL), are extremely delighted to announce that our full Marsden Fund proposal – the investigation of co-crystal chemistry on Titan – has been funded 2022 through 2024. We will be very excited to advertise positions for a PhD and Postdoc on experimental astrochemistry studies at the University of Otago in the near future, where opportunities to travel and work alongside this fantastic group of AIs in their respective laboratories will form part of the project. We can’t wait to get started on this new international collaboration!
Please read more about our work here in the Marsden Fund press release:
Synchrotron Far-IR for MOF Morphology Changes
Appearing in the pages of the Journal of Physical Chemistry C this month is a collaboration between the Ennis and Meledandri workgroups interrogating the gas adsorption and thermal properties of Cu(II)BTC MOF nonparticles with synchrotron far-infrared and periodic DFT. Here we prevent peculiar, temperature dependent, structural changes between HKUST-1 polymorphs; revealed by low frequency lattice and torsional modes. Thanks to Subo Lee at Massey for some additional characterisation.
Read Here: Ennis, Tay, Falconer, Lee & Meledandri (2021) JPCC
Hydrogen-bonded cavitands for cation encapsulation
Just published in RSC Chemical Science is a report by Jordan Smith from the Lucas group on new cavitand dimers bound by hydrogen-bonding interactions. The Ennis group have contributed DFT calculations to determine binding energies for a range of neutral and cationic guest species to corroborate NMR titrations. Have a read!
Flexible Hydrogen-bonded Organic Frameworks
Just published is the Ennis workgroup’s first collaboration with the Lyall Hanton lab. This research involves Beth Lippitt’s PhD work into flexible, hydrogen-bonded organic frameworks. Our contribution includes periodic DFT calculations and vibrational mode analysis to quantify the strength of various carboxylic acid dimer bonding geometries holding these interesting structural polymorphs together.
Read more about this work here: Lippitt et al. (2020) Cryst. Growth Des.
Illicit Drug Fingerprints at the Australian Synchrotron
All welcome to read the work of Ennis group member Will Graf’s Honours (La Trobe 2018) research on the forensic detection of amphetamine class compounds using Far-Infrared wavelengths. A collaboration with the Victoria Police Forensic Services Division, Will collected spectra of a series of illicit drug samples at the Australian Synchrotron Terahertz beamline before assigning low frequency vibrational modes through periodic DFT modelling. Nice job indeed!
Link: Graf, Pearson, Appadoo, Robertson & Ennis (2020) Vibrational Spectroscopy
Ternary-phase Co-crystals on Titan
Coming out the other side of lock-down, we are happy to announce the publication of our latest DFT theory work predicting possible cyanide-bearing co-crystals in Titan’s atmosphere. This paper is our first output with new collaborators Helen Maynard-Casely at ANSTO Sydney and Morgan Cable and Robert Hodyss at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratories. Experiments to characterise this interesting co-crystal to follow…
Link: Ennis, Cable, Hodyss, Maynard-Casely (2020) ACS Earth & Space Chemistry
Synchrotron Visit
We are excited to report that some very clean diffraction patterns were collected by Summer Scholarship holder Nick Yevstigneyev at the Australian Synchrotron Powder Diffraction beamline during the Ennis group’s latest visit. A new structure for his space ice system should be coming soon!
Here is Nick finding his way to the linear accelerator which supplies the electrons for the booster ring… during maintenance shut-down and not operation!
