Lawrence W. Potts Students working with Professor Potts are investigating synthetic polymers and their chemical and physical interactions at a variety of surfaces. There is considerable interest in polymers made by heating dicarboxylic amino acids such as aspartic acid and glutamic acid in the absence of oxygen.
Heating causes dehydration, and can lead to products such as polyamides.
Our successful synthesis and characterization of polyaspartic acid and its intermediate forms led us to try the polymerization of glutamic acid. Chemisorption of glutamate oligomers onto mineral and metal oxide surfaces We have designed and successfully synthesized an 8-unit oligomer of glutamic acid. We anticipate that chemical bonding between our new peptide and an HA surface should be quite strong, as a consequence of the close fit, and that we might be able to learn more about how proteins and enzymes bind to such surfaces. A recent grant from the National Science Foundation helped us to purchase equipment to build and maintain two high vacuum systems, one for vapor deposition of metals, and the other for plasma cleaning and controlled oxidation of surfaces. These systems are used in conjunction with a new scanning tunneling microscope, also a component of the grant.