Rotational motion dynamics

Because of limitations of space, this section concentrates very little on rotational motion and its interaction with the vibrations of a molecule. However, this is an extremely important aspect of molecular dynamics of long-standing interest, and with development of new methods it is the focus of mtense investigation [18, 19, 20. 21. 22 and 23]. One very interesting aspect of rotation-vibration dynamics involving geometric phases is addressed in section A1.2.20. 

Treating the full internal nuclear-motion dynamics of a polyatomic molecule is complicated. It is conventional to examine the rotational movement of a hypothetical "rigid" molecule as well as the vibrational motion of a non-rotating molecule, and to then treat the rotation-vibration couplings using perturbation theory. 

We discuss the rotational dynamics of water molecules in terms of the time correlation functions, Ciit) = (P [cos 0 (it)]) (/ = 1, 2), where Pi is the /th Legendre polynomial, cos 0 (it) = U (0) U (it), u [, Is a unit vector along the water dipole (HOH bisector), and U2 is a unit vector along an OH bond. Infrared spectroscopy probes Ci(it), and deuterium NMR probes According to the Debye model (Brownian rotational motion), both... 

Models for description of liquids should provide us with an understanding of the dynamic behavior of the molecules, and thus of the routes of chemical reactions in the liquids. While it is often relatively easy to describe the molecular structure and dynamics of the gaseous or the solid state, this is not true for the liquid state. Molecules in liquids can perform vibrations, rotations, and translations. A successful model often used for the description of molecular rotational processes in liquids is the rotational diffusion model, in which it is assumed that the molecules rotate by small angular steps about the molecular rotation axes. One quantity to describe the rotational speed of molecules is the reorientational correlation time T, which is a measure for the average time elapsed when a molecule has rotated through an angle of the order of 1 radian, or approximately 60°. It is indirectly proportional to the velocity of rotational motion. 

Pulsed deuteron NMR is described, which has recently been developed to become a powerftd tool for studying molectdar order and dynamics in solid polymers. In drawn fibres the complete orientational distribution function for the polymer chains can be determined from the analysis of deuteron NMR line shapes. By analyzing the line shapes of 2H absorption spectra and spectra obtained via solid echo and spin alignment, respectively, both type and timescale of rotational motions can be determined over an extraordinary wide range of characteristic frequencies, approximately 10 MHz to 1 Hz. In addition, motional heterogeneities can be detected and the resulting distribution of correlation times can directly be determined. 

We would like to point out that an order parameter indicates the static property of the lipid bilayer, whereas the rotational motion, the oxygen transport parameter (Section 4.1), and the chain bending (Section 4.4) characterize membrane dynamics (membrane fluidity) that report on rotational diffusion of alkyl chains, translational diffusion of oxygen molecules, and frequency of alkyl chain bending, respectively. The EPR spin-labeling approach also makes it possible to monitor another bulk property of lipid bilayer membranes, namely local membrane hydrophobicity. 

Here r0 is the limiting anisotropy obtained in the absence of rotational motion. The dynamic range of anisotropy sensing is determined by the difference of this parameter observed for free sensor, which is commonly the rapidly rotating unit and the sensor-target complex that exhibits a strongly decreased rate of rotation. 

Figure 4.1. Time scales for rotational motions of long DNAs that contribute to the relaxation of the optical anisotropy r(t). Experimental methods used to study these motions in different time ranges are also indicated along with the authors and dates of some early work in each case. FPA, Fluorescence polarization anisotropy (Refs. 15, 18-20, and 87) TPD, transient photodichroism (Refs. 28 and 62) TEB, transient electric birefringence (Refs. 26 and 27) DDLS, depolarized dynamic light scattering (Ref. 116) TED, transient electric dichroism (Refs. 25, 115, and 130) Microscopy, time-resolved fluorescent microscopy (Ref. 176).

Rose and Benjamin studied the water dipole and the water H-H vector reorientation dynamics at the water/Pt( 100) interface and the results are reproduced in Fig. 4. As in the case of the translational diffusion, the effect of the surface is to significantly slow down the adsorbed water layer. We note that the effect is very short range, and that the rotational motion of water molecules in the second layer is already very close to the one in bulk water. 

In all the approaches mentioned below, it is assumed that the correlation function can be factorized into a product of correlation functions for the three degrees of freedom rotational motion, translational diffusion and electron spin dynamics. 

For a molecular crystal, the internal modes tend to be q independent and thus appear as horizontal lines in Fig. 2.1 n is then equal to the number of molecules M in the cell, leading to a considerable simplification. The resulting dynamical matrix has 6M x 6M elements, considering both translational and rotational motions, and atom-atom potential functions may be used for its evaluation. Dispersion curves obtained in this manner for anthracene and naphthalene, are illustrated in Fig. 2.2. 

The motional dynamics of O J adsorbed on Ti supported surfaces has been analyzed over the temperature range 4.2-400 K in a recent paper by Shiotani et al. (66). Of the several types of 02, a species noted as 02 (III), and characterized by gxx = 2.0025, gyy = 2.0092, g12 = 2.0271 at 4.2 K, exhibited highly anisotropic motion. While gxx and gzz varied with increasing temperature and were accompanied by drastic line shape changes, gyy was found to remain constant. This observation indicates that the molecular motion of this 02 can be described by rotation about the y axis perpendicular to the internuclear axis of 02 and perpendicular to the surface with the notation given in Fig. 4. The EPR line shapes were simulated for different possible models and it was found that a weak jump rotational diffusion gave a best fit of the observed spectra below 57.4 K, whereas some of the models could fit the data above this temperature. The rotational correlation time was found to range from 10 5 sec (below 14.5 K) to 10 9 sec (263 K), while the... 

In the second half of this article, we discuss dynamic properties of stiff-chain liquid-crystalline polymers in solution. If the position and orientation of a stiff or semiflexible chain in a solution is specified by its center of mass and end-to-end vector, respectively, the translational and rotational motions of the whole chain can be described in terms of the time-dependent single-particle distribution function f(r, a t), where r and a are the position vector of the center of mass and the unit vector parallel to the end-to-end vector of the chain, respectively, and t is time, (a should be distinguished from the unit tangent vector to the chain contour appearing in the previous sections, except for rodlike polymers.) Since this distribution function cannot describe internal motions of the chain, our discussion below is restricted to such global chain dynamics as translational and rotational diffusion and zero-shear viscosity. 

When the solution is dilute, the three diffusion coefficients in Eq. (40a, b) may be calculated only by taking the intramolecular hydrodynamic interaction into account. In what follows, the diffusion coefficients at infinite dilution are signified by the subscript 0 (i.e, D, 0, D10> and Dr0). As the polymer concentration increases, the intermolecular interaction starts to become important to polymer dynamics. The chain incrossability or topological interaction hinders the translational and rotational motions of chains, and slows down the three diffusion processes. These are usually called the entanglement effect on the rotational and transverse diffusions and the jamming effect on the longitudinal diffusion. In solving Eq. (39), these effects are taken into account by use of effective diffusion coefficients as will be discussed in Sect. 6.3. 

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