Magdalena Almén

Diffraction from protein crystals remains the central pathway to high-quality protein structure determination, but a universal approach to crystallization has not been presented. This lack is linked to the underlying fundamental complexity of protein crystallization: proteins are nonspherical, flexible macromolecules with highly anisotropic interactions. Anisotropic sticky attraction can induce amorphous aggregation, and a better understanding […]

Proton-conducting oxides are materials of huge interest for a variety of applications, such as electrolytes in membrane reactors or in proton-conducting fuel cells (PCFC) operating in the intermediate temperature range, T = 200 – 500°C. A limiting factor pertaining to the performance of present-day PCFC devices is a too low proton conductivity of the electrolyte […]

The great advantage of using neutron scattering within the Life Sciences is not only the greater sensitivity towards hydrogen as compared to using X-rays as probe instead, but more importantly the ability to distinguish hydrogen from its heavier isotope deuterium.  This property enables highlighting different parts within a molecule or a molecular complex, and has […]

Nonlamellar lipid liquid crystalline phases have many potential applications, such as for drug delivery, protein encapsulation or crystallization. Lipid liquid crystalline sponge phase (L3) has so far not been very much considered in these applications, in spite of apparent advantages in terms of its flexibility and capacity of forming large aqueous pores able to encapsulate […]

Cellulose nanomaterials extracted from plants are very attractive due to their intrinsic optical and mechanical properties (e.g., high transparency, large elastic modulus, etc) and the potential novel applications that exploit these features. However, despite the extraordinary intrinsic properties of nanocelluloses at the nanoscopic level, the translation of the properties to the macroscopic level is not […]