Joanna Czapla-Masztafiak

Institute of Nuclear Physics · Department of Experimental Physics of Complex System (NZ52)

From the commonly known metal-based chemotherapeutics, like cisplatin, there is ongoing interest in searching for some of their alternatives, including copper complexes containing organic groups. In this paper, we report the results of the preliminary examination of copper-based compounds, which are studied with the use of the laboratory XAS setup,...

Cr(VI) is a harmful, carcinogenic agent with a high permeability rate throughout the lipid membranes. In an intracellular environment and during interactions with cellular membranes, it undergoes an instant reduction to lower oxidation states throughout radical states, recognized as the most dangerous factor for cells. The cellular membrane is the...

X-ray free electron lasers (XFELs) have provided scientists opportunities to study matter with unprecedented temporal and spatial resolutions. However, access to the attosecond domain (i.e., below 1 femtosecond) remains elusive. Herein, a time-dependent experimental concept is theorized, allowing us to track ultrafast processes in matter with sub-f...

New alternatives of platinum chemotherapeutics are still in the area of interest of many researches, that concentrates around other metal compounds, like copper. In this paper we demonstrate applicability of laboratory X-Ray Absorption Spectroscopy (XAS) experiments to study Cu-based materials. Unoccupied electronic structure of Cu(1,10-phenanthrol...

The electronic structure of transition-metal oxides is a key component responsible for material's optical and chemical properties. Specifically for metal-oxide structures, the crystal-field interaction determines the shape, strength, and occupancy of electronic orbitals. Consequently, the crystal-field splitting and resulting unoccupied state popul...

Herein, it is demonstrated how the resonant X-ray emission spectroscopy can be employed to study the charge transfer dynamics in real-time during temperature-induced oxidation of metallic tungsten. Application of high energy resolution schemes allowed to distinguish charge transfer to separate orbitals resulting from crystal field splitting. Based...

OLED technology beyond small or expensive devices requires light-emitters, luminophores, based on earth-abundant elements. Understanding and experimental verification of charge transfer in luminophores are needed for this development. An organometallic multicore Cu complex comprising Cu–C and Cu–P bonds represents an underexplored type of luminopho...

Stochastic processes are highly relevant in research fields as different as neuroscience, economy, ecology, chemistry, and fundamental physics. However, due to their intrinsic unpredictability, stochastic mechanisms are very challenging for any kind of investigations and practical applications. Here we report the deliberate use of stochastic X-ray...

A von Hamos geometry based wavelength dispersive spectrometer combined with an in situ reactor cell has been developed to measure non-resonant sulfur Kα emission for the in situ speciation of low concentrations of sulfur. The spectrometer operates at 15 cm focusing radius, is equipped with a curved Si(111) crystal and a position sensitive detector,...

X-ray spectroscopy studies are usually performed on synchrotron radiation sources, which offer bright, coherent, energy-tuneable and monochromatic light. However, the application of synchrotron-based X-ray emission spectroscopy (XES) and X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) is directly constrained by the limited, infrequent access to the central fac...

For incident x-ray energies below the core level ionization threshold, one-photon absorption (OPA) leads to off-resonant x-ray excitations that are mediated by a virtual intermediate electronic state. In the linear regime of x-ray interaction, this intermediate state may decay radiatively and the maximum energy of the emitted photon is given by the...

Hydrated electrons are important in radiation chemistry and charge-transfer reactions with applications that include chemical damage of DNA, catalysis and signalling. Conventionally, hydrated electrons are produced by pulsed radiolysis, sonolysis, two-ultraviolet-photon laser excitation of liquid water, or by photo-detachment of suitable electron d...

"Probe-before-destroy" methodology permitted diffraction and imaging measurements of intact specimens using ultrabright but highly destructive X-ray free-electron laser (XFEL) pulses. The methodology takes advantage of XFEL pulses ultrashort duration to outrun the destructive nature of the X-rays. Atomic movement, generally on the order of >50 fs,...

Human prion protein is a subject of extensive study, related in particular to molecular basis of neurodegenerative disease development and prevention. This protein has two main domains: membrane C-terminal, structured domain as well as unstructured N-terminal domain. While PrPC (23-231) has up to eight Cu(II) binding sites in N-terminal domain, it...

X-ray emission spectroscopy (XES) and X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) provide a unique opportunity to probe both the highest occupied and the lowest unoccupied states in matter with bulk sensitivity. In this work, a combination of valence-to-core XES and pre-edge XAS techniques are used to determine changes induced in the electronic structure o...

Zinc oxide (ZnO) is one of the most versatile semiconductor material with multifarious potential applications. Easily accessible alkylzinc alkoxides have been widely exploited as single-source precursors of ZnO-based nanomaterials but their multi-step decomposition pathways have not been understood in detail. The formation mechanism of ZnO nanocrys...

Herein we report on the hydrolysis mechanism of [Pt{N(p-HC6F4)CH2}2(NC5H5)2(OH)2], a platinum(IV) complex that exhibits anti-cancer properties. Atomic telemetry, an in situ technique based on electron structure sensitive X-ray spectroscopy, revealed that hydrolysis preceded any reduction of the metal center. The obtained results are complemented wi...

THE MOLECULAR WATER OXIDATION CATALYST [RU(BDA)(L)2] HAS BEEN INCORPORATED INTO PYRIDINE-DECORATED MIL-101(CR) METAL ORGANIC FRAMEWORKS. THE RESULTING MIL-101@RU MATERIALS EXHIBIT TURNOVER FREQUENCIES (TOFS) UP TO TEN TIMES HIGHER COMPARED TO...

Herein, we report a systematic study on the electronic structure of surface and bulk TiO2 doped with C, N or S. The results were attained with a semi-empirical method consisting of a combination between resonant X-ray emission spectroscopy (RXES) measurements and localized density of states (LDOS) simulations. Experimental TiO2 RXES data was used t...

One of the remaining challenges for accurate photon diagnostics at X-ray freeelectron lasers (FELs) is the shot-to-shot, non-destructive, high-resolution characterization of the FEL pulse spectrum at photon energies between 2 keV and 4 keV, the so-called tender X-ray range. Here, a spectrometer setup is reported, based on the von Hamos geometry and...

We report on the application of a short working distance von Hamos geometry spectrometer to measure the inelastic X-ray scattering (IXS) signals from solids and liquids. In contrast to typical IXS instruments where the spectrometer geometry is fixed and the incoming beam energy is scanned, the von Hamos geometry allows measurements to be made using...

Resonant X-ray emission spectroscopy (RXES) technique was applied to probe electronic states of three Fe compounds: Fe, α-Fe2O3 (hematite) and Fe(NO3)3 × 9 H2O (ferric nitrate) around Fe K-absorption edge with simultaneous detection of Kβ and valence-to-core transitions. We show that deep insights on the valence and conduction band position, such a...

Neurodegenerative diseases are one of the malfunctions of human nervous system, being a class of complex and prominent pathologies. The human prion Protease Resistant Protein (PrP) is protein regulating copper metabolism in mammalian cells through binding of Cu(II) ions to specific fragments. Nowadays misfolding of this protein is associated with d...

The biological influence of radiation on living matter has been studied for years; however, several questions about the detailed mechanism of radiation damage formation remain largely unanswered. Among all biomolecules exposed to radiation, DNA plays an important role because any damage to its molecular structure can affect the whole cell and may l...

Platinum-based drugs are commonly used in cancer treatment. The biological activity of a metallodrug is obviously closely related to its chemical and stereochemical characteristics. An overlooked aspect is the effect of the ligand to the electronic structure of the metal atom (coordinating atom). We report herein a Resonant X-ray Emission Spectrosc...

The use of synchrotron radiation may shed more light on the study of prostate cancer, one of the leading diseases among men. In the presented study the microbeam setup at the PSI Swiss Light Source combined with fluorescence detected X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) was applied to determine two-dimensional (2D) imaging of distributions of variou...

The structure-activity relationships of chiral 1,2-diaminophenylalkane platinum(II) anticancer derivatives are studied, including interactions with telomeric- and genomic-like DNA sequences, the pKa of their diaqua species, structural properties obtained from DFT calculations and resonant X-ray emission spectroscopy. The binding modes of the compou...

The binding of the antitumor drug cisplatin with DNA was determined by means of in situ resonant inelastic X-ray scattering (RIXS) spectroscopy. Because of the penetrating properties of hard X-rays, we could determine, under physiological conditions, the identity and number of platinum complexes present. In situ RIXS revealed that under physiologic...

The application of micro X-Ray Absorption Spectroscopy (μXAS) and the advantages of light produced by synchrotron radiation sources have made possible to determine chemical forms of different elements in complex structures such as biological systems. Presented results were obtained during μXAS experiments performed at ANKA (Germany) and SLS (Switze...

Sulphur plays a vital role in every human organism. It is known, that sulphur-bearing compounds, such as for example cysteine and glutathione, play critical roles in development and progression of many diseases. Any alteration in sulphur's biochemistry could become a precursor of serious pathological conditions. One of such condition is prostate ca...

Prostate cancer cell lines along with selected organic and inorganic compounds used as references were studied with sulphur K-edge X-ray absorption near edge structure spectroscopy. The experiment was performed at the SUL-X beamline of the synchrotron radiation source ANKA, Karlsruhe (Germany). The sulphur was chosen for the studies because it is a...

Urological cancers comprise approximately one-third of all cancers diagnosed in men worldwide and out of these, prostate cancer is the most common one (WHO World Cancer Report, 2008). Several risk factors such as age, hormone levels, environmental conditions and family history are suspected to play a role in the onset of this disease of otherwise o...

Poster

Journal article