Energy Landscape Exploration of Sub-Nanometre Copper-Silver Clusters

Energy landscapes-Past, present, and future: A perspective

Energy landscapes and the closely related cost function landscapes have been recognized in science, mathematics, and various other fields such as economics as being highly useful paradigms and tools for the description and analysis of the properties of many systems, ranging from glasses, proteins, and abstract global optimization problems to business models. A multitude of algorithms for the exploration and exploitation of such landscapes have been developed over the past five decades in the various fields of applications, where many re-inventions but also much cross-fertilization have occurred. Twenty-five years ago, trying to increase the fruitful interactions between workers in different fields led to the creation of workshops and small conferences dedicated to the study of energy landscapes in general instead of only focusing on specific applications. In this perspective, I will present some history of the development of energy landscape studies and try to provide an outlook on in what directions the field might evolve in the future and what larger challenges are going to lie ahead, both from a conceptual and a practical point of view, with the main focus on applications of energy landscapes in chemistry and physics.

A Threshold-Minimization Scheme for Exploring the Energy Landscape of Biomolecules: Application to a Cyclic Peptide and a Disaccharide

We present a scheme, called the threshold-minimization method, for globally exploring the energy landscapes of small systems of biomolecular interest where typical exploration moves always require a certain degree of subsequent structural relaxation in order to be efficient, e.g., systems containing small or large circular carbon chains such as cyclic peptides or carbohydrates. We show that using this threshold-minimization method we can not only reproduce the global minimum and relevant local minima but also overcome energetic barriers associated with different types of isomerism for the example of a cyclic peptide, cyclo-(Gly)4. We then apply the new method to the disaccharide α-d-glucopyranose-1-2-β-d-fructofuranose, report energetically preferred configurations and barriers to boat-chair isomerization in the glucopyranosyl ring, and discuss the energy landscape.

Prediction and clarification of structures of (bio)molecules on surfaces

The design of future materials for biotechnological applications via deposition of molecules on surfaces will require not only exquisite control of the deposition procedure, but of equal importance will be our ability to predict the shapes and stability of individual molecules on various surfaces. Furthermore, one will need to be able to predict the structure patterns generated during the self-organization of whole layers of (bio)molecules on the surface. In this review, we present an overview over the current state of the art regarding the prediction and clarification of structures of biomolecules on surfaces using theoretical and computational methods.