Spin trapping as tool for investigating radiation induced free radicals in biologically active molecules

Since from the second half of the last century the spin trapping has found wide applications in chemistry, biology and medicine [1]. Of particular interest are the studied of the free radicals induced in biologically active molecules, such as DNA and proteins, when they are exposed to ionizing radiation. Their characterization allows to investigate the radiation-induced primary processes inside living cells. Indeed, ionizing radiations produce many kinds of free radicals through direct action; radicals can be formed also by indirect actions. However, the direct detection of these radicals is hard to obtain as they have a too short lifetime and this makes difficult to record them by conventi…

Continous wave and pulsed EPR analysis of spatial distribution of free radicals in ammonium tartrate samples.

Defects in graphenic materials by EPR and DFT methods

We have used EPR to characterize a series of defects, which are characterized by tipical g-tensors, linewidths, intensity as function of the temperature. Mostly, signals arises from the presence of conduction electrons, and of so-called "edge states", that are unpaired electrons located at the edges of graphenic flakes; the relative molecular orbitals are not very muche extended as for low-lying orbitals, and are located within few atomic rows from edges with zig-zag topology. All the relative EPR signals are naturally and intrinsically generated by all graphitic materials. We now extend our study to the defects that are formed inside the graphenic structure. There is a full zoo of possible…

Study of the spatial distribution of free radicals in ammonium tartrate dosimeters through pulsed ESR techniques.