Agenda

Join us for QSense User Day 2024!

We are thrilled to announce QSense User Day 2024! Join us for a day filled with inspirational and educational sessions on QSense® QCM-D. This event offers you the chance to hear from engaging speakers and expand your knowledge about the technology in various fields.

 

The User Day is organized into two sessions. The first session will be dedicated to scientific topics, with speakers from various research areas sharing their results and insights. In the second session, the focus will shift to technology and practical usage. This session will include best practices, tips and tricks for using QSense QCM-D, and a panel session with QSense application team where you get the opportunity to talk to an expert and ask questions. Check out the agenda below and sign up!

Session 1: 08:30 – 11:30 CET

Speaker Presentation
Kourtney Yang, MSc
Department of Chemistry, University of Auckland, New Zealand		 Development of a smart wound-healing device based on conducting polymers

Tsukuru Masuda, Assistant Professor

Department of Bioengineering, University of Tokyo, Japan

 Molecular interaction analysis in structure-controlled cationic polymer brush surfaces showing bactericidal ability 

Coralie Schneider, PhD

Analytical and Material Science department, BASF, Germany

 Physical characterization of surfactants for antibody formulations
Nils Rieger, MSc
Department of Physics, Chalmers University of technology, Sweden		 Studying ionomer catalyst interaction for PEM fuel cells during potential cycling with EQCM-D

Session 2: 15:00 – 18:00 CET

Time Speaker Presentation
15:00 – 15:10 Malin Edvardsson and Erik Nilebäck Welcome from the studio!
15:10 – 16:00

Viktor Vanoppen,

Department of Chemistry - Ångström Laboratory, and Structural Chemistry, Uppsala University, Sweden

 Introduction to EQCM-D
16:00 – 16:30

Fredrik Pettersson and Yousra Ben Salah,

Biolin Scientific Team

 QCM-D Best practices #1: Experimental design/how to produce quality data
16:30 – 16:50 

Eva Ekerot and Mahrad Khakpour,

Biolin Scientific Team

 Product updates
17:00 – 17:30

Erik Nilebäck and Mohsin Raza,

Biolin Scientific Team

 QCM-D Best practices #2: The QCM-D sensor and how to handle for optimal performance
17:30 – 17:50  Biolin Scientific Team Panel session

Register to sessions

Join our User Day to explore the latest in scientific research, learn practical tips for using QSense QCM-D, and connect with experts!

Sign up for Session 1

Sign upfor Session 2

 

 

Speakers presenting at QSense User Day

Blue Modern Geometric Business Webinar Facebook Ad (LinkedIn-inlägg) (4)-1

Development of a smart wound-healing device based on conducting polymers.

Listen to Kourtney Yang 

Current PhD student of Chemistry at the University Of Auckland, supervised by Prof. Jadranka Travas-Sejdic and Dr. Lisa Pilkington. My research experience is in biomaterials for targeted therapy and healthcare applications. Most of the work is at the interface between chemistry, biomedical, and engineering and is highly multidisciplinary and collaborative. In recent years, my main research has focused on drug delivery and wearable bioelectronic devices for tissue regeneration. 

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Project has proposed a novel smart wound healing device based on conducting polymers, which is expected to combine drug delivery and electrical stimulation in one system, controlled by a clean, simple, and efficient electrochemical method. The platform is also expected to achieve attachment-release of wound-healing drugs with different structures and investigate this platform for advanced wound regeneration. The key technology of the platform was based on a functionalized CP monomer EDOT-thioacetate (EDOTSAc) reported by our group, which was used to provide a thiol functionality that is capable of electrochemical and reversible conjugation of various (bio)molecules. This has enabled the capture and release of small and biomolecules, such as 2-mercaptoethanol (2ME) and DNA drugs, as well as larger bio entities. To realize the interaction between the drug molecules and the deposited CP layers, we are utilizing QCM-D to monitor the whole attachment-release process. Moreover, the QCM-D was used to test the anti-fouling performance of wound-healing devices.

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Physical characterization of surfactants for antibody formulations

Hear from Coralie Schneider


Coralie Schneider is a lab team leader in the Analytical and Material Science department of BASF SE in Ludwigshafen, Germany. Her research interests are surfaces and interfaces with a focus on wetting and adsorption phenomena. Before joining BASF in 2022, she has received a PhD in Theoretical Physics from Heidelberg University.

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Stabilization of liquid therapeutic protein formulations with non-ionic surfactants is imperative to avoid critical loss of the active pharmaceutical ingredient by aggregation or adsorption onto different types of interfaces. 

In the present work, we have characterized the interfacial activity of different surfactants – alone and in competition with antibodies, by applying a comprehensive suite of experimental techniques including tensiometry, interfacial rheology and quartz-crystal microbalance with dissipation monitoring (QCM-D). 

The obtained data show important differences between the surfactants as well as a clear influence of the type of interface considered on the observed behavior. We have linked these physicochemical results to the performance of the surfactants in stabilization of antibodies. 

Our findings and the broad spectrum of tests described in this work are instructive towards a better understanding of protein stabilization in distinct primary packaging systems through surfactants in aqueous formulations. 

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2-Oct-15-2024-06-51-04-7812-PM

Studying ionomer catalyst interaction for PEM fuel cells during potential cycling with EQCM-D

Hear from Nils Rieger  

Nils Rieger is a PhD student at the Department of Physics at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden. He received his M.Sc. degree in Nano-Science from the Eberhard Karls University Tübingen in 2022 after presenting his work on nanostructuring and modification of the photoluminescence of 2D-tungsten disulfide by electron irradiation within the group of Professor Jannik Meyer. In May 2023 Nils Rieger then started at his current position at Chalmers University. He is working within the group of Professor Björn Wickman, which is part of the Division of Chemical Physics. His research there focuses on degradation and deactivation of PEM fuel cell electrodes and catalysts. 

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In recent years, the development of proton exchange membrane fuel cells has been greatly accelerated due to the increasingly evident climate change, as they represent an efficient alternative for the conversion of green hydrogen into electricity. Despite the rapid progress in this field, not all problems have been solved yet. For example, corrosion on the electrodes of fuel cells remains an ongoing challenge, which still has a major impact on the durability and therefore also the commercial application of this technology. To date, not much is known about the interplay during the corrosion processes between ionomer and the platinum catalyst material. Consequently, in this study the interaction of platinum surfaces and Nafion as an ionomer material is analysed using EQCM-D. With this method, mass changes as well as structural changes on the surface of the electrode can be tracked with high precision and subsequently correlated to the corresponding electrochemical processes. Thus, we were able to observe a significant loss of mass during potential cycling for a pure polycrystalline platinum surface, while the same surface coated with a thin layer of Nafion demonstrated contrary behaviour. Instead, a significant increase in mass on the electrode surface and an increase in dissipation were observed. However, this effect could not be observed for surfaces of other materials such as gold and carbon. Therefore, we conclude that the cyclic oxidation and reduction of the platinum surface during potential cycling leads to an increase of the water content in the Nafion layer. In this context, it is assumed that the osmotic drag force of the ions involved in the oxidation and reduction reaction is primarily responsible for the observed effect. 

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1-Oct-15-2024-06-51-32-1174-PM

Molecular interaction analysis in structure-controlled cationic polymer brush surfaces showing bactericidal ability

Hear the presentation from Tsukuru Masuda

Tsukuru Masuda received his Ph.D. from the University of Tokyo in 2017 under the supervision of Professor Ryo Yoshida. He was a postdoctoral researcher and a research fellow (PD) of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) for Young Scientists in the group of Professor Atsushi Maruyama at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. In April 2019, he became an Assistant Professor in the group of Professor Madoka Takai at the University of Tokyo. His research interests include soft interfaces composed of polymer materials; specifically, structure control of polymer brush surfaces, molecular interaction analysis, and machine learning for materials informatics. 

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Soft interfaces formed by polymer materials are important interfaces for biological systems (biointerfaces). Controlling the chemical and physical structures of the interfaces at the nanometer level plays a pivotal role in understanding the mechanism of functioning and its applications. To this end, the polymer brush surfaces prepared by controlled radical polymerization is suitable to investigate the relationship between the interfacial structure and the functions.　In this study, a cationic poly(2-(methacryloyloxy)ethyl) trimethylammonium chloride) (PMTAC) brush surfaces were prepared by surface-initiated atom transfer radical polymerization (SI-ATRP), and their properties were systematically investigated to discuss the factors affecting their bactericidal abilities and interactions with proteins. The bactericidal ability for S. aureus of the high-graft-density polymer brush (0.45 chains nm-2) was higher than that of the low-graft-density polymer brush (0.06 chains nm-2). To discuss the effect of polymer brush structure on bactericidal ability in the view of molecular interactions, we focused on dissipation change (ΔD) of QCM-D measurement to consider the adsorption state. For the protein adsorption, BSA was likewise adsorbed when the brush structure was changed; however, the negative ΔD indicated the BSA-adsorbed, high-graft-density PMTAC brush became a rigid state. Moreover, for S. aureus adhesion after incubating in a growth media, a small slope of ΔD/ΔF plots considered initial adsorption of bacteria on the high-graft-density polymer brush strongly interacted compared to that of low-graft-density polymer brush. The value of the slope of ΔD/ΔF on the high-graft-density polymer brush was considered due to the dead bacteria in between the bacteria and the polymer brush interface. These investigations for structure-controlled cationic polymer brush will contribute to the design of anti-bacterial surfaces. (T. Masuda* et al., Langmuir 2023, 39, 16522–16531.) 

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Introduction to EQCM-D

Presentation from Viktor Vanoppen

Currently a PhD candidate at Uppsala University under the supervision of Prof. Erik J. Berg. He received his master's degree from KU Leuven Technology campus Ghent in 2021 during which he investigated the fluid dynamics of spiral jet mills using Computational Fluid Dynamics or CFD modeling. His current research focuses on studying interfacial processes during metal plating for energy storage by combining EQCM-D, automation, machine learning, and advanced modeling techniques for QCM-D such as Hydrodynamic Spectroscopy and FreqD-LBM.