In the summer of 2025, four faculty members from the Department of Chemistry—Prof. Şefik Süzer, Prof. Ömer Dağ, Asst. Prof. Fahri Alkan and Asst. Prof. Halil I. Okur—published four studies in The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters (JPCL), covering a wide range of topics in physical chemistry from gold nanoparticles to charge behavior at interfaces, from self-assembly to stabilization of proteins.
In the first study, Prof. Süzer and coworkers demonstrated that electrical and ionic components of local electrical potentials can be faithfully separated within a supercapacitor-like device. The study is titled “Unveiling Ionic/Electronic Contributions to the Potential Development of Electrical Double Layer Using XPS.”
The second study, titled “From Salt-in-Water to Water-in-Salt: How Ion Identity Governs Surfactant Self-Assembly in Salt–Water–Nonionic Surfactant Mixtures,” by Prof. Dağ and coworkers, demonstrates that self-assembly and phase behaviour can be strategically tuned across a wide range of salt hydration levels, offering a new approach to controlling the properties of salt–surfactant lyotropic liquid crystals. It also highlights ion identity as a critical design parameter for engineering mesostructured materials.
In the third study, Dr. Alkan and coworkers demonstrate the use of approximate density-functional-theory methods to investigate the excited state properties of gold nanoclusters in the article titled “Understanding Excited States in Magic Series Au8n+4(SR)4n+8 Nanoclusters: Role of Size, Ligands, and Theory Level.”
In the final study, Dr. Okur and coworkers demonstrated the unique stabilizing action of Adenosine Triphosphate (ATP) on neutral macromolecules during biomacromolecular coacervate formation. Their study is titled “ATP can Act as a Stabilizer on Neutral Macromolecules.”
The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters (American Chemical Society) is a Nature Index Journal. The full articles can be found via the below links;
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jpclett.5c01855
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jpclett.5c02158
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jpclett.5c02436
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jpclett.5c02467
