Germanene, a 2D honeycomb lattice analogous to graphene, is fabricated on a Pt(111) surface. It exhibits a buckled configuration with a (3 × 3) superlattice coinciding with the substrate's (√19 × √19) superstructure. Covalent bonds exist throughout the germanene layer. The resulting high-quality germanene enables researchers to explore the fundamentals of germanene and its potential applications.

Herein we report a novel strategy for the design and construction of natural and natural productlike libraries based on the principle of priVileged structures, a term originally introduced to describe structural motifs capable of interacting with a variety of unrelated molecular targets. The identification of such privileged structures in natural products is discussed, and subsequently the 2,2-dimethylbenzopyran moiety is selected as an inaugural template for the construction of natural product-like libraries via this strategy. Initially, a novel solid-phase synthesis of the benzopyran motif is developed employing a unique cycloloading strategy that relies on the use of a new, polystyrene-based selenenyl bromide resin. Once the loading, elaboration, and cleavage of these benzopyrans was established, this new solid-phase method was then thoroughly validated through the construction of six focused combinatorial libraries designed around natural and designed molecules of recent biological interest.

Having developed a reliable and versatile solid-phase strategy for the split-and-pool synthesis of naturally occurring and designed derivatives of the benzopyran template (see preceding paper), we now report the construction of a 10 000-membered natural product-like compound library for chemical biology studies. Concomitantly, we report an early application of the IRORI NanoKan optical encoding system for the high throughput nonchemical tagging and sorting of library members during split-and-pool synthesis. The overall synthetic strategy for library construction is discussed and the individual reaction pathways are examined in the context of specific library members, illustrating reaction conditions as well as yields and purities. The issues of building block selection and quality control of library members are also addressed and, finally, potential applications of the library to chemical biology are discussed.

As described in the preceding two papers, our interest in the construction of natural and natural product-like libraries for chemical biology studies led to the development of a new solid-phase cycloloading strategy for the construction of substituted benzopyrans. Herein, we report a parallel solution-phase method that facilitates the enhancement of both the size and diversity of these non-oligomeric benzopyran libraries using the “libraries from libraries” principle. We examine the rationale behind the use of this tandem strategy to construct discrete small molecule libraries, and describe the development of a polymer-assisted solution-phase (PASP) methodology necessary to effect the required transformations. Once developed, this chemistry is applied to two demonstration libraries.

Bernal-stacked bilayer germanene with a stable buckled honeycomb structure has been successfully synthesized on Cu(111). Structural and electronic characterizations as well as theoretical calculations unequivocally demonstrate for the first time the presence of a nearly linear energy dispersion in the vicinity of the Fermi energy, as expected of the Dirac signature for theoretical freestanding germanene.

Sulfur vacancy (SV) is one of the most typical defects in two-dimensional monolayer MoS2, leading to reactive sites. We presented a systematic study of the adsorption behaviors of gas molecules, CO2, N2, H2O, CO, NH3, NO, O2, H2 and NO2, on monolayer MoS2 with single SV by first-principles calculations. It was found that CO2, N2 and H2O molecules physisorbed at the proximity of single SV. Our adsorption energy calculations and charge transfer analysis showed that the interactions between CO2, N2 and H2O molecules and defective MoS2 are stronger than the cases of CO2, N2 and H2O molecules adsorbed on pristine MoS2, respectively. The defective MoS2 based gas sensors may be more sensitive to CO2, N2 and H2O molecules than pristine MoS2 based ones. CO, NO, O2 and NH3 molecules were found to chemisorb at the S vacancy site and thus modify the electronic properties of defective monolayer MoS2. Magnetism was induced upon adsorption of NO molecules and the defective states induced by S vacancy can be completely removed upon adsorption of O2 molecules, which may provide some helpful information for designing new MoS2 based nanoelectronic devices in future. The H2 and NO2 molecules were found to dissociate at S vacancy. The dissociation of NO2 molecules resulted in O atoms located at the S vacancy site and NO molecules physisorbed on O-doped MoS2. The calculated results showed that NO2 molecules can help heal the S vacancy of the MoS2 monolayer.

The angular and velocity distributions of desorbing products N2 and CO2 were studied in a steady-state NO + CO reaction on Pd(110) and Rh(110) by cross-correlation time-of-flight techniques. The CO2 desorption sharply collimated along the surface normal on both surfaces. On the other hand, N2 desorption on Pd(110) sharply collimated along about 40° off the surface normal in the plane along the [001] direction below around 650 K, yielding a translational temperature of about 3600 K. At higher temperatures, the normally directed desorption was relatively enhanced. On Rh(110), desorbing N2 sharply collimated along the surface normal, yielding a translational temperature of about 2500 K. The inclined desorption was assigned to the decomposition of the intermediate, N2O(a) → N2(g) + O(a), and the normally directed component was proposed to be due to the associative desorption of adsorbed nitrogen atoms, 2N(a) → N2(g). The branching of these pathways was analyzed on Pd(110).

bBiofilms of microbial cells encased in an exopolymeric matrix can form on solid surfaces, but how bacteria sense a solid surface and upregulate biofilm genes is largely unknown. We investigated the role of the Bacillus subtilis signal peptidase, SipW, which has a unique role in forming biofilms on a solid surface and is not required at an air-liquid interface. Surprisingly, we found that the signal peptidase activity of SipW was not required for solid-surface biofilms. Furthermore, a SipW mutant protein was constructed that lacks the ability to form a solid-surface biofilm but still retains signal peptidase activity. Through genetic and gene expression tests, the non-signal peptidase role of SipW was found to activate biofilm matrix genes specifically when cells were on a solid surface. These data provide the first evidence that a signal peptidase is bifunctional and that SipW has a regulatory role in addition to its role as a signal peptidase.