@article{MitznerRehanekKernetal.2013, author = {Mitzner, Rolf and Rehanek, Jens and Kern, Jan and Gul, Sheraz and Hattne, Johan and Taguchi, Taketo and Alonso-Mori, Roberto and Tran, Rosalie and Weniger, Christian and Schr{\"o}der, Henning and Quevedo, Wilson and Laksmono, Hartawan and Sierra, Raymond G. and Han, Guangye and Lassalle-Kaiser, Benedikt and Koroidov, Sergey and Kubicek, Katharina and Schreck, Simon and Kunnus, Kristjan and Brzhezinskaya, Maria and Firsov, Alexander and Minitti, Michael P. and Turner, Joshua J. and M{\"o}ller, Stefan and Sauter, Nicholas K. and Bogan, Michael J. and Nordlund, Dennis and Schlotter, William F. and Messinger, Johannes and Borovik, Andrew S. and Techert, Simone and de Groot, Frank M. F. and F{\"o}hlisch, Alexander and Erko, Alexei and Bergmann, Uwe and Yachandra, Vittal K. and Wernet, Philippe and Yano, Junko}, title = {L-edge x-ray absorption spectroscopy of dilute systems relevant to metalloproteins using an X-ray free-electron laser}, series = {The journal of physical chemistry letters}, volume = {4}, journal = {The journal of physical chemistry letters}, number = {21}, publisher = {American Chemical Society}, address = {Washington}, issn = {1948-7185}, doi = {10.1021/jz401837f}, pages = {3641 -- 3647}, year = {2013}, abstract = {L-edge spectroscopy of 3d transition metals provides important electronic structure information and has been used in many fields. However, the use of this method for studying dilute aqueous systems, such as metalloenzymes, has not been prevalent because of severe radiation damage and the lack of suitable detection systems. Here we present spectra from a dilute Mn aqueous solution using a high-transmission zone-plate spectrometer at the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS). The spectrometer has been optimized for discriminating the Mn L-edge signal from the overwhelming 0 K-edge background that arises from water and protein itself, and the ultrashort LCLS X-ray pulses can outrun X-ray induced damage. We show that the deviations of the partial-fluorescence yield-detected spectra from the true absorption can be well modeled using the state-dependence of the fluorescence yield, and discuss implications for the application of our concept to biological samples.}, language = {en} } @article{KubinGuoKrolletal.2018, author = {Kubin, Markus and Guo, Meiyuan and Kroll, Thomas and Loechel, Heike and Kallman, Erik and Baker, Michael L. and Mitzner, Rolf and Gul, Sheraz and Kern, Jan and F{\"o}hlisch, Alexander and Erko, Alexei and Bergmann, Uwe and Yachandra, Vittal and Yano, Junko and Lundberg, Marcus and Wernet, Philippe}, title = {Probing the oxidation state of transition metal complexes}, series = {Chemical science}, volume = {9}, journal = {Chemical science}, number = {33}, publisher = {Royal Society of Chemistry}, address = {Cambridge}, issn = {2041-6520}, doi = {10.1039/c8sc00550h}, pages = {6813 -- 6829}, year = {2018}, abstract = {Transition metals in inorganic systems and metalloproteins can occur in different oxidation states, which makes them ideal redox-active catalysts. To gain a mechanistic understanding of the catalytic reactions, knowledge of the oxidation state of the active metals, ideally in operando, is therefore critical. L-edge X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) is a powerful technique that is frequently used to infer the oxidation state via a distinct blue shift of L-edge absorption energies with increasing oxidation state. A unified description accounting for quantum-chemical notions whereupon oxidation does not occur locally on the metal but on the whole molecule and the basic understanding that L-edge XAS probes the electronic structure locally at the metal has been missing to date. Here we quantify how charge and spin densities change at the metal and throughout the molecule for both redox and core-excitation processes. We explain the origin of the L-edge XAS shift between the high-spin complexes Mn-II(acac)(2) and Mn-III(acac)(3) as representative model systems and use ab initio theory to uncouple effects of oxidation-state changes from geometric effects. The shift reflects an increased electron affinity of Mn-III in the core-excited states compared to the ground state due to a contraction of the Mn 3d shell upon core-excitation with accompanied changes in the classical Coulomb interactions. This new picture quantifies how the metal-centered core hole probes changes in formal oxidation state and encloses and substantiates earlier explanations. The approach is broadly applicable to mechanistic studies of redox-catalytic reactions in molecular systems where charge and spin localization/delocalization determine reaction pathways.}, language = {en} } @article{SchreckBeyeSellbergetal.2014, author = {Schreck, Simon and Beye, Martin and Sellberg, Jonas A. and McQueen, Trevor and Laksmono, Hartawan and Kennedy, Brian and Eckert, Sebastian and Schlesinger, Daniel and Nordlund, Dennis and Ogasawara, Hirohito and Sierra, Raymond G. and Segtnan, Vegard H. and Kubicek, Katharina and Schlotter, William F. and Dakovski, Georgi L. and Moeller, Stefan P. and Bergmann, Uwe and Techert, Simone and Pettersson, Lars G. M. and Wernet, Philippe and Bogan, Michael J. and Harada, Yoshihisa and Nilsson, Anders and F{\"o}hlisch, Alexander}, title = {Reabsorption of soft x-ray emission at high x-ray free-electron laserfluences}, series = {Physical review letters}, volume = {113}, journal = {Physical review letters}, number = {15}, publisher = {American Physical Society}, address = {College Park}, issn = {0031-9007}, doi = {10.1103/PhysRevLett.113.153002}, pages = {6}, year = {2014}, abstract = {We report on oxygen K-edge soft x-ray emission spectroscopy from a liquid water jet at the Linac Coherent Light Source. We observe significant changes in the spectral content when tuning over a wide range of incident x-ray fluences. In addition the total emission yield decreases at high fluences. These modifications result from reabsorption of x-ray emission by valence-excited molecules generated by the Auger cascade. Our observations have major implications for future x-ray emission studies at intense x-ray sources. We highlight the importance of the x-ray pulse length with respect to the core-hole lifetime.}, language = {en} } @article{KubinKernGuletal.2017, author = {Kubin, Markus and Kern, Jan and Gul, Sheraz and Kroll, Thomas and Chatterjee, Ruchira and Loechel, Heike and Fuller, Franklin D. and Sierra, Raymond G. and Quevedo, Wilson and Weniger, Christian and Rehanek, Jens and Firsov, Anatoly and Laksmono, Hartawan and Weninger, Clemens and Alonso-Mori, Roberto and Nordlund, Dennis L. and Lassalle-Kaiser, Benedikt and Glownia, James M. and Krzywinski, Jacek and Moeller, Stefan and Turner, Joshua J. and Minitti, Michael P. and Dakovski, Georgi L. and Koroidov, Sergey and Kawde, Anurag and Kanady, Jacob S. and Tsui, Emily Y. and Suseno, Sandy and Han, Zhiji and Hill, Ethan and Taguchi, Taketo and Borovik, Andrew S. and Agapie, Theodor and Messinger, Johannes and Erko, Alexei and F{\"o}hlisch, Alexander and Bergmann, Uwe and Mitzner, Rolf and Yachandra, Vittal K. and Yano, Junko and Wernet, Philippe}, title = {Soft x-ray absorption spectroscopy of metalloproteins and high-valent metal-complexes at room temperature using free-electron lasers}, series = {Structural dynamics}, volume = {4}, journal = {Structural dynamics}, publisher = {American Institute of Physics}, address = {Melville}, issn = {2329-7778}, doi = {10.1063/1.4986627}, pages = {16}, year = {2017}, abstract = {X-ray absorption spectroscopy at the L-edge of 3d transition metals provides unique information on the local metal charge and spin states by directly probing 3d-derived molecular orbitals through 2p-3d transitions. However, this soft x-ray technique has been rarely used at synchrotron facilities for mechanistic studies of metalloenzymes due to the difficulties of x-ray-induced sample damage and strong background signals from light elements that can dominate the low metal signal. Here, we combine femtosecond soft x-ray pulses from a free-electron laser with a novel x-ray fluorescence-yield spectrometer to overcome these difficulties. We present L-edge absorption spectra of inorganic high-valent Mn complexes (Mn similar to 6-15 mmol/l) with no visible effects of radiation damage. We also present the first L-edge absorption spectra of the oxygen evolving complex (Mn4CaO5) in Photosystem II (Mn < 1 mmol/l) at room temperature, measured under similar conditions. Our approach opens new ways to study metalloenzymes under functional conditions. (C) 2017 Author(s).}, language = {en} } @article{KrollKernKubinetal.2016, author = {Kroll, Thomas and Kern, Jan and Kubin, Markus and Ratner, Daniel and Gul, Sheraz and Fuller, Franklin D. and L{\"o}chel, Heike and Krzywinski, Jacek and Lutman, Alberto and Ding, Yuantao and Dakovski, Georgi L. and Moeller, Stefan and Turner, Joshua J. and Alonso-Mori, Roberto and Nordlund, Dennis L. and Rehanek, Jens and Weniger, Christian and Firsov, Alexander and Brzhezinskaya, Maria and Chatterjee, Ruchira and Lassalle-Kaiser, Benedikt and Sierra, Raymond G. and Laksmono, Hartawan and Hill, Ethan and Borovik, Andrew S. and Erko, Alexei and F{\"o}hlisch, Alexander and Mitzner, Rolf and Yachandra, Vittal K. and Yano, Junko and Wernet, Philippe and Bergmann, Uwe}, title = {X-ray absorption spectroscopy using a self-seeded soft X-ray free-electron laser}, series = {Optics express : the international electronic journal of optics}, volume = {24}, journal = {Optics express : the international electronic journal of optics}, publisher = {Optical Society of America}, address = {Washington}, issn = {1094-4087}, doi = {10.1364/OE.24.022469}, pages = {22469 -- 22480}, year = {2016}, abstract = {X-ray free electron lasers (XFELs) enable unprecedented new ways to study the electronic structure and dynamics of transition metal systems. L-edge absorption spectroscopy is a powerful technique for such studies and the feasibility of this method at XFELs for solutions and solids has been demonstrated. However, the required x-ray bandwidth is an order of magnitude narrower than that of self-amplified spontaneous emission (SASE), and additional monochromatization is needed. Here we compare L-edge x-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) of a prototypical transition metal system based on monochromatizing the SASE radiation of the linac coherent light source (LCLS) with a new technique based on self-seeding of LCLS. We demonstrate how L-edge XAS can be performed using the self-seeding scheme without the need of an additional beam line monochromator. We show how the spectral shape and pulse energy depend on the undulator setup and how this affects the x-ray spectroscopy measurements. (C) 2016 Optical Society of America}, language = {en} } @article{SellbergMcQueenLaksmonoetal.2015, author = {Sellberg, Jonas A. and McQueen, Trevor A. and Laksmono, Hartawan and Schreck, Simon and Beye, Martin and DePonte, Daniel P. and Kennedy, Brian and Nordlund, Dennis and Sierra, Raymond G. and Schlesinger, Daniel and Tokushima, Takashi and Zhovtobriukh, Iurii and Eckert, Sebastian and Segtnan, Vegard H. and Ogasawara, Hirohito and Kubicek, Katharina and Techert, Simone and Bergmann, Uwe and Dakovski, Georgi L. and Schlotter, William F. and Harada, Yoshihisa and Bogan, Michael J. and Wernet, Philippe and F{\"o}hlisch, Alexander and Pettersson, Lars G. M. and Nilsson, Anders}, title = {X-ray emission spectroscopy of bulk liquid water in "no-man's land"}, series = {The journal of chemical physics : bridges a gap between journals of physics and journals of chemistr}, volume = {142}, journal = {The journal of chemical physics : bridges a gap between journals of physics and journals of chemistr}, number = {4}, publisher = {American Institute of Physics}, address = {Melville}, issn = {0021-9606}, doi = {10.1063/1.4905603}, pages = {9}, year = {2015}, abstract = {The structure of bulk liquid water was recently probed by x-ray scattering below the temperature limit of homogeneous nucleation (T-H) of similar to 232 K [J. A. Sellberg et al., Nature 510, 381-384 (2014)]. Here, we utilize a similar approach to study the structure of bulk liquid water below T-H using oxygen K-edge x-ray emission spectroscopy (XES). Based on previous XES experiments [T. Tokushima et al., Chem. Phys. Lett. 460, 387-400 (2008)] at higher temperatures, we expected the ratio of the 1b(1)' and 1b(1)" peaks associated with the lone-pair orbital in water to change strongly upon deep supercooling as the coordination of the hydrogen (H-) bonds becomes tetrahedral. In contrast, we observed only minor changes in the lone-pair spectral region, challenging an interpretation in terms of two interconverting species. A number of alternative hypotheses to explain the results are put forward and discussed. Although the spectra can be explained by various contributions from these hypotheses, we here emphasize the interpretation that the line shape of each component changes dramatically when approaching lower temperatures, where, in particular, the peak assigned to the proposed disordered component would become more symmetrical as vibrational interference becomes more important. (C) 2015 AIP Publishing LLC.}, language = {en} }