Mechanochemical Genesis of Prebiotics (18-LW-36) (Final Report)
In this project we explored the athermal condensation of simple amino acids towards the formation of peptides under high-pressure conditions. Our main aim was to address the provocative question that science continues explore: “Does life exists beyond Earth?”. We followed a combined experimental and theoretical investigation of simple amino acids under static high pressure and also under simultaneous application of high pressure and plastic shear. Surprisingly, we find that the ambient crystal structure of a-glycine has an extensive pressure resilience and stability up to at least 50 GPa. In the case glycylglycine (the simplest polypeptide) an isosymmetric phase transition was observed at ~7GPa. In the framework of this project a novel QMD approach was developed aiming to simulate the response of organic, molecules (with focus on glycine) under the simultaneous application of high pressure and plastic shear (V-RDAC). The V-RDAC simulations predict that glycine readily reacts when subject to high strain rate shearing under applied compressive loads greater than 7 GPa.