Terahertz spectroscopy of short-chain polypeptides

Abstract

Terahertz (THz) absorption and neutron vibrational spectra for solid-phase short-chain peptide sequences at 77 and 298 K are reported. We demonstrate that a high degree of spectral and structural information exists for these systems in the 1–15 THz (33–500 cm −1) spectral range. The density and uniqueness of distinct spectral features for each system suggests that sequence-dependent structural information can potentially be extracted from these spectra using quantum mechanical solid-state modeling and theories.