Eur. Phys. J. E (2019) 42: 117
https://doi.org/10.1140/epje/i2019-11880-1

Regular Article

Thermodiffusion and hydrolysis of 1-Ethyl-3-(3-dimethylaminopropyl)carbodiimide (EDC)

ICS-3 Soft Condensed Matter, Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, D-52428, Jülich, Germany

^* e-mail: d.niether@fz-juelich.de

Received: 8 March 2019
Accepted: 1 August 2019
Published online: 6 September 2019

Abstract

Presently, microfluidic traps are designed mimicking the environment of hydrothermal pores, where a combination of thermophoresis and convection leads to accumulation so that high concentrations of organic matter can be reached. Such a setup is interesting in the context of the origin of life to observe accumulation and possible further synthesis of small organic molecules or prebiotic molecules such as nucleotides or RNA-fragments, but could also be used to replicate DNA-strands. The addition of coupling agents for the activation of carboxyl or phosphate groups such as 1-Ethyl-3-(3-dimethylaminopropyl)carbodiimide (EDC) and EDC-hydrochloride (EDC-HCl) is necessary in order to speed up the process. This work characterizes the thermophoretic properties of EDC and EDC-HCl needed to optimize the design of the traps. At p H 4–6 spontaneous hydrolysis of EDC is observed, which also leads to a neutralisation of the p H. In order to evaluate the thermodiffusion measurements the rate constants were measured at 23 and C and the activation energy of the hydrolysis calculated.