Visualising coordination chemistry: fluorescence X-ray absorption near edge structure tomography.

Coordination chemistry underlies the structure/function of biological metal complexes. Contextualising this chemical information within an organism's physiology is critical for enhancing the understanding of bioinorganic chemistry but few high-fidelity probes are available. Here we develop fluorescence X-ray absorption near-edge structure tomography as a means for studying the spatial arrangement of biological coordination chemistry within intact organisms, and demonstrate the approach by mapping the distribution of cuprous and cupric complexes within Drosophila melanogaster.

The effect of vacancy ordering on quadrupole shifts in Mössbauer spectra of maghemite.

Electric field gradient (EFG) lattice sums for the vacancy-disordered and vacancy-ordered forms of maghemite were evaluated using a point charge model. The calculated EFGs produced a wide range of magnitudes and principal directions for the quadrupole interaction for both forms of maghemite. Small perturbations of the crystallographic parameters were shown to have a significant effect on the quadrupole shift. The effects observed were significant enough to show that quadrupole shifts should be considered when fitting the Mössbauer spectra of maghemite.