1H-13C-29Si triple resonance and REDOR solid-state NMR-A tool to study interactions between biosilica and organic molecules in diatom cell walls

•Synthesis of 13C,29Si-labeled tetraphenoxysilane.•H1-C13-Si29 double CP with labeled tetraphenoxysilane.•Double CP and 13C{29Si} REDOR experiments on diatom biosilica cell walls.•Most likely polyamines are the interface species in diatom biosilica.

Triple resonance solid-state NMR experiments using the spin combination 1H-13C-29Si are still rarely found in the literature. This is due to the low natural abundance of the two heteronuclei. Such experiments are, however, increasingly important to study hybrid materials such as biosilica and others. A suitable model substance, ideally labeled with both 13C and 29Si, is thus very useful to optimize the experiments before applying them to studies of more complex samples such as biosilica. Tetraphenoxysilane could be synthesized in an easy, two-step synthesis including double isotope labelling. Using tetraphenoxysilane, we established a 1H-13C-29Si double CP-based HETCOR experiment and applied it to diatom biosilica from the diatom species Thalassiosira pseudonana. Furthermore, we carried out 1H-13C{29Si} CP-REDOR experiments in order to estimate the distance between the organic matrix and the biosilica. Our experiments on diatom biosilica strongly indicate a close contact between polyamine-containing parts of the organic matrix and the silica. This corroborates the assumption that the organic matrix is essential for the control of the cell wall formation.

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