There is, I think, something ethereal about i —the square root of minus one. I remember first hearing about it at school. It seemed an odd beast at that time—an intruder hovering on the edge of reality.

Usually familiarity dulls this sense of the bizarre, but in the case of i it was the reverse: over the years the sense of its surreal nature intensified. It seemed that it was impossible to write mathematics that described the real world in …

I and i

Although gold is the subject of one of the most ancient themes of investigation in science, its renaissance now leads to an exponentially increasing number of publications, especially in the context of emerging nanoscience and nanotechnology with nanoparticles and self-assembled monolayers (SAMs). We will limit the present review to gold nanoparticles (AuNPs), also called gold colloids. AuNPs are the most stable metal nanoparticles, and they present fascinating aspects such as their assembly of multiple types involving materials science, the behavior of the individual particles, size-related electronic, magnetic and optical properties (quantum size effect), and their applications to catalysis and biology. Their promises are in these fields as well as in the bottom-up approach of nanotechnology, and they will be key materials and building block in the 21st century. Whereas the extraction of gold started in the 5th millennium B.C. near Varna (Bulgaria) and reached 10 tons per year in Egypt around 1200-1300 B.C. when the marvelous statue of Touthankamon was constructed, it is probable that “soluble” gold appeared around the 5th or 4th century B.C. in Egypt and China. In antiquity, materials were used in an ecological sense for both aesthetic and curative purposes. Colloidal gold was used to make ruby glass 293 Chem. Rev. 2004, 104, 293−346

Gold nanoparticles: assembly, supramolecular chemistry, quantum-size-related properties, and applications toward biology, catalysis, and nanotechnology.

Multilayer films of organic compounds on solid surfaces have been studied for more than 60 years because they allow fabrication of multicomposite molecular assemblies of tailored architecture. However, both the Langmuir-Blodgett technique and chemisorption from solution can be used only with certain classes of molecules. An alternative approach—fabrication of multilayers by consecutive adsorption of polyanions and polycations—is far more general and has been extended to other materials such as proteins or colloids. Because polymers are typically flexible molecules, the resulting superlattice architectures are somewhat fuzzy structures, but the absence of crystallinity in these films is expected to be beneficial for many potential applications.

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/277/5330/1232.full.pdf

Fuzzy Nanoassemblies: Toward Layered Polymeric Multicomposites

There is intense interest in graphene in fields such as physics, chemistry, and materials science, among others. Interest in graphene's exceptional physical properties, chemical tunability, and potential for applications has generated thousands of publications and an accelerating pace of research, making review of such research timely. Here is an overview of the synthesis, properties, and applications of graphene and related materials (primarily, graphite oxide and its colloidal suspensions and materials made from them), from a materials science perspective.

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Graphene and Graphene Oxide: Synthesis, Properties, and Applications

Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSCs) offer the possibilities to design solar cells with a large flexibility in shape, color, and transparency. DSC research groups have been established around the worl ...

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Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells

Polymer nanocomposites, especially polymer-layered silicate (PLS) nanocomposites, represent a radical alternative to conventionally (macroscopically) filled polymers. Because of their nanometer-size dispersion, the nanocomposites exhibit markedly improved properties when compared with the pure polymers or conventional composites. These include increased modulus and strength, decreased gas permeability, increased solvent and heat resistance and decreased flammability. In addition to their potential applications, PLS nanocomposites are also unique model systems to study the structure and dynamics of polymers in confined environments. Using both delaminated and intercalated hybrids, the statics and dynamics of polymers confined over distances ranging from the radius of gyration of the polymer to the statistical segment length of the chains can be studied. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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Polymer-layered silicate nanocomposites: Synthesis, properties and applications

the kinetics of polystyrene melt intercalation in organically modified mica-type silicates were studied using X-ray diffraction and transmission electron microscopy. By monitoring the change in the integrated intensity of the basal reflection of the silicate host, the rate of conversion from unintercalated to intercalated silicate was determined at various temperatures and for various molecular weights of polystyrene. Hybrid formation is limited by mass transport into the primary particles of the host silicate and not specifically by diffusion of the polymer chains within the silicate galleries. The activation energy of hybrid formation is similar to that previously measured for polystyrene self-diffusion in the melt, implying that the mobility of the polymer chains within the host galleries is at least comparable to that in the melt.

Kinetics of polymer melt intercalation

Synthesis and properties of new poly(dimethylsiloxane) nanocomposites

The chemical synthesis and photoluminescence properties of either dispersed or supported carbogenic nanoparticles are described. In the first case, ionic nanoparticles are obtained by thermal oxidation of an appropriate citrate salt. In the second, carbogenic nanoparticles decorate the external surfaces of zeolite crystals and are obtained by thermal oxidation of a preexchanged zeolite host.

Photoluminescent Carbogenic Dots

The microstructure of various (ordered and disordered) polymer−organically modified layered silicate hybrids, synthesized via static polymer melt intercalation, is examined with X-ray diffraction and transmission electron microscopy. The ordered intercalates exhibit microstructures very similar to the unintercalated organically modified layered silicate (OLS). Polymer intercalation occurs as a front which penetrates the primary OLS particle from the external edge. The disordered hybrids, on the other hand, exhibit heterogeneous microstructures with increased layer disorder and spacing toward the polymer−primary particle boundary. In these hybrids, individual silicate layers are observed near the edge, whereas small coherent layer packets separated by polymer-filled gaps are prevalent toward the interior of the primary particle. The heterogeneous microstructure indicates that the formation of these disordered hybrids occur by a more complex process than simple sequential separation of individual layers sta...

Emmanuel P. Giannelis

Papers

Polymer-layered silicate nanocomposites: Synthesis, properties and applications

Kinetics of polymer melt intercalation

Synthesis and properties of new poly(dimethylsiloxane) nanocomposites

Photoluminescent Carbogenic Dots

Microstructural Evolution of Melt Intercalated Polymer−Organically Modified Layered Silicates Nanocomposites