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.

/pdf/self-assembled-monolayers-of-thiolates-on-metals-as-a-form-1neb0hj3k4.pdf

Self-assembled monolayers of thiolates on metals as a form of nanotechnology.

This review focuses on the synthesis, protection, functionalization, and application of magnetic nanoparticles, as well as the magnetic properties of nanostructured systems. Substantial progress in the size and shape control of magnetic nanoparticles has been made by developing methods such as co-precipitation, thermal decomposition and/or reduction, micelle synthesis, and hydrothermal synthesis. A major challenge still is protection against corrosion, and therefore suitable protection strategies will be emphasized, for example, surfactant/polymer coating, silica coating and carbon coating of magnetic nanoparticles or embedding them in a matrix/support. Properly protected magnetic nanoparticles can be used as building blocks for the fabrication of various functional systems, and their application in catalysis and biotechnology will be briefly reviewed. Finally, some future trends and perspectives in these research areas will be outlined.

Magnetic nanoparticles: Synthesis, protection, functionalization, and application

Advancing perovskite solar cell technologies toward their theoretical power conversion efficiency (PCE) requires delicate control over the carrier dynamics throughout the entire device. By controlling the formation of the perovskite layer and careful choices of other materials, we suppressed carrier recombination in the absorber, facilitated carrier injection into the carrier transport layers, and maintained good carrier extraction at the electrodes. When measured via reverse bias scan, cell PCE is typically boosted to 16.6% on average, with the highest efficiency of ~19.3% in a planar geometry without antireflective coating. The fabrication of our perovskite solar cells was conducted in air and from solution at low temperatures, which should simplify manufacturing of large-area perovskite devices that are inexpensive and perform at high levels.

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/345/6196/542.full.pdf

Interface engineering of highly efficient perovskite solar cells

Valence band photoelectron spectroscopy of liquid silicon has been performed by using a new technique based on laser pulse heating, which has been developed for measuring strongly evaporating systems under ultrahigh vacuum conditions. Such measurements show that liquid silicon is close to a free-electron metal except for a distinct dip in the middle of the spectrum at 5.3 eV binding energy.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1209/0295-5075/31/3/007/pdf

Valence Band Photoelectron Spectroscopy of Liquid Silicon

Depth profiles of Argon incorporated into Boron Nitride films during preparation and their temperature dependent evolution

Ion beam assisted growth of c-BN films on top of c-BN substrates — a HRTEM study

Layered CoO/Co(7 nm)/Cu(6 nm)/Co(7 nm) spin-valve systems capped by a 5 nm boron top layer, which exhibit giant magnetoresistance (GMR), were prepared by pulsed laser deposition (PLD) with a 193 nm ArF excimer laser. To reduce atomic intermixing at the various layer interfaces, the areal energy density of the laser was lowered to 4.2 J/cm2 for the first 2 nm of the intermediate Cu and the Co top layers, while applying 11 J/cm2 for the rest. By this procedure, a clear improvement of the GMR could be accomplished as compared to an identical reference system prepared by exclusively applying the high value of 11 J/cm2, pointing to the importance of minimizing interface mixing. Additionally, the effect of the laser intensity on the areal density and shape of μm-sized droplets co-deposited onto the substrates by PLD was studied. It turned out that for the two limiting values applied in the present case, no negative influence of the droplets on the magnetic hysteresis of pure Co layers or spin-valve systems could be observed.

Hans-Gerd Boyen

Papers

Valence Band Photoelectron Spectroscopy of Liquid Silicon

Depth profiles of Argon incorporated into Boron Nitride films during preparation and their temperature dependent evolution

Ion beam assisted growth of c-BN films on top of c-BN substrates — a HRTEM study

Properties of a Co/Cu/Co spin-valve system prepared by an optimized 193 nm pulsed laser deposition process

Fabrication of ohmic Au/Cr contacts on top of cubic Boron Nitride films