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.

Using the freedom of design that metamaterials provide, we show how electromagnetic fields can be redirected at will and propose a design strategy. The conserved fields-electric displacement field D, magnetic induction field B, and Poynting vector B-are all displaced in a consistent manner. A simple illustration is given of the cloaking of a proscribed volume of space to exclude completely all electromagnetic fields. Our work has relevance to exotic lens design and to the cloaking of objects from electromagnetic fields.

/pdf/controlling-electromagnetic-fields-3ryxkryf1t.pdf

Controlling Electromagnetic Fields

Signaling Recognition Events with Fluorescent Sensors and Switches.

Department of Materials Science, University of Patras, 26504 Rio Patras, Greece, Theoretical and Physical Chemistry Institute, National Hellenic Research Foundation, 48 Vass. Constantinou Avenue, 116 35 Athens, Greece, Institut de Biologie Moleculaire et Cellulaire, UPR9021 CNRS, Immunologie et Chimie Therapeutiques, 67084 Strasbourg, France, and Dipartimento di Scienze Farmaceutiche, Universita di Trieste, Piazzale Europa 1, 34127 Trieste, Italy

Chemistry of Carbon Nanotubes

Electrochemical detection of C606- and C706-: Enhanced stability of fullerides in solution

Carbon Nanotube Doped Polyaniline

Ever since the first experimental evidence of the existence of endohedral metallofullerenes (EMFs) was obtained, the search for carbon cages with encapsulated metals and small molecules has become a very active field of research. EMFs exhibit unique electronic and structural features, with potential applications in many fields. Furthermore, functionalized EMFs offer additional potential applications because of their higher solubility and their ease of characterization by X-ray crystallography and other techniques. Herein we review the general field of EMFs, particularly of functionalized EMFs. We also address their structures and their (electrochemical) properties, as well as applications of these fascinating compounds.

Chemical, electrochemical, and structural properties of endohedral metallofullerenes.

Fullerene derivatives in which an oligophenylenevinylene (OPV) group is attached to C60 through a pyrrolidine ring have been prepared by 1,3-dipolar cycloaddition of the azomethine ylides generated in situ from the corresponding aldehydes and sarcosine. Electrochemical and photophysical studies have revealed that ground-state electronic interactions between the covalently bonded OPV moiety and the fullerene sphere are small. The photophysical investigations have also shown that both in dichloromethane and benzonitrile solution an efficient singlet−singlet OPV → C60 photoinduced energy-transfer process takes place, and occurrence of electron transfer, if any, is by far negligible relative to energy transfer. The C60−OPV derivatives have been incorporated in photovoltaic devices, and a photocurrent could be observed showing that photoinduced electron transfer does take place under these conditions. However, the efficiency of the devices is limited by the fact that photoinduced electron transfer from the OPV...

/pdf/fullerene-oligophenylenevinylene-hybrids-synthesis-2h8ikm1v3e.pdf

Fullerene-oligophenylenevinylene hybrids: Synthesis, electronic properties, and incorporation in photovoltaic devices

What is the role of electrochemistry in supramolecular chemistry? On one hand, it provides information on energy and kinetics that is not available with spectroscopic and mass spectrometric techniques; on the other, it can be used to alter the electronic states and thus the interactions between molecules, resulting in new compounds and materials. A typical cyclic voltammogram of the complex shown is depicted on the right; only the first three reductions are presented, although a total of six electrons can be transferred to the bipyridine units sequentially (E in V vs. ferrocene/ferrocenium).

Luis Echegoyen

Papers

Electrochemical detection of C606- and C706-: Enhanced stability of fullerides in solution

Carbon Nanotube Doped Polyaniline

Chemical, electrochemical, and structural properties of endohedral metallofullerenes.

Fullerene-oligophenylenevinylene hybrids: Synthesis, electronic properties, and incorporation in photovoltaic devices

Electrochemistry of Supramolecular Systems.