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

Electrogenerated chemiluminescence (also called electrochemiluminescence and abbreviated ECL) is the process whereby species generated at electrodes undergo high-energy electron-transfer reactions to form excited states that emit light. The first detailed ECL studies were described by Hercules and Bard et al. in the mid-1960s, although reports concerning light emission during electrolysis date back to the 1920s by Harvey. After about 40 years study, ECL has now become a very powerful analytical technique and been widely used in the areas of, for example, immunoassay, food and water testing, and biowarfare agent detection. ECL has also been successfully exploited as a detector of flow injection analysis (FIA), high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), capillary electrophoresis, and micro total analysis (μTAS). Figure 1 illustrates a time line of various events in the development of ECL. A literature survey using SciFinder Scholar reveals that more than 2000 journal articles, book chapters, and patents on various topics of ECL have been published. The overall number of publications, as shown in Figure 2, has increased exponentially over the past 20 years, of which 40–50% were biorelated. Similar amounts of ECL papers could be also found from the Thomson ISI Web of Science as well as † Telephone (601) 266 4716; fax (601) 266 6075; e-mail wujian.miao@ usm.edu. Wujian Miao received his undergraduate diploma in chemistry from Nantong University (Nantong, China) in 1982, his M.Sc. degree in analytical chemistry from Zhongshan University (Guangzhou, China, with Jinyuan Mo) in 1991, and his Ph.D. degree in electrochemistry from Monash University (Melbourne, Australia, with Alan M. Bond) in 2000. He then served as a Research Scientist in CSIRO (Melbourne, Australia), followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Texas at Austin with Allen J. Bard in 2001. Since 2004 he has served as an assistant professor of chemistry at the University of Southern Mississippi.

Electrogenerated Chemiluminescence and Its Biorelated Applications

Electrografting refers to the electrochemical reaction that permits organic layers to be attached to solid conducting substrates. This definition can be extended to reactions involving an electron transfer between the substrate to be modified and the reagent, but also to examples where a reducing or oxidizing reagent is added to produce the reactive species. These methods are interesting as they provide a real bond between the surface and the organic layer. Electrografting applies to a variety of substrates including carbon, metals and their oxides, but also dielectrics such as polymers. Since the 1980s several methods have been developed, either by reduction or oxidation, and some of them have reached an industrial stage. This critical review describes the methods that are used for electrografting, their mechanism, the formation and growth of the layers as well as their applications (742 references).

Electrografting: a powerful method for surface modification

Recent advances in polyaniline research: Polymerization mechanisms, structural aspects, properties and applications

Recent applications of electrogenerated chemiluminescence in chemical analysis.

In the past, palladium as a member of the platinum group metals was mainly known as an expensive noble metal. Probably, only fast hydrogen absorption into bulk palladium reminded of its unique catalytic activity. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, detailed studies of the electron structure of palladium atom/nanocluster/nanoparticles launched a new understanding of the selective catalytic activity of this noble metal. This review presents the simplest and most useful methods of synthesizing palladium in a nano scale. In addition, the most famous and required applications of nano-palladium are described in the second half of the review. With the rapid development of nanotechnologies, palladium nanoparticles are becoming prospective selective catalysts for complex chemical reactions.

Chemical synthesis and application of palladium nanoparticles

Co-polymers of aniline and nitroanilines. Part I. Mechanism of aniline oxidation polycondensation

A possible scheme of electrochemiluminescence generation on platinum cathodes in aqueous solutions of peroxydisulfates

Synthesis and properties of the polyanisidines

Approximately two decades ago, gold catalyst opened up a new view of their properties when they are introduced in the form of nanomaterials, since at that time, many approaches to preparation and use of gold nanoparticles started to be used in many practical applications. Today, the research activity relating to gold nanomaterials is becoming systematic and goes further to make connections between their surface structure, chemical and physical properties, and possible applications. Since electrodeposition is one of the most controllable methods used to prepare nanoparticles, nanowires, and nanoclusters of gold, the present review gives preference on their electrochemical synthesis. The relationship between catalytic activity, size, morphology and stability of gold nanomaterials is discussed in detail. Based on the properties of the prepared gold nanocatalysts, their new applications in chemical, photochemical, and electrochemical reactions have been observed.

Oleksandr Reshetnyak

Papers

Chemical synthesis and application of palladium nanoparticles

Co-polymers of aniline and nitroanilines. Part I. Mechanism of aniline oxidation polycondensation

A possible scheme of electrochemiluminescence generation on platinum cathodes in aqueous solutions of peroxydisulfates

Synthesis and properties of the polyanisidines

Electrochemical synthesis and properties of gold nanomaterials