Author Archive

Austrian Physical Society becomes co-owner of PCCP

PCCP is delighted to announce that the Österreichische Physikalische Gesellschaft (OePG) has recently become the nineteenth society to co-own PCCP. Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics (PCCP) is proud to be a Society journal and is published by the Royal Society of Chemistry on a not-for-profit basis for the benefit of the whole scientific community.

Wolfgang E. Ernst, President of the OePG, says ‘The Österreichische Physikalische Gesellschaft is very happy to be on board with PCCP as a new co-owner. Many groups in the physics institutes of Graz, Innsbruck, Linz, and Vienna participate in research projects, the results of which perfectly fit the mission of PCCP. I am confident that 2015 will be an excellent year for the partnership between PCCP and the Österreichische Physikalische Gesellschaft.’

Javier Aoiz, Chair of PCCP‘s Ownership Board and representative of the Spanish Royal Society of Chemistry, says ‘On behalf of the full Ownership Board, it is a pleasure to welcome the Österreichische Physikalische Gesellschaft as a new co-owner of PCCP.  The Austrian Physical Society has become the twentieth Society from 19 different European and non-European countries participating in, what was since its very inception, an exciting project.

PCCP was launched in 1999, and since then the number of papers published each year has grown by three and a half times; in 2014, the journal published almost 4,000 papers. It is now a well-established journal and a sure reference in the interdisciplinary field of Physical Chemistry-Chemical Physics covering a broad scope of cutting-edge scientific subjects.

We are sure the journal will benefit from the participation of the OePG and that the contribution from Austrian scientists will soar in the near future.’

To celebrate this new partnership, PCCP has created a collection of top cited articles from authors based in Austria to showcase some of the great Austrian research published recently in the journal. These articles are free to read until 28th February 2015.

PERSPECTIVES:
Understanding photosynthetic light-harvesting: a bottom up theoretical approach
Thomas Renger and Frank Müh
DOI: 10.1039/c3cp43439g, Perspective

ORIGINAL RESEARCH:
Matter–wave interference of particles selected from a molecular library with masses exceeding 10000 amu
Sandra Eibenberger, Stefan Gerlich, Markus Arndt, Marcel Mayor and Jens Tüxen
DOI: 10.1039/C3CP51500A, Paper

A step towards the a priori design of ionic liquids
Heiko Niedermeyer, Claire Ashworth, Agnieszka Brandt, Tom Welton and Patricia A. Hunt
DOI: 10.1039/C3CP50521A, Paper

Internal state thermometry of cold trapped molecular anions
Rico Otto, Alexander von Zastrow, Thorsten Best and Roland Wester
DOI: 10.1039/C2CP43186F, Paper

Polarisabilities of alkylimidazolium ionic liquids
Katharina Bica, Maggel Deetlefs, Christian Schröder and Kenneth R. Seddon
DOI: 10.1039/C3CP43867H, Paper

N-site de-methylation in pyrimidine bases as studied by low energy electrons and ab initiocalculations
D. Almeida, D. Kinzel, F. Ferreira da Silva, B. Puschnigg, D. Gschliesser, P. Scheier, S. Denifl, G. García, L. González and P. Limão-Vieira
DOI: 10.1039/C3CP50548K, Paper

The relevance of interfaces for oxide ion transport in yttria stabilized zirconia (YSZ) thin films
Matthias Gerstl, Gernot Friedbacher, Frank Kubel, Herbert Hutter and Jürgen Fleig
DOI: 10.1039/C2CP42347B, Paper

Long-range Li+ dynamics in the lithium argyrodite Li7PSe6 as probed by rotating-frame spin–lattice relaxation NMR
V. Epp, Ö. Gün, H.-J. Deiseroth and M. Wilkening
DOI: 10.1039/C3CP44379E, Paper

Electron attachment to the dipeptide dialanine: influence of methylation on site selective dissociation reactions
Benjamin Puschnigg, Stefan E. Huber, Michael Probst, Katrin Tanzer, Violaine Vizcaino, Filipe Ferreira da Silva, Paul Scheier, Paulo Limão-Vieira and Stephan Denifl
DOI: 10.1039/C3CP44230F, Paper

Irreversible thermochromism in copper chloride Imidazolium Nanoparticle Networks
Martin Kronstein, Konstantin Kriechbaum, Johanna Akbarzadeh, Herwig Peterlik and Marie-Alexandra Neouze
DOI: 10.1039/C3CP50430A, Paper

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New Associate Editors for PCCP

We are delighted to welcome three new Associate Editors to PCCP, Bo Albinsson, Luis Bañares and Henry F. Schaefer III. All three Associate Editors will start handling submissions very soon, so we encourage you to submit your best work to these Editorial Offices now.

Bo Albinsson
Bo Albinsson is professor in Physical Chemistry at Chalmers University of Technology in Göteborg, Sweden. He is currently vice head of the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering with responsibility for the graduate training (presently over 200 PhD students in four graduate schools) and will become the Director of the Chalmers Area of Advance for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology beginning in 2015. Albinsson has a long-standing interest in mechanisms for energy and electron transfer reactions with relevance for solar energy research and he has lately been involved in developing DNA nanostructures with photo redox active functionalizations. 13 students have completed their PhD under the supervision of Bo Albinsson and he has published over 120 refereed scientific publications in mostly high impact journals.

Luis Bañares
Professor Bañares is Chair of Physical Chemistry and Director of the Centre for Ultrafast Lasers at Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM), Spain. He received his PhD in Chemistry from UCM in 1990. Following postdoctoral research associate positions at California Institute of Technology (USA) and Universität Würzburg (Germany) with Fulbright and Alexander von Humboldt fellowships, respectively, he joined UCM as an assistant professor, associate professor and since 2007 as full professor. His research interests are related to experimental and theoretical chemical reaction dynamics and femtochemistry. His work focuses on the understanding of fundamental chemical reactions and photodissociation processes at a molecular level.

Henry F. Schaefer
Dr. Schaefer is currently Graham Perdue Professor of Chemistry and Director of the Center for Computational Quantum Chemistry at the University of Georgia, USA. He received his B.S. degree in chemical physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Ph.D. degree in chemical physics from Stanford University. For 18 years he served as a professor of chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. His research involves the use of state-of-the-art computational hardware and theoretical methods to solve important problems in molecular quantum mechanics.

All three Editors will start to handle manuscripts soon, so we encourage you to submit now to these three new Editorial offices.

Take a look at some of the recent contributions the new Associate Editors have made to PCCP:

Triplet–triplet annihilation photon-upconversion: towards solar energy applications
Victor Gray, Damir Dzebo, Maria Abrahamsson, Bo Albinsson and Kasper Moth-Poulsen
Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 2014, DOI: 10.1039/C4CP00744A, Perspective

Imaging the stereodynamics of methyl iodide photodissociation in the second absorption band: fragment polarization and the interplay between direct and predissociation
Marta G. González, Javier D. Rodríguez, Luis Rubio-Lago and Luis Bañares
Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 2014, DOI: 10.1039/C4CP03823A, Paper

Proton-transfer in hydrogenated guanine–cytosine trimer neutral species, cations, and anions embedded in B-form DNA
Yuexia Lin, Hongyan Wang, Yingxi Wu, Simin Gao and Henry F. Schaefer III
Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 2014, DOI: 10.1039/C3CP54904F, Paper

New PCCP Associate Editors: Bo Albinsson (left), Luis Bañares (centre) and Henry F. Schaefer (right).

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Rivers, Trees And The Many Structures Of Carbon Nanotubes

When a river comes up against an obstacle, it will split and flow around it before joining up again, thereby forming a central island. Similarly, carbon nanotubes can be grown to split apart and then re-join through the judicious use of metal catalysts. The authors of this communication, Hasegawa and Kohno, identified this phenomenon and coined the term ‘origami mechanism’ to describe it.

My river analogy is, however, a rather simplistic take on what they found. In order to draw a more accurate comparison I must turn to tree limbs. Imagine a branch with a linear split; there will be a hole in the middle, flanked by bare timber, and the bark will be effectively split into two halves with clearly defined edges. This would be equivalent to the carbon nanotube splitting into two ribbons with terminal edges, before reforming into an entire nanotube, as one might expect to observe.

However, this does not entirely tally with what Hasegawa and Kohno actually found. Their findings align more closely with the example of a wisteria, which has co-dominant stems, which grow apart and then re-fuse as the plant twists around itself as it grows. The difference here is that each of the stems, whilst apart, still retains a full covering of bark, as it is a distinct branch. Indeed, the authors found that the nanoribbons take the form of entire flattened nanotubes before they join up again.

Of course, the reality is more complex still, and you can’t beat reading about it in the authors’ own words, which incidentally, I strongly encourage you to do.

Splitting and joining in carbon nanotube/nanoribbon/nanotetrahedron growth
Takayuki Hasegawa and Hideo Kohno
Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 2015, DOI: 10.1039/C4CP05139D

Graphical abstract: Splitting and joining in carbon nanotube/nanoribbon/nanotetrahedron growth

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Zeolites net new carbon allotropes

Previously unknown carbon allotropes have been predicted by scientists exploring their links with well-known network topologies. The new structures are highly stable and transparent, some with larger optical band gaps than diamond.

Advanced computational techniques are leading the search for new forms of carbon and other group 14 elements. Now, Davide Proserpio from the University of Milan, Italy, and co-workers, have shown that fundamental network descriptors known about and catalogued for many years can help predict as well as classify and compare allotropes.

Interested to know more?

Read the full article in Chemistry World by Jonathan Midgley.

Take a look at the original Open Access research article:

From zeolite nets to sp3 carbon allotropes: a topology-based multiscale theoretical study
Igor A. Baburin, Davide M. Proserpio, Vladimir A. Saleev and Alexandra V. Shipilova
Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 2015, DOI: 10.1039/C4CP04569F

Six new carbon allotropes

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Fundamental processes in semiconductor nanocrystals – PCCP themed issue online now

PCCP is delighted to present a themed collection which includes a number of great articles on Fundamental Processes in Semiconductor Nanocrystals. The issue was guest edited by Efrat Lifshitz (Technion, Israel) and Laurens Siebbeles (TU Delft, The Netherlands) and brings together a collection of contributed papers that cover current interest in a wide variety of topics associated with semiconductor crystals. You can read the Guest Editor’s full introduction to the issue in their Editorial.

There are a number of great contributions in this issue, including:

Influence of nanoparticle shape on charge transport and recombination in polymer/nanocrystal solar cells
Zhe Li, Weiyuan Wang, Neil C. Greenham and Christopher R. McNeill
Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 2014,16, 25684-25693

Multiple exciton generation in cluster-free alloy CdxHg1−xTe colloidal quantum dots synthesized in water
Stephen V. Kershaw, Sergii Kalytchuk, Olga Zhovtiuk, Qing Shen, Takuya Oshima, Witoon Yindeesuk, Taro Toyoda and Andrey L. Rogach
Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 2014,16, 25710-25722

Take a look at the themed collection online now to see all of the great contributions!


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Paul von Ragué Schleyer, 1930–2014

Credit: U of Georgia

Paul von Ragué Schleyer, a leading figure in physical organic chemistry, died on November 21st at his home in Georgia, USA. Schleyer pioneered the use of computational chemistry in characterizing new and widely used concepts and made vast contributions to a broad range of physical organic, organometallic, inorganic, and theoretical chemistry topics.

‘Paul Schleyer was one of the greatest chemists of the 20th century’, says Herbert Mayr, from Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany. ‘Paul’s impact on Organic Chemistry is only inadequately reflected by the impressive numbers of articles he had published. Of even greater importance was his influence on the thinking of a countless number of scientists who discussed with him their projects, collaborated with him, or just attended his lectures.’

Schleyer attended Princeton University gaining an A.B. degree in Chemistry in 1951, followed by Harvard University where he received a Ph.D. in physical organic chemistry under Paul Bartlett in 1957. In 1976 Schleyer moved to the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, in Germany and became a frequent speaker at international meetings, forming close relationships with many chemists with whom he would continue to maintain an active correspondence. Schleyer extended his career well past the mandatory retirement age in Germany and continued to contribute to the field as Graham Perdue Professor at the University of Georgia.

PCCP would like to send our deepest condolences to Paul Schleyer’s family and colleagues.

Is C60 buckminsterfullerene aromatic?
Zhongfang Chen,  Judy I. Wu,   Clémence Corminboeuf,  Jonathan Bohmann,  Xin Lu,  Andreas Hirsch and  Paul von Ragué Schleyer
Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 2012,14, 14886-14891

D 3h CN3Be3+ and CO3Li3+: viable planar hexacoordinate carbon prototypes
Yan-Bo Wu, Yan Duan, Gang Lu, Hai-Gang Lu, Pin Yang, Paul von Ragué Schleyer, Gabriel Merino, Rafael Islas and Zhi-Xiang Wang
Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 2012,14, 14760-14763

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Size selected clusters and particles: from physical chemistry and chemical physics to catalysis – PCCP themed issue online now

PCCP is delighted to present its latest themed collection which includes a great selection of articles on Size selected clusters and particles. The issue was guest-edited by Jeroen van Bokhoven (Institute for Chemical and Bioengineering ETH Zurich) and Stefan Vajda (Argonne National Laboratory) and you can read an introduction to this issue in their editorial.

The outside front cover features an article from Anastassia N. Alexandrova et al. entitled Pure and Zn-doped Pt clusters go flat and upright on MgO(100).

There are many other great contributions to this themed issue including:

Optimised photocatalytic hydrogen production using core–shell AuPd promoters with controlled shell thickness
W. Jones, R. Su, P. P. Wells, Y. Shen, N. Dimitratos, M. Bowker, D. Morgan, B. B. Iversen, A. Chutia, F. Besenbacher and G. Hutchings
Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 2014,16, 26638-2664

Propene epoxidation with O2 or H2–O2 mixtures over silver catalysts: theoretical insights into the role of the particle size
M. Boronat, A. Pulido, P. Concepción and A. Corma
Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 2014,16, 26600-26612

Make sure to take a look at the full contents of this themed collection online now!

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New Solution to Ancient Problem

Take two bodies of water whose initial characteristics are identical, except for their temperature. Measure how long it takes these two bodies of water to cool to the same specified lower temperature. Explain why the initially hotter water apparently cools faster.

Alright, so it’s a bit more complicated than that, with precise experimental parameters that must be adhered to, but the essence of the problem remains the same. There appears to be a difference in the relative rates at which different bodies of water cool depending on their starting temperatures. The Mpemba effect (as it is often known) may sound simple, but it is a phenomenon that is often disputed, deceptively difficult to analyse, has many proffered explanations and a historical pedigree going back to Aristotle. A few years ago the RSC even held a competition to try to settle the matter and reach a consensus of opinion. Yet despite the declaration of a winner, apparently not everybody agreed that the question was quite settled once and for all.

Now, Zhang et al. are throwing their hat into the ring with a new answer. They say that they’ve approached the problem from an unusual angle, and present new quantitative evidence to support their argument. So have they finally cracked it, or is this just the latest in a long line of possible explanations that extends back over thousands of years? With a topic as divisive as this, I’m not placing any bets just yet.

Read the original manuscript online now!

Hydrogen-bond memory and water-skin supersolidity resolving the Mpemba paradox

Xi Zhang, Yongli Huang, Zengsheng Ma, Yichun Zhou, Ji Zhou, Weitao Zheng, Qing Jiang and Chang Q. Sun

Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 2014, DOI: 10.1039/C4CP03669G

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Charge generation mechanism in organic solar cells – PCCP themed issue online now

PCCP is delighted to present its latest themed collection which includes an excellent selection of interesting and timely articles on charge generation mechanism in organic solar cells. The issue was guest-edited by Maria Antonietta Loi and Alessandro Troisi and you can read their editorial to find out more.

The outside front cover features a Perspective article entitled Charge separation energies at organic heterojunctions: on the role of structural and electrostatic disorder from Frédéric Castet, David Beljonne et al.

There are plenty of other great contributions in this themed collection, including:

Charge generation in polymer–fullerene bulk-heterojunction solar cells
Feng Gao and Olle Inganäs
Perspective, DOI: 10.1039/C4CP01814A

Ultrafast charge separation and nongeminate electron–hole recombination in organic photovoltaics
Samuel L. Smith and Alex W. Chin
Communication, DOI: 10.1039/C4CP01791A

Make sure to check out the full contents of the themed issue online now.

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ELECTROCHEM 2014 Poster Prize

Congratulations to Jing Wang who was recently awarded a PCCP poster prize at the ‘Electrochem2014′ conference which took place at Loughborough Univeristy, UK from 7th–9th September. Jing Wang’s poster was entitled ‘Electrodeposition and Characterisation of Novel Ni-NbOx Composite Coatings as a Diffusion Barrier for High Temperature Electronics Packaging’ and he was awarded the prize by Professor Rob Hillman, PCCP Advisory Board member.

The Electrochemconference series has emerged as an established annual UK & Ireland event, where a cross-disciplinary range of electrochemistry, fundamental and applied, is on show with a particular view on broadening exchange of knowledge, providing information about the latest research developments, linking academia to industry and suppliers, and engaging with the next generation of electrochemists and electrochemical entrepreneurs.

PCCP will be awarding more Poster Prizes next year, so please do let us know of any suitable conferences which PCCP could sponsor in 2015.

Electrochem 2014 - Poster prize winner

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