PCCP Blog

This week’s HOT articles

16 Dec 2013

By Katherine Dunn, Publishing Assistant.

Take a look at this week’s HOT articles, which are free to access for a limited time:

Li ion dynamics in TiO2 anode materials with an ordered hierarchical pore structure – insights from ex situ NMR
Patrick Bottke, Yu Ren, Ilie Hanzu, Peter G. Bruce and Martin Wilkening
DOI: 10.1039/C3CP54586E, Paper

Edge-closed graphene nanoribbons fabricated by spontaneous collapse of few-walled carbon nanotubes
Yunfang Li
DOI: 10.1039/C3CP53785D, Paper

Targeting adequate thermal stability and fire safety in selecting ionic liquid-based electrolytes for energy storage
L. Chancelier, A. O. Diallo, C. C. Santini, G. Marlair, T. Gutel, S. Mailley and C. Len
DOI: 10.1039/C3CP54225D, Paper

Domain structure for an amorphous iridium-oxide water-oxidation catalyst characterized by X-ray pair distribution function analysis
Jier Huang, James D. Blakemore, Diego Fazi, Oleksandr Kokhan, Nathan D. Schley, Robert H. Crabtree, Gary W. Brudvig and David M. Tiede
DOI: 10.1039/C3CP54878C, Communication

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Altmetrics now featured on PCCP

10 Dec 2013

By Fiona McKenzie, Executive Editor.

We are pleased to announce the inclusion of Altmetrics on PCCP.

With a constantly changing publishing landscape and changes to the way people use scientific literature, altmetrics is a measure that can monitor the level of conversation and interest in a particular piece of research at the article level. Thus altmetrics provides an additional modern metric for our authors to measure the impact of their work, rather than rely solely on citations and impact factor.

To view altmetrics on PCCP articles, use the Metrics tab as pictured below on the article landing page.

A press release from Altmetrics is available on our website.

What do you think? We are interested to hear your feedback on this new development and how you are utilising these new types of metrics. Please leave your comments below.

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This week’s HOT articles

10 Dec 2013

By Katherine Dunn, Publishing Assistant.

Take a look at this week’s HOT articles, which are free to access for a limited time: Graphical abstract: A primer on the synthesis, water-solubilization, and functionalization of quantum dots, their use as biological sensing agents, and present status

A primer on the synthesis, water-solubilization, and functionalization of quantum dots, their use as biological sensing agents, and present status
Christina Marie Tyrakowski and Preston Todd Snee
DOI: 10.1039/C3CP53502A, Perspective

Hydrogen defects in tetragonal ZrO2 studied using density functional theory
Mostafa Youssef and Bilge Yildiz
DOI: 10.1039/C3CP54153C, Paper

Mode-specific vibrational relaxation of photoexcited guanosine 5′-monophosphate and its acid form: a femtosecond broadband mid-IR transient absorption and theoretical study
Yuyuan Zhang, Roberto Improta and Bern Kohler
DOI: 10.1039/C3CP53815J, Paper

The binding mechanisms of intrinsically disordered proteins
Jakob Dogan, Stefano Gianni and Per Jemth
DOI: 10.1039/C3CP54226B, Perspective

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This week’s HOT articles

02 Dec 2013

By Katherine Dunn, Publishing Assistant.

Take a look at this week’s HOT articles, which are free to access for a limited time: Graphical abstract: Electrochemistry at nanometer-sized electrodes

Electrochemistry at nanometer-sized electrodes
Shengli Chen and Yuwen Liu
DOI: 10.1039/C3CP53773K, Perspective

Nanoscale resolution scanning thermal microscopy using carbon nanotube tipped thermal probes
Peter D. Tovee, Manuel E. Pumarol, Mark C. Rosamond, Robert Jones, Michael C. Petty, Dagou A. Zeze and Oleg V. Kolosov
DOI: 10.1039/C3CP53047G, Paper

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Advancing the chemistry of the f-elements (Dalton Discussion 14) – final chance to submit

28 Nov 2013

By Katherine Dunn, Publishing Assistant.

Advancing the Chemistry of the Actinides:DD14

Advancing the chemistry of the f-elements (Dalton Discussion 14) – final chance to submit

The oral abstract deadline for Advancing the chemistry of the f-elements (Dalton Discussion 14) is almost upon us. Take advantage of this exceptional opportunity to showcase your work at this truly interactive event and submit before Monday 2 December 2013.

For full details on Advancing the chemistry of the f-elements (Dalton Discussion 14), please visit the dedicated website.

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PCCP themed issue: Size Selected Clusters and Particles: From Physical Chemistry to Catalysis

28 Nov 2013

By Rowan Frame, Commissioning Editor.

PCCP themed issue: Size Selected Clusters and Particles: From Physical Chemistry to Catalysis

Guest Editors: Stefan Vajda (Argonne National Laboratory) and Jeroen van Bokhoven (ETH Zürich)

Deadline for Submissions: 16^th May 2014

Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics (PCCP) is delighted to announce a high-profile themed issue ‘Size Selected Clusters and Particles: From Physical Chemistry to Catalysis’.

Please do let us know if you are interested in contributing to this themed issue by emailing the PCCP Editorial Office (pccp-rsc@rsc.org). We look forward to hearing from you.

The themed issue will be published in PCCP in 2014. It will receive great exposure, and get significant promotion.

PCCP is a high-impact, community spanning, international journal publishing work of the highest quality in the broad fields of physical chemistry, chemical physics and biophysical chemistry.

Ultrasmall clusters and particles consist of dominantly under-coordinated surface atoms, but the ratio of facet to corner and edge atoms increases with growing size. The variety and controllability of surface or binding-site atoms offers an excellent tuning knob to optimize binding, reactivity and catalytic properties. Moreover, small particles facilitate reaction pathways that are not feasible on extended rigid surfaces, because they can undergo dynamical structural changes.

This themed issue aims to address the need for the fundamental understanding of the evolution of physicochemical and catalytic properties of matter starting with small subnanometer size clusters that consist of only a handful of atoms, up to particles nanometers in size. Both experimental and computational contributions are welcome.

Please note that:

Submissions must contain new physical insight and should be high quality manuscripts of original, unpublished research.
Communications and full papers can be submitted for consideration.
If you are interested in submitting a ‘PCCP Perspective-review’ article this themed issue, please get in touch with the Editorial Office for more information about Perspective articles.
Manuscripts can be submitted in any reasonable format using our online submissions service.
You should indicate upon submission that your manuscript is intended for this themed issue.
All submissions will be subject to an initial assessment by the editors and, if appropriate, rigorous peer review.

The deadline for submissions to the themed issue is 16^th May 2014, although submissions before this date are of course welcomed.

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This week’s HOT article

25 Nov 2013

By Katherine Dunn, Publishing Assistant.

Take a look at this week’s HOT article, which is free to access for a limited time: Graphical abstract: Electrochemical studies of silver nanoparticles: a guide for experimentalists and a perspective

Electrochemical studies of silver nanoparticles: a guide for experimentalists and a perspective
Kristina Tschulik, Christopher Batchelor-McAuley, Her-Shuang Toh, Emma J. E. Stuart and Richard G. Compton
DOI: 10.1039/C3CP54221A, Perspective

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This week’s HOT articles

18 Nov 2013

By Katherine Dunn, Publishing Assistant.

Take a look at this week’s HOT article, which is free to access for a limited time:
Graphical abstract: High-resolution anion photoelectron spectra of TiO2−, ZrO2−, and HfO2− obtained by slow electron velocity-map imaging

High-resolution anion photoelectron spectra of TiO2−, ZrO2−, and HfO2− obtained by slow electron velocity-map imaging
Jongjin B. Kim, Marissa L. Weichman and Daniel M. Neumark
DOI: 10.1039/C3CP54084G, Paper

A conformational factorisation approach for estimating the binding free energies of macromolecules
Kenji Mochizuki, Chris S. Whittleston, Sandeep Somani, Halim Kusumaatmaja and David J. Wales
DOI: 10.1039/C3CP53537A, Paper

Detection of a charge-separated catalyst precursor state in a linked photosensitizer-catalyst assembly
Anusree Mukherjee, Oleksandr Kokhan, Jier Huang, Jens Niklas, Lin X. Chen, David M. Tiede and Karen L. Mulfort
DOI: 10.1039/C3CP54420F, Paper

Free energy barriers for CO2 and N2 in zeolite NaKA: an ab initio molecular dynamics approach
Amber Mace, Kari Laasonen and Aatto Laaksonen
DOI: 10.1039/C3CP52821A, Paper

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New Insight into Surface Charge Behaviour in C60

14 Nov 2013

By Heather Montgomery, Deputy Editor.

Victoria Parkes is a guest web-writer for PCCP. She is currently studying for a PhD at the University of Nottingham, UK.

There can be no doubt that fullerene research is both interesting and varied; we have created carbon nanotubes from them, we can put things inside them, they have diverse medical uses, and recently evidence has been presented suggesting that they are found in space. In this paper, Raggi et al. take a computational approach to investigate the dielectric properties of C₆₀, the smallest of the fullerene family, and the first to be predicted and discovered.

Table of contents image The results of their study are quite striking. They found that by varying the distance between the fullerene and the point charge, the surface charge density of C₆₀ can be manipulated. In other words, they predict that one could selectively polarise a fullerene molecule to a greater or lesser extent. They were also able to predict the separation parameters necessary in order to achieve this, including identifying the tipping point at which the charge distribution is expressed as a purely positive hemisphere and a purely negative hemisphere.

This study has important implications for future studies into fullerenes as it demonstrates that assuming a uniform surface charge density can only be valid above a certain threshold separation from the point charge. As well as being important to the understanding of fullerene-ion collisions, this new insight could potentially lead towards an understanding of fullerene fission mechanisms.

by Victoria Parkes

Read the full details of this exciting research in PCCP:

Surface-charge distribution on a dielectric sphere due to an external point charge: examples of C₆₀ and C₂₄₀ fullerenes
Gerardo Raggi, Anthony J. Stace and Elena Bichoutskaia
DOI: 10.1039/C3CP53522C