Journal of Materials Chemistry Blog

This week Dr James Milne (RSC Publishing) presented a certificate of achievement to Professor Hongjie Zhang, at Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry.

Professor Zhang was recognised for his prolific published research over the last year. RSC has published 17 of Professor Zhang’s papers – making him the most successful author from China during the year and 4 of these papers were published in Journal of Materials Chemistry.

Read Professor Zhang’s excellent work published in Journal of Materials Chemistry.

• White-light emission from a single-emitting-component Ca9Gd(PO4)(7):Eu2+,Mn2+ phosphor with tunable luminescent properties for near-UV light-emitting diodes
• Facile and rapid fabrication of metal-organic framework nanobelts and color-tunable photoluminescence properties
• A transparent and luminescent ionogel based on organosilica and ionic liquid coordinating to Eu3+ ions
• One-pot synthesis of flowerlike Ni7S6 and its application in selective hydrogenation of chloronitrobenzene

RSC Publishing is offering two fantastic opportunities to gain experience in scientific publishing over the summer.

Science Writer Internship
The RSC is looking for a student member to work as a science writer in our editorial office this summer. You will gain experience working for two of our publications: Chemistry World and Education in Chemistry. Full details here:

Summer Placement – Scientific Publishing
This is a great opportunity to gain experience over an 8-12 week period of working with dynamic journals teams and academics to ensure the RSC publishes leading journals for the chemical science community worldwide. Full details here:

Materials chemists in China have developed a compound that they believe should improve the quality of field emission displays (FEDs), bringing applications a step closer. FEDs have, for a number of years, been a promising technology for flat panel displays, but progress has been hampered by the display quality.

Jun Lin at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun, and colleagues developed a phosphor with promising colour properties for FED applications…  Read the full story in Chemistry World.

Original research article here: Cyan-emitting Ti⁴⁺– and Mn²⁺-coactivated Mg₂SnO₄ as a potential phosphor to enlarge the color gamut for field emission display. Guogang Li, Xiao Zhang, Chong Peng, Mengmeng Shang, Dongling Geng, Ziyong Cheng and Jun Lin, J. Mater. Chem., 2011, DOI: 10.1039/c1jm00057h

The front cover features Acid-directed synthesis of SERS-active hierarchical assemblies of silver nanostructures. This paper reports the acid-directed self-assembly of metal nanoparticles into large systems with complex structures, without the application of any polymer surfactant or capping agent. The team behind the research say that the addition of acid to induce formation of self-assembled structures can be a general synthetic platform to fabricate metal structures with complex morphologies. (J. Mater. Chem., 2011, 21, 2495-2501.)

Highlighted on the inside cover is Aqueous polyfluorene probe for the detection and estimation of Fe3+ and inorganic phosphate in blood serum. Reported in this paper is the synthesis of an anionic polyfluorene derivative, poly(9,9-bis(6′-sulfate)hexyl) fluorene-alt-1,4-phenylene sodium salt. This probe exhibits exemplary activity towards the selective detection of Fe3+ and phosphates under physiological conditions. (J. Mater. Chem., 2011, 21, 2502-2507.)

Mobility and photovoltaic performance studies on polymer blends: effects of side chains volume fraction by Getachew Adam, Almantas Pivrikas, Alberto M. Ramil, Sisay Tadesse, Teketel Yohannes, Niyazi S. Sariciftci and Daniel A. M. Egbe is the paper featured on the back cover. (J. Mater. Chem., 2011, 21, 2594-2600.)

The paper featured on the outside front cover is Self-assembly and charge transport properties of a benzobisthiazole end-capped with dihexyl thienothiophene units (Greg J. McEntee, Filipe Vilela, Peter J. Skabara, Thomas D. Anthopoulos, John G. Labram, Steve Tierney, Ross W. Harrington and William Clegg, J. Mater. Chem., 2011, 21, 2091-2097). The paper reports thin-film studies and OFEt characteristics for a rigid, planar conjugated molecule, BDHTT-BBT. The authors say that this material exhibits liquid crystal properties in its thin-film state.

Unique hexagonal non-close-packed arrays of alumina obtained by plasma etching/deposition with catalytic performance is the paper highlighted on the inside front cover. (Shuyan Gao, Naoto Koshizaki, Yue Li and Liang Li, J. Mater. Chem., 2011, 21, 2087-2090.) This paper reports a hexagonal-non-close-packed alumina array with hierarchical micro-/nano-structures fabricated by plasma etching/deposition that acts as a catalyt in ethyl acetoacetate isomerization.

The back cover showcases the work of David Muñoz-Rojas, Judith Oró-Solé, Omar Ayyad and Pedro Gómez-Romero (Shaping hybrid nanostructures with polymer matrices: the formation mechanism of silver–polypyrrole core/shell nanostructures; J. Mater. Chem., 2011, 21, 2078-2086). In the paper the team show that a polypyrrole matrix forming around suspended Ag2O particles in a pyrrole solution under hydrothermal conditions is key for the formation of tortuous Ag@PPy nanostructures.

You can read the whole issue here:

The one-pot synthesis of core/shell/shell CdTe/CdSe/ZnSe quantum dots in aqueous media for in vivo deep tissue imaging. Shohei Taniguchi, Mark Green, Sarwat B. Rizvi and Alexander Seifalian, J. Mater. Chem., 2011, DOI: 10.1039/C0JM03527K, Paper (Advance Article)

Water soluble, near infrared emitting CdTe/CdSe/ZnSe quantum dots have been synthesized in a simple one-pot procedure. The team of scientists based at King’s College London and University College London in the UK, say the emission wavelength could be tuned from 530 nm (original CdTe core) to 670 nm. To demonstrate the effectiveness the quantum dots were used in subcutaneous deep tissue monitoring.

Controllable synthesis of anisotropic elongated particles using microvalve actuated microfluidic approach. Qingquan Zhang, Shaojiang Zeng, Bingcheng Lin and Jianhua Qin, J. Mater. Chem., 2011, DOI: 10.1039/C0JM04033A (Advance Article)

The team from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, China, showcase a method to synthesize anisotropic elongated particles via the combination of a droplet based microsphere synthesis and colloidal assembly in a microchannel. The team claim’s that the method is flexible and easy to operate and could find applications in rheological modifiers and drug delivery carrier design.