Journal of Materials Chemistry Blog

Journal of Materials Chemistry Volume 21 is now with us and issue 1 is online now.  The editorial ‘Journal of Materials Chemistry: Developing to serve the materials chemistry community’ looks back at 2010, highlighting the phenomenal growth that Journal of Materials Chemistry has seen in this past year in both size and impact factor; it also looks forward to 2011 as we welcome our new Editorial Board Chair, Professor Seth Marder.

The cover of this first issue for 2011 features an applications review from Sam N. Rothstein and Steven R. Little, ‘A “tool box” for rational design of degradable controlled release formulations’.  The image demonstrates that heterogeneous erosion in degradable polyester particles can be correlated with the buildup of acidic species (seen by colour shift) using fluorescence confocal microscopy.

The inside cover features work from Orlin D. Velev describing a leaf-like solar cell ‘Aqueous soft matter based photovoltaic devices’.  This work received widespread media attention, including coverage on this blog.

Why not browse the articles in issue 1 and post any comments you have below.

Journal of Materials Chemistry issue 48 is now online.  The paper featured on the front cover is ‘Synthesis and electrical conductivity of perchlorate-doped TTF–diamide nanofibers with double and triple helix structures’ by Sejung Ahn, Yukyung Kim, Seungjae Beak, Shohei Ishimoto, Hideo Enozawa, Eigo Isomura, Masashi Hasegawa, Masahiko Iyoda and Yungwoo Park from South Korea and Japan.

In this paper the double- and triple-helix nanofibers having tunnelling conduction behaviour are synthesized by splitting the spiral ribbons arising from lamellarly arranged TTF–diamide and intercalated perchlorate ion in the 3:1 ratio.

Interested in knowing more?  Read the full article here; free to access until January 10th.

I am very pleased to announce that Professor Seth Marder (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA) will be the next Journal of Materials Chemistry Editorial Board Chair from January 2011, on the ‘retirement’ of the current Chair, Professor George Malliaras (Centre Microélectronique de Provence of the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Saint Etienne).  During George’s term as Chair of the Editorial Board, we have seen the journal move from strength to strength, with a growth of 125% in size, and 10% incresase in impact factor, to its curent value of 4.80. Thank you, George, for all your help and support.   

Seth Marder

 Seth has been involved with Journal of Materials Chemistry for a number of years, as an author, referee, and more recently as a member of the Advisory Board.  In 2009, he also organised a very successful themed issue on organic non-linear optics.  

Seth is the director of the Center for Organic Photonics and Electronics (COPE) and his research interests include electronic and optical materials.  The materials being developed by Seth have a wide variety of applications from optical storage to dyes for biological imaging. Seth is a Fellow of the Optical Society of America and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.    

We are all looking forward to working with Seth in his new role with the journal.  Welcome on Board, Seth! 

A graphene oxide anticancer drug carrier that combines different targeting mechanisms has been designed by scientists from China.

Many anticancer drugs are toxic or cause harmful side effects because they target healthy cells as well as tumour cells. Yongsheng Chen from Nankai University, China, and colleagues have developed a delivery system using functionalised graphene oxide as the drug carrier. Graphene oxide has a very high surface area, enabling it to transport a large amount of the drug. As cancer cells are typically more acidic than normal cells, the team developed the system to increase drug release as pH decreases. This confines the drug to the tumour site and limits uptake by healthy cells. This could allow doctors to use higher doses and improve the effectiveness of treatments, or reduce side-effects for patients…

Read the full article for free in Highlights in Chemical Science.

ChemComm is delighted to invite nominations for the very first ChemComm Emerging Investigator Lectureship. The lectureship, which will be awarded annually, will recognise an emerging scientist in the early stages of their independent academic career. Deadline for nominations: 28th February 2011. Visit the ChemComm blog for more information.

Journal of Materials Chemistry issue 44 is now online and features inside and outside cover artwork from two ‘Hot Articles’ reported on this blog in October.

Red, Green, Blue, Black, Transparent, all these states can now be achieved with a single electrochromic polymer. This front cover artwork represents a paper from Levant Toppare and colleagues from the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey: ‘Processable donor–acceptor type electrochromes switching between multicolored and highly transmissive states towards single component RGB-based display devices’. 

The inside front cover features another ‘Hot Article’: ‘Anomalous Eu layer doping in Eu, Si co-doped aluminium nitride based phosphor and its direct observation‘ from Takashi Takeda and co-workers from the National Institute for Materials Science and Tohoku University in Japan.