Journal of Materials Chemistry Blog

A reliable and efficient means of storing hydrogen is one of the major challenges that needs to be overcome to establish the “hydrogen economy”. In this Hot Paper Xuebin Yu and co-workers report the first successful identification of the structure of Ca(BH4)2·NH3 and a strategy to improved its dehydrogenation properties by combining Ca(BH4)2·NH3 with LiBH4. The synergistic effect of the introduction of an extra BH group and aided-cation allows the combined system to dehydrogenate at much lower temperatures than neat Ca(BH4)2·NH3 and LiBH4, and other Li-Ca-based hydrogen storage systems.

A novel aided-cation strategy to advance the dehydrogenation of calcium borohydride monoammoniate: Ziwei Tang, Yingbin Tan, Qinfen Gu and Xuebin Yu, J. Mater. Chem., 2012, 22, 5312-5318.

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The submission deadline for the Materials for Biosurfaces themed issue has been extended by 1 month. The final submission deadline for contributions is now 20th March 2012.

The Materials for Biosurfaces themed issue will focus on the synthetic and physical chemistry of biosurfaces with a primary attention to polymer based surfaces and the role of surfaces in biomedical related applications such as biosensors. Materials of interest include polymer brushes, hydrogels, membranes and self-assembled monolayers. The role of surfaces in cell adhesion and cell-surface interactions is also a topic of this special issue. Professor Christopher K. Ober (Cornell University, USA), Dr. Christian Ohm (Cornell University, USA), Ms. Mary E. Welch (Cornell University, USA) are the guest editors of this themed issue.

Please contact the editorial office if you would like to discuss contributing an article.

Combining metallic nanoparticles with host materials whose dielectric properties can be tuned by means of an external control is one route to create “active plasmonics”. In this hot article a soft-matter periodic structure made from a composite mixture of cholesteric liquid crystals and Au nanoparticles is reported. The cholesteric liquid crystals act as a “host fluid” whose refractive index can be varied in a broad range by using external electric fields and temperature variations. This has a strong influence on the position of the plasmonic absorption peak of the nanoparticles.

Broad band tuning of the plasmonic resonance of gold nanoparticles hosted in self-organized soft materials: Luciano De Sio, Roberto Caputo, Ugo Cataldi and Cesare Umeton, J. Mater. Chem., 2011, 21, 18967-18970

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Congratulations to Nélida Gimeno (Universidad de Zaragoza, Spain) for winning the Journal of Materials Chemistry poster prize at 13th International Conference on Ferroelectric Liquid Crystals.

Nélida Gimeno’s winning poster was entitled “Liquid Crystalline Janus-type co-dendrimers based on bent-core units“.

Nélida Gimeno with her winning poster

 Jason Morvan (Kent State University, USA) won a Soft Matter poster prize for his poster “Electro-mechanical response of electro-spum polylactic acid fibers dispersed with ferroelectric barium titanate nanoparticles”.

 The 13th International Conference on Ferroelectric Liquid Crystals was held 29th August  – 2nd September at Niagara Falls, Canada.

This Symposium will feature three one day meetings that will take place at three different locations throughout China. Each one day meeting will feature a selection of lectures covering the properties and applications of many different materials given by some of the world’s leading international scientists.

• Monday 24th October: Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
• Wednesday 26th October: Wuhan University, Wuhan, China
• Friday 28th October: Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China

 Conference website including the scientific programme

Formation of complex nanostructures driven by polar surfaces: In this Hot Highlight Huatao Wang and Tom Wu discuss the recent advances in synthesizing novel nanostructures whose formation is driven by the electrostatic forces between polar surfaces. (J. Mater. Chem., 2011, DOI: 10.1039/C1JM12417J, Advance Article)

Phonon engineering through crystal chemistry: Low thermal conductivity is critical in a broad range of energy conversion technologies. In the second Hot Highlight Eric S. Toberer, Alex Zevalkink and G. Jeffrey Snyder review the structural and chemical parameters of materials which determine phonon velocity, and therefore lattice thermal conductivity, in complex materials. (J. Mater. Chem., 2011, DOI: 10.1039/C1JM11754H, Advance Article)

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