DOI: 10.1039/C0JM02172E
DOI: 10.1039/C0JM01897J
DOI: 10.1039/C0JM02708A
DOI: 10.1039/B925751A
DOI: 10.1039/C0JM03253K
DOI: 10.1039/C0JM02126A
DOI: 10.1039/C0JM02494E
DOI: 10.1039/C0JM02271C
DOI: 10.1039/B913168J
DOI: 10.1039/B910898J
We would like to wish you all a merry Christmas and a happy New Year! The Editorial office will be closed from 24th December 2010 and will re-open on January 4th 2011.
We’re looking forward to 2011, which will see some great themed issues, the 2011 Journal of Materials Chemistry Lectureship and much more! Don’t miss out – sign up to our blog’s RSS feed!
from the Journal of Materials Chemistry Editorial team
Read the most-read Journal of Materials Chemistry articles of October 2010, listed below:
Read the most-read Journal of Materials Chemistry articles of September 2010, listed below:
Fingerprints leave their mark on surfaces that remain even if they are washed off allowing them to be detected using disulphur dinitride, claim UK scientists.
Fingerprint analysis of crime scenes has become a powerful weapon in the forensic scientist’s arsenal. The ridges present on the tips of the fingers are unique to a person. By comparison of impressions left in materials – typically flat, regular surfaces, such as glass – to a sample taken from a suspect it is possible to identify the owner of the fingerprints.
It could be possible to identify fingerprints that have been washed from surfaces
But there are occasions where fingerprints are not easily viewable or are fragmented. Here, latent fingerprinting – where obscured fingerprints are enhanced – can be used to identify an individual. In 2008, Paul Kelly and co-workers at Loughborough University noticed that the strained four-membered ring system S2N2 quickly polymerises to (SN)x in the presence of fingerprints. Detecting this polymer produces a visual image of the fingerprint.
To view the full Highlights in Chemical Technology article, please click here: Polymerisation reveals hidden fingerprints
Polymerisation of S2N2 to (SN)x as a tool for the rapid imaging of fingerprints removed from metal surfaces
Stephen M. Bleay, Paul F. Kelly and Roberto S. P. King, J. Mater. Chem., 2010
DOI: 10.1039/c0jm02724c
Issue 41 of Journal of Materials Chemistry is now out and can be read online here.
The paper featured on the outside front cover is ‘Facile synthesis and electrochemical properties of RuO2 nanofibers with ionically conducting hydrous layer’ by Il-Doo Kim and colleagues in Korea and the USA from the Korea Institute of Science and Technology, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The cover shows RuO2 nanofibers with an ionically conducting hydrous layer provide superior electron and ion transport characteristics optimized for application in an electrochemical capacitor.
This article will be free for the next 6 weeks! Read it online here.
The 2010 Nobel prize for physics has been awarded to Professors Andre Geim and Kostya Novoselov, both from the University of Manchester, UK. Andre and Kostya were awarded the prize for ‘ for groundbreaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional material graphene’, including the discovery that stable graphene can be prepared using sticky tape and graphite!
Since their discovery in 2004, research into graphene has grown considerably, and graphene based materials have been shown to have many potential applications, such as for single molecule gas detection, as transistors, for integrated circuits, as conducting electrodes, bio-devices and antibacterial coatings.
From the Journal of Materials Chemistry Editorial Office and Editorial Board, warm congratulations, Andre and Kostya!
Read Journal of Materials Chemistry articles on graphene here.
Read the most-read Journal of Materials Chemistry articles of August 2010, listed below:
Submit your best work to this high profile themed issue with Guest Editors Dmitri Talapin and Professor Yadong Yin.
Journal of Materials Chemistry is delighted to announce a high-profile themed issue on the Chemical Transformations of Nanoparticles to be published in 2011. The guest editors of the issue will be Professor Dmitri Talapin (University of Chicago, USA) and Professor Yadong Yin (University of California, Riverside, USA).
Journal of Materials Chemistry has published several themed issues on other important emerging topics in recent years, and it now seems particularly timely to publish a focused set of articles covering the Chemical Transformations of Nanoparticles. The key aim is to highlight the most important areas and directions in this field within a high quality and high impact issue.
The deadline for the receipt of manuscripts for this themed issue is: 25th January 2011.
Submissions, either communications or full papers, should be high-quality manuscripts of original, unpublished research, containing important new insight. All submissions will be subject to rigorous peer review to meet the usual high standards of Journal of Materials Chemistry.
Manuscripts can be submitted using our online submission service. Please indicate on you submission letter that your manuscript is submitted in response to the call for papers for the Chemical Transformations of Nanoparticles themed issue.
A transparent spiderweb-like film formed from interconnected carbon nanotubes (CNTs) is highly efficient in solar energy harvesting, say Chinese scientists.
CNTs are well known for their excellent electrical properties, which offer the potential for use in a broad range of modern technologies from sensors to flexible display panels. However, an appropriate method to produce CNT films that are both conductive and transparent has proved elusive, limiting their applications.
Anyuan Cao and colleagues at Peking and Tsinghua Universities, Beijing, have developed a direct synthesis technique to achieve highly conductive and transparent CNT spiderwebs. They use chemical vapour deposition to grow ultra-long CNTs, followed by ethanol addition to condense them into bundles.
We use an extremely slow feeding rate of the chemical precursor, resulting in well controlled formation of thin, uniform CNT films,’ explains Cao. The thinner the film, the higher the transparency – a property essential for its effective use as an electrode in solar cells. By tuning the transparency, Cao ensures that most of the incident sunlight can reach the underlying silicon wafer for conversion into electricity, without compromising the film’s conductivity.
‘CNTs play multiple roles in the solar cells: capturing the solar energy, forming junctions, collecting the photo-generation carriers and also as the transparent electrodes,’ according to Yanqui Zhu at the University of Nottingham in the UK, who has expertise in nanomaterials fabrication and CNTs. He believes the successful fabrication of the 100 cm2 films brings CNTs a step closer to practical applications and paves the way for even larger scale production.
The spiderwebs are sticky yet robust and sufficiently flexible to be transferred easily to various substrates including metal, paper and micro carbon fibres. Cao foresees numerous potential applications for his CNT spiderwebs, and is pursuing research into their use in flexible devices and window coatings with self-cleaning, sensing, UV-blocking and heating functions.
Erica Wise
Large area, highly transparent carbon nanotube spiderwebs for energy harvesting
Zhen Li, Yi Jia, Jinquan Wei, Kunlin Wang, Qinke Shu, Xuchun Gui, Hongwei Zhu, Anyuan Cao and Dehai Wu
J. Mater. Chem., 2010, DOI: 10.1039/c0jm01361g