Journal of Materials Chemistry Blog

If cells are the building blocks of life, an analogy can be made that transistors are the building blocks of the digital world. They could be credited as the discovery of the 20th century. One of the IEEE milestones, transistors can be counted as biggest step in technology. For the first 20 years after the discovery of transistors, Germanium based transistors were used all over the globe replacing vacuum tube based gadgets. Germanium transistors certainly helped kick off the table size computer age, but silicon based transistors revolutionized the design of it and produced an entire industry in California namely silicon valley. But researchers would not be termed researchers if they stopped inventing and innovating making this world a better place to live. Inventions of materials like graphene, carobon nanotubes and fullerens are stretching the boundaries and making a dent in bringing a new generation of transistors which would shrink the size of electronic gadgets even further with landmark speed.

Rubicene: a molecular fragment of C₇₀ for use in organic field-effect transistors
Hyunbok Lee, Yue Zhang, Lei Zhang, Timothy Mirabito, Edmund K. Burnett, Stefan Trahan, Ali Reza Mohebbi, Stefan C. B. Mannsfield, Fred Wudl and Alejandro L. Briseno
J. Mater. Chem. C, 2014, Advanced Article. DOI:10.1039/C3TC32117G

Padmanabh Joshi is a guest web writer for the Journal of Materials Chemistry blog. He currently works at the Department of Chemistry, University of Cincinnati.

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Defect-sensitive crystals based on diaminomaleonitrile-functionalized Schiff base with aggregation-enhanced emission
Tianyu Han, Yuning Hong, Ni Xie, Sijie Chen, Na Zhao, Enqui Zhao, Jacky W.Y. Lam, Herman H. Y. Sung, Yuping Dong, Bin Tong and Ben Zhong Tang

Luminescent distyrylbenzenes: tailoring molecular structure and crystalline morphology
Johannes Gierschner and Soo Young Park

Monodisperse Cu@PtCu nanocrystals and their conversion into hollow-PtCu nanostructures for methanol oxidation
Xiaoqing Huang, Yu Chen, Enbo Zhu, Yuxi Xu, Xiangfeng Duan and Yu Huang

These papers are free to access until 28th April 2014 

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Thin films are a part of everyday life; if you looked in a mirror today you experienced the advantages of a thin film at work. Crystalline thin films can be made of a range of functional materials and are essential to achieve the desired functionality of various devices including micromachines (not the miniature racing cars but micro-electronic-mechanical systems or MEMS). Crystal films can offer characteristics such as ferroelectricity and piezoelectricity, however these properties are strongly dependent on crystal orientation, degree of orientation and film crystallinity.

Epitaxial growth has become a highly important method for growing crystalline films as it allows for tailoring of properties in order to control electronic, optical and magnetic qualities. Unfortunately as described in this paper by Shibata et al, one of the basic requirements for attaining a good epitaxy is a close structural matching between a substrate and a growing crystal epilayer. This restriction causes a major obstacle for its wide application. In order to overcome this problem these researchers, led by Takayoshi Sasaki, have used 2D inorganic nanosheets of either Ca₂Nb₃O₁₀^–, Ti_0.87O₂^0.52- or MoO₂^δ- as highly organised layers depositied onto amorphous glass. These different surfaces allow for the deposition of SrTiO₃ on to the glass with precise and selective control of crystallographic orientation.

This novel technique has already grabbed press attention because of its cost-effective and universal nature that comes from the possibility to use conventional substrates such as glass and plastic that wasn’t possible before. Whilst some development is still required this technique is already being seen as a huge leap forward in the growth of crystal films that will bring significant technological innovation in the future.

Versatile van der Waals epitaxy-like growth of crystal films using two-dimensional nanosheets as a seed layer: orientation tuning of SrTiO₃ films along three important axes on glass substrates

Tatsuo Shibata, Hikaru Takano, Yasuo Ebina, Dae Sung Kim, Tadashi C. Ozawa, Kosho Akatsuka, Tsuyoshi Ohnishi, Kazunori Takada, Toshihiro Kogure and Takayoshi Sasaki

J. Mater. Chem. C, 2014, 2, 441-449 C3TC31787K

H. L. Parker is a guest web writer for the Journal of Materials Chemistry blog. She currently works at the Green Chemistry Centre of Excellence, the University of York.

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Abdelmohsen et al write in the first line of this review “biological motors are one of the most remarkable products of evolution” and I couldn’t agree more. Nanoscale biomotors are common in nature and these tiny machines have inspired scientists to copy nature and attempt to develop man-made micro- and nano-motors themselves. Incredibly, machines that are as small as one 60,000th of a human hair have already been made.

Micro-machines show remarkable promise for use in a wide range of biomedical applications; including drug delivery, sensing and isolation, nanosurgery and imaging that would enable targeted or non-invasive medicine to be carried out. Although as this review points out there is still a considerable amount of work to take micro- and nano-machines for in vivo applications from concept into reality.

This paper covers topics including micro-motor design, potential fuel and fuel free machines and new developments for their use in biomedical applications and gives an interesting and balanced insight into the work of micro-machines highlighting the opportunities and challenges currently facing this field.

Micro- and nano-motors for biomedical applications

Loai K. E. A. Abdelmohsen, Fei Peng, Yingfeng Tu and Daniela A. Wilson,

 J. Mater. Chem. B, 2014. C3TB21451F

H. L. Parker is a guest web writer for the Journal of Materials Chemistry blog. She currently works at the Green Chemistry Centre of Excellence, the University of York.

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Glycoproteins are abundant in living organisms and appear in nearly every biological process studied. There are also many clinical biomarkers and therapeutic targets that are glycoproteins. The diverse function of glycoproteins is due to their structure – they consist of a polypeptide covalently bonded to a carbohydrate moiety.

The recognition and analysis of glycoproteins can be tricky. Mass spectrometry has proven a powerful tool; however when glycoproteins are in low abundance an enrichment process is required in order to see the proteins. In order to improve glycoprotein recognition Lin et al have developed a novel imprinting strategy using reversible covalent complexation of glycoprotein to create glycoprotein-specific recognition cavities on 3-acrylamidophenylboronic acid-immobilized silica nanoparticles (SiO2@AAPBA).

When tested the materials exhibited high glycoprotein adsorption capacity and excellent recognition selectivity not just between glycoproteins and non-glycoproteins but also between specific glycoproteins themselves.

Synthesis of boronic acid-functionalized molecularly imprinted silica nanoparticles for glycoprotein recognition and enrichment

Zian Lin, Lixiang Sun, Wei Lui, Zhiwei Xia, Huanghao Yang and Guonan Chen,
J. Mater. Chem. B, 2014, 2, 637-643. C3TB21520B

H. L. Parker is a guest web writer for the Journal of Materials Chemistry blog. She currently works at the Green Chemistry Centre of Excellence, the University of York.

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