NJC Blog

NJC Hot Articles: our latest selection!

04 Jan 2012

Check out NJC’s latest Hot Articles now available as Advance Articles on the web:

Dithiolene complexes as metallo-ligands

In this NJC Hot article Formigué and co-workers (research collaboration within France, Italy and Poland) describe the synthesis and behaviour of complexes between Ni(II) ion and crown ethers incorporating a dithiolene coordination motif. A nickel dithiolene complex substituted with crown ether cyclic moieties incorporating four O atoms, abbreviated as [Ni(S2O4)2]1,0, is isolated in its radical anionic (as Na+ salt) and neutral forms.

The results presented in this paper show that dithiolene complexes substituted with crown ether moieties, can be used as metallo-ligands toward 3d magnetic metal cations for the elaboration of more complex magnetic systems. This work opens new perspectives to the preparation of more complex magnetic structures applying a trivalent metal cations such as rare-earth cations as well as smaller crown-ether moieties.

Dithiolene complexes as metallo-ligands: a crown-ether approach by Alessia Famengo, Dalice Pinero, Olivier Jeannin, Thierry Guizouarn, Lidia Piekara-Sady and Marc Fourmigué; New J. Chem., 2012, Advance Article; DOI: 10.1039/C1NJ20870E, Paper

Purification of double-walled carbon nanotube macro-films

The authors of the next NJC Hot article, J. N. Wang and co-workers (China) present a new, interesting concept for macroscopic carbon nanotube films purification. They use thermal reduction using NH4Cl as reducing agent and gas-phase sublimation instead of liquid-phase purification with acids.

The most important advantage of this method over previous oxidation in acid is that nanotubes do not come into contact with potentially damaging acids, and thus the morphology and integrity of the macroscopic film are maintained.

Purification of double-walled carbon nanotube macro-films by Yun Chen, Shi Qing Xu and Jian Nong Wang; New J. Chem., 2012, Advance Article, DOI: 10.1039/C1NJ20866G, Letter

Glycodendrimers as functional antigens and antitumor vaccines

In this NJC Perspective article, Roy and Shiao (University of Montreal, Quebec, Canada) give an excellent and timely overview of the application of glycodendrimers in the field of actively pursued vaccine candidates against tumor associated carbohydrate antigens.

This perspective is composed of two parts, one describing the present state of the art of glycodendrimers, and another one presented all recent advances in glycoderived cancer vaccine. This article is part of the themed issue Dendrimers II, guest-edited by Jean-Pierre Majoral, to be out in the February issue of NJC.

Glycodendrimers as functional antigens and antitumor vaccines by Tze Chieh Shiao and René Roy; New J. Chem., 2012, Advance Article; DOI: 10.1039/C2NJ20873C; Perspective.

Interested in reading further? Why not read by accessing the full article now! This “Hot article” will be free to access for a period of 4 weeks.

If you have some of your own exciting, high impact research to publish then consider submitting your manuscript to NJC, via our online submission system.

Comments Off on NJC Hot Articles: our latest selection!

Presentation of NJC issue to Didier Astruc

19 Dec 2011

By Denise Parent, Managing Editor.

Presentation of the October 2011 NJC issue to Prof. Didier Astruc took place during a symposium held in Bordeaux.

At the beginning of December I made the trip to Bordeaux to participate in a 2-day symposium that brought together many of the authors who contributed to the NJC issue in honor of Didier Astruc.

Former co-workers, current colleagues, friends from around the world were there, including Prof. Hiroshi Nishihara (who incidentally provided the artwork for the inside front cover to accompany his article in the October issue) and Dr. Yves Chauvin, who spoke at the presentation of this NJC issue to Didier.

From left to right: Yves Chauvin, Denise Parent, Didier Astruc, Jean-René Hamon

Comments Off on Presentation of NJC issue to Didier Astruc

Meet our Authors of the January issue of NJC

19 Dec 2011

By Yannick Guari, Assistant Editor.

We are pleased to present a selection of our authors of the January issue of NJC. We thank each of them for accepting our invitation and having kindly taken some of their time to answer a few questions for us.

Our first author is Aharon Gendanken who is Professor of Chemistry at the Bar-Ilan University (Ramat-Gan, Israel). His current research interests are focused on nanochemistry. Sonochemistry is a method used in Aharon’s laboratory for synthesizing nanomaterials. One of the unique additional properties of the use of ultrasonic waves is the ability to create microspheres of proteins, starch, Chitosan, DNA and RNA in a one step short process. In his NJC paper, Aharon and co-workers examined whether they can apply this method to the preparation of Graphene Oxide spheres? The answer is yes, and the manuscript presents the technique.

“I think that NJC is treating very fairly papers that are submitted to the journal for publication. I have never experienced that the editors have rejected my paper before the refereeing process. After all the Editors in Chief and Assoc. Editors of a journal are great experts in science but the question is how wide is their knowledge? And many of their rejection are very questionable.”, says Aharon.

Outside of the lab, Aharon enjoys listening to Classical Music, and watching Sport on TV. He used to play soccer until 15 months ago and then hanged his shoes. If he could not be a scientific researcher, he would be a music conductor.

Graphene oxide microspheres prepared by a simple, one-step ultrasonication method by Matias Sametband, Ulyana Shimanovich and Aharon Gedanken, New J. Chem., 2012, 36, 36-39; DOI: 10.1039/C1NJ20738E, Letter.

Our next author is Cristina Silva Pereira, Assistant researcher at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa, (Lisbon, Portugal). Cristina’s research interests are centred on the understanding of fungal response to critical anthropogenic stresses, such as ionic liquids, and their potential utility for designing novel and environmentally friendly biotechnological processes.

In this issue of NJC, Cristina has authored the article Unravelling the mechanism of toxicity of alkyltributylphosphonium chlorides in Aspergillus nidulans conidia by Marija Petkovic, Diego O. Hartmann, Gabriela Adamová, Kenneth R. Seddon, Luís Paulo N. Rebelo and Cristina Silva Pereira, New J. Chem., 2012, 36, 56-63; DOI: 10.1039/C1NJ20470J, Paper. “A rapid method to detect the effects of industrially important ionic liquids in cellular boundaries of filamentous fungi conidia is proposed. After exposure to quaternary phosphonium ionic liquids carrying long alkyl substituents, severe membrane damage was almost immediately observed; this is known as baseline toxicity and exonerates the involvement of programmed cell death. ”, explains Cristina who chooses NJC for publication of this article as the NJC renders high interest for publishing multidisciplinary studies, with a chemical core, that cross borders of pure disciplines.

In her free time, Cristina loves spending time writing, reading and travelling to remote and uninhabited locations. If she could not be a scientist, she will be a writer.

Closing this month’s author selection, Mike Coogan is Senior lecturer at the Cardiff University UK (Cardiff, United Kingdom).

His current research interest is inorganic chemistry, specialising in the application of metal complexes in cell imaging and he has authored in this NJC issue the paper The importance of cellular localisation of probes: synthesis, photophysical properties, DNA interactions and cellular imaging properties of rhenium dppz complexes with known cellular localisation vectors by Flora L. Thorp-Greenwood, Michael P. Coogan, Lallan Mishra, Niraj Kumari, Geeta Rai and Srikrishna Saripella, New J. Chem., 2012, 36, 64-72; DOI: 10.1039/C1NJ20662A, Paper.

This paper shows that when designing probes for cell imaging the cellular uptake and localisation are vital parameters, which are often overlooked in favour of the purely analytical chemists’ approach of designing responsive molecules. They showed that rhenium dppz complexes which are known to act as DNA luminescence sensors can be tuned to highlight oligonucleotides in particular cell compartments (e.g. mitochondria) by tuning their localisation properties with additional ligands.

“I see NJC as a natural home for imaging studies which by their nature combine synthetic, analytical and biological chemistry, and so fit well with the interdisciplinary mission of this journal.”, says Mike.

Out of the lab, Mike’s favorite activity is walking in the hills. If he could not be a scientist, Mike will probably run a campsite – all the other options him though of such as naturalist are really scientists anyway and he don’t think you can be a professional hill-walker!

Comments Off on Meet our Authors of the January issue of NJC

NJC Issue 12 online!

15 Dec 2011

By Eva Balentova, deputy editor.

We welcome you to NJC’s December issue out now. This month again NJC publishes high-quality, original and significant research works in the areas of supramolecular chemistry, organometallic chemistry, catalysis, nanostructures, material sciences, electrochemistry, sensing, synthetic chemistry, crystallographic engineering and much more.

The outside front cover highlights our latest article by Annarosa Mangone et al. (University of Bari, Italy) that was aimed at defining the compositional and structural characteristics of a group of monochrome blue faiences recovered in Pompeii to assess provenance on the basis of their technological features. The data obtained by the joint usage of different complementary analytical techniques provided detailed diagnostic information, useful for enriching the knowledge of the technological-productive aspects of Roman ceramics, and led to interesting archaeometric and archaeological results.

A multianalytical study of archaeological faience from the Vesuvian area as a valid tool to investigate provenance and technological features by Annarosa Mangone, Giuseppe Egidio De Benedetto, Daniela Fico, Lorena Carla Giannossa, Rocco Laviano, Luigia Sabbatini, Inez Dorothé van der Werf and Angela Traini; New J. Chem., 2011, 35, 2860-2868; DOI: 10.1039/C1NJ20626E.

NJC issue 12, 2011 inside front cover was produced by Dr Sophie Tingry and co-workers (University of Montpelier II). In this research article, the authors describe novel approach towards electrospun carbon nanofibers (CNFs) through electrospinning and thermal carbonization treatment. The intensified current density achieved at the CNFs modified bioelectrode suggests that CNFs are promising candidates for improving the catalytic oxygen reduction at enzymatic cathodes. The simple and facile procedure makes the CNFs electrode a promising prospect in developing bioelectrochemical devices.

Fabrication of free-standing electrospun carbon nanofibers as efficient electrode materials for bioelectrocatalysis by Ai-Fu Che, Vincent Germain, Marc Cretin, David Cornu, Christophe Innocent and Sophie Tingry; New J. Chem., 2011, 35, 2848-2853. DOI: 10.1039/C1NJ20651F.

You can access and read the whole issue 12 of NJC here. Leave us a comment and let us know what you think!

Comments Off on NJC Issue 12 online!

Meet Our Authors – December 2011

12 Dec 2011

By Laurent Vial, Assistant Editor.

Here is a selection of author profiles from the December issue of NJC. We thank them most warmly for accepting our invitation and having kindly taken some of their time to answer a few questions for us.

Our first author is Roser Pleixats, who is Full Professor for Organic Chemistry at the Faculty of Sciences of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain. Her current research interests focus on organometallic chemistry, catalyst recycling, metal nanoparticles and hybrid silica materials for catalysis (cross-coupling, metathesis, organocatalysis, …). Her latest contribution to NJC has been developed in collaboration with two other research groups and joints experiences in asymmetric catalysis and sol-gel chemistry. The paper describes a chiral prolinamide-based organosilica prepared by sol-gel methodology which presents similar performances to homogeneous related analogues in direct asymmetric aldol reactions, with the added advantages of easy recovery and good recyclability. It also fits green chemistry requirements as the reactions are performed with low catalyst loadings, in water, at room temperature.

Her previous positive experiences with this journal and also the quality and interdisciplinary nature of the articles published in NJC, directed to a diverse readership, was Roser’s motivation behind her submission to the journal.

Besides the lab, Roser enjoys reading, travelling, going to the cinema and theatre.  "I loved some holidays with my family in the green and peaceful Scotland, in the bright Mediterranean landscape of Sicily, an island full of art, archaeology and history, scenery of mythical films, or in the cosmopolitan New York, where you never feel as a foreigner and where I could be wandering for days in the charming streets of the Greenwich Village", said Roser.When asked for an alternative career path if not a scientist, Roser answered: "I would have liked to have the talent to be a good writer".


“Prolinamide bridged silsesquioxane as an efficient, eco-compatible and recyclable chiral organocatalyst”, Amàlia Monge-Marcet, Roser Pleixats, Xavier Cattoën, Michel Wong Chi Man, Diego A. Alonso and Carmen Nájera, New J. Chem., 2011, 35, 2766-2772, DOI: 10.1039/C1NJ20516A.

Frédéric Paul is CNRS Research Director at the « Sciences Chimiques de Rennes » Institute, France. He is currently working in the field of molecular photonics and electronics, in particular organometallic and organic molecular architectures that exhibit specific photonic or redox properties optimized for a given task. In this NJC paper, the motivation was to develop new classes of functional ligands featuring an organometallic redox-active substituent (also named metallo-ligands) for which the reversible oxidation might be used to control the reactivity of a complex to which this ligand is coordinated. The authors hoped to control the reactivity of the active species in a cross-coupling catalytic transformation by changing the redox state of the organometallic substituent of the metallo-ligand. Unfortunately, in this attempt, the lack of inertness of the reaction medium prevented the observation of significant changes following oxidation. The synthesis of a series of new triarylphosphane-based metallo-ligands is nevertheless reported and further attempts to use them in other reactions are in progress.

On choosing NJC to publish this work, Fréderic comments that: “In order to reach the largest possible readership that might be interested by the results of our investigation, we needed to submit our findings to a quite general journal that covers a large panel of topics and chemicals species.”

Outside of the lab, Frédéric multiplies the activities, including trekking in the wilderness or discovering/visiting new places with his wife and three kids. If he could not be a scientist, he would be someone working with books, maybe a book seller in a book store or a documentalist in a library.

“Stille-type aryl–aryl cross-coupling catalysis using triarylphosphine ligands with electron-rich Fe(II)-alkynyl substituents”, Guillaume Grelaud, Ayham Tohmé, Gilles Argouarch, Thierry Roisnel and Frédéric Paul, New J. Chem., 2011, 35, 2740-2742, DOI: 10.1039/C1NJ20480G.

Closing this month’s selection, we are pleased to present Junhua Luo, Professor of Chemistry at the Fujian Institute of Research on the Structure of Matter (FJIRSM), which is located in Fuzhou, the capital of the Fujian province, China. Junhua obtained his Ph.D. from the FJIRSM in 2003 under the supervision of CAS (Chinese Academy of Science) Distinguished Professor Maochun Hong and then returned to the FJIRSM  under the CAS "Hundred of Talents Program" after five and a half years' postdoctoral stay in the USA. Junhua research focuses on molecule-based opto-electrical materials including luminescent, ferroelectric and nonlinear optical (NLO) materials. His NJC paper presents the synthesis, bulk crystal growth, and crystal structure of a novel third-order NLO crystal based on the organic borate carboxylate ester. This work is the fruit of a collaboration between his research group and Dr. Ning-ning Cai (State Key Laboratory of Crystal Materials and Institute of Crystal Materials, Shandong Univerity), Dr. Jing-wei Chen (Department of Optics, Shandong University), and Prof. Ren-Gen Xiong (Southeast University).

“I feel very happy that this interdisciplinary research work, involving coordination chemistry, crystallography, and optical sciences is reported in NJC, which publishes very diverse and high quality articles .”, says Junhua.

Hiking with his family including his two lovely young daughters, Lisa and Jennifer, and playing badminton with his group colleagues and students every saturday afternoon are Junha's favorites activities outside the lab. If not be a scientist, Junhua would be a middle-school chemistry teacher since he obtained his bachelor of chemistry education in 1997 from Jiangxi Normal University.

“Synthesis, growth and characterization of a third-order nonlinear optical crystal based on the borate ester with sodium supporting its structural framework”, Zhihua Sun, Tianliang Chen, Ning-ning Cai, Jing-wei Chen, Lina Li, Yan Wang, Junhua Luo and Maochun Hong, New J. Chem., 2011, 35, 2804-2810, DOI: 10.1039/C1NJ20420C.

We wish you a happy holiday season and see you next month for more!

Fancy submitting an article to NJC? Then why not submit to us today or alternatively email us your suggestions.

Comments Off on Meet Our Authors – December 2011

Hot article: Multifunctional lanthanide-organic octahedra heterogeneous catalysts.

06 Dec 2011

By Eva Balentova, deputy editor.

Scientists in China have designed and prepared new heterogeneous catalysts based on the assembled metal–organic polyhedra to exhibit efficient base-type and acid-type catalytic performances at the same time.

New channel-like and cage-like porous materials have been prepared through the packing and stacking of the amide containing lanthanide-based octahedra Tb–PT1 and Sm–PT1 featuring both Lewis acidic Ln3+ sites and basic amide group sites. Their catalytic properties have been validated in cyanosilylation reactions and aldol reactions, in a size-selective fashion through base-type and acid-type catalysis sites, respectively.

These crystalline molecular materials hierarchically assembled from semi-infinite metal–organic polyhedra are thus expected to be useful catalysts which could combine the advantage of a heterogeneous catalyst and the excellent size discrimination properties of the polyhedra in solution.

Catalytic performance of lanthanide molecular solids containing well-modified metal–organic octahedra by Xiao Wu, Zhihua Lin, Cheng He and Chunying Duan; New J. Chem., 2012, Advance Article DOI: 10.1039/C1NJ20736A, Paper

Interested in reading further? Why not download the full article now, FREE to access for a period of 4 weeks!

Comments Off on Hot article: Multifunctional lanthanide-organic octahedra heterogeneous catalysts.

Carbeniophospanes, a novel class of ligands.

29 Nov 2011

By Yannick Guari, Assistant Editor.

Y. Canac, R. Chauvin & co-workers (LCC, France) give an overview on the discovery, recent developments and prospects on carbeniophosphanes, and in particular of imidazoliophosphanes.

In this review is discussed the carbeniophosphanes preparation, their electronic vs. coordinative properties, their intrinsic reactivity but also the catalytic properties of carbeniophosphine complexes.

The versatile and unique characteristics of carbeniophosphanes addressed as part of this review make them potentially a novel class of phosphorus ligands for transition metals.

Carbeniophosphanes and their carbon → phosphorus → metal ternary complexes Yves Canac, Carine Maaliki, Ibrahim Abdellah and Remi Chauvin New J. Chem., 2012, Advance Article DOI: 10.1039/C1NJ20808J, Perspective.

Interested to know more? Why not read by accessing the full article now! This “Hot article” will be FREE to access for a period of 4 weeks.

Comments Off on Carbeniophospanes, a novel class of ligands.

NJC poster prize winners at the 2011 EJCC in Ottawa, Canada.

23 Nov 2011

By Eva Balentova, deputy editor.

We are pleased to announce the recent poster prizes awarded at the 2011 Entretiens Jacques Cartier Colloquium on 21^st Century Catalysis Science and Applications held in Ottawa, Canada on September 29,30.

Dr. Marianne Trépannier (University of Ottawa) was selected for her poster entitled, “The role of catalytic site deposition on cobalt catalysts supported on carbon nanotubes for Fischer-Tropsch synthesis.”

Marianne obtained her PhD degree from the University of Saskatchewan, Canada. During her PhD study she worked on research project that focused on improving the Co/CNT catalyst selectivity for FTS synthesis. ”The most important result of this project is that by controlling the active metal position in the carbon nanotubes (CNT) support, the catalyst shows better selectivity for diesel. Moreover, deposition of the cobalt particle inside the CNT decreases the catalyst deactivation phenomena”, comments on her project results.

Marianne now holds a postdoctoral position in Dr. Sayari group at Center for Catalysis Research and Innovation and her future plan is to become a research leader in catalysis for renewable energy.

(photo: Dr. Marianne Trépannier and Prof. R. Tom Baker, CCRI Director (University of Ottawa))

The other poster prize was awarded to Dr. Daniel Harrison (University of Ottawa) for his poster entitled, “New cobalt fluorocarbenes: Synthesis and preliminary reactivity studies.”

Daniel is postdoctoral researcher in Prof. Tom Baker’s group, at the Centre for Catalysis Research and Innovation, University of Ottawa, Canada.

new cobalt fluorocarbenes

When queried about his future plans, Daniel commented:

Many congratulations again from the NJC editorial team to Marianne and Daniel on their awards, and to the organizers of this conference for their help in organizing these awards.

Comments Off on NJC poster prize winners at the 2011 EJCC in Ottawa, Canada.

An unusual route to molecular magnets

22 Nov 2011

By Laurent Vial, Assistant Editor.

Oxidized phthalocyanines are widely used in the design of optical, magnetic and conducting materials.

In this NJC Letter, Dmitri V. Konarev and co-workers (Institutes of Problems of Chemical Physics and Solid State Physics, Russia) demonstrated that the reduction of phthalocyanines with strong metallocene donors like decamethylchromocene can also lead to the preparation of molecular magnets. In particular, the negatively charged iron phthalocyanine (Cp*₂Cr⁺)(Fe^IPc^–)(C₆H₄Cl₂)₄ is a soft ferrimagnet showing hysteresis with a small coercive ﬁeld and a bifurcation temperature of about 5 K.

This original strategy should allow the extension of the molecular-based magnet family by exploiting metal-containing and metal-free phthalocyanines.

“Structure and magnetic properties of ionic compound (Cp*2Cr+)·(FeIPc−)·(C6H4Cl2)4 containing negatively charged iron phthalocyanine”, Dmitri V. Konarev, Leokadia V. Zorina, Salavat S. Khasanov, El’za U. Hakimova and Rimma N. Lyubovskaya, New J. Chem., 2012, Advance Article, DOI: 10.1039/C1NJ20858F.

Interested to know more? Why not read by accessing the full article now! This “Hot article” will be FREE to access for a period of 4 weeks.

Comments Off on An unusual route to molecular magnets

NJC Hot Articles: our latest selection!

Presentation of NJC issue to Didier Astruc

Meet our Authors of the January issue of NJC

NJC Issue 12 online!

Meet Our Authors – December 2011

Hot article: Multifunctional lanthanide-organic octahedra heterogeneous catalysts.

Top ten most accessed articles in October

Carbeniophospanes, a novel class of ligands.

NJC poster prize winners at the 2011 EJCC in Ottawa, Canada.

An unusual route to molecular magnets

Links

Categories

Archives

Meta