Nanoscale & Nanoscale Advances Blog

The photocatalysis of alcohols to aldehydes and carboxylic acids usually involves UV or visible light, but a group of scientists from China has discovered that carbon quantum dots can catalyse such reactions using near-infrared wavelengths.

Conventional UV/visible-light approaches involve expensive, toxic heavy metals, whereas the carbon quantum dots are more environmentally friendly and stable under the near-infrared operating conditions. In their Nanoscale article the researchers report the transformation of benzyl alcohol to benzaldehyde with 100% selectivity and 92% conversion, and identify •OH radicals as the main active oxygen species.

Read this HOT Nanoscale article in full:

Near-infrared light controlled photocatalytic acitvity of carbon quantum dots for highly slective oxidation reaction
Haitao Li, Ruihua Liu, Suoyuan Lian, Yang Liu, Hui Huang and Zhenhui Kang
DOI: 10.1039/C3NR00092C

Electrospun polystyrene shell/polyurethane core fibres made by scientists in China have absorption capacities 2-3 times higher than reported for non-woven polypropylene fibres (widely used to clean up oil spills).

Electrospun fibres are an ideal candidate for soaking up oil, as their structure means the oil can fit into the voids between fibres, not just be adsorbed on a surface. The materials are also recyclable, showing comparable oil sorption capacity to polypropylene fibres even after five sorption cycles.

Applications could be in oil spill remediation and in removing discarded edible oils from the wastewater system.

Find out more about this exciting research. Read this HOT Nanoscale article today:

Co-axial electrospun polystyrene/polyurethane fibres for oil collection from water surface
Jinyou Lin, Feng Tian, Yanwei Shang, Fujun Wang, Bin Ding, Jianyong Yu and Zhi Guo
DOI: 10.1039/C3NR34008B

If plasmonics were a person it would have an h-index of 112, with 88,000 citations (57,000 without self-citation) and 33,000 citing articles. With a publication record starting around 2002, this is very impressive indeed. In this paper in Nanoscale, Associate Professor Wounjhang Park presents two different plasmonic oligomer structures and discusses their optical properties.

While I must admit that the deeper physical meaning is lost on me, I can appreciate the thoroughly conducted investigation of the two inherently different six-fold symmetric structures. By ordering six gold nano-rods around a central gold island, Tamma and co-workers can measure and describe the coupled plasmon resonances of these plasmonic molecules. The high symmetry allow for a detailed analysis using group theory.

From the viewpoint of a tinctorial chemist it is always interesting to read this type of paper and try to bridge the difference between the language and properties of metallic nanostructures and small dye molecules. The matter-light interaction is in both cases an interaction between light and electrons, but how far can the analogy be stretched? Can plasmonic excitation be fully described by a transition dipole and could coupled plasmonic resonance be described in exciton coupling terminology?

Interested? Much more can be gleaned from the paper:

Nanorod orientation dependence of tunable Fano resonance in plasmonic nanorod heptamers
Venkata Ananth Tamma, Yonghao Cui, Jianhong Zhou and Wounjhang Park
DOI: 10.1039/C2NR33292B

by Thomas Just Sørensen

US scientists have prepared zirconium phosphate nanoplatelets (ZrP NPs) as carriers for the anticancer drug doxorubicin (DOX). The platelets showed improved cellular uptake and cytotoxicity of DOX in metastatic breast cancer cells. They were non-toxic to both healthy and malignant human cells, while they could carry a high dosage of drug and release it over a prolonged period.

The team says that the nanoplatelets could be used as a theranostic for simultaneous treatment and imaging of cancer.

Zirconium phosphate nanoplatelets: A biocompatible nanomaterial for drug delivery to cancer
Vipin Saxena, Agustín Díaz, Abraham Clearfield, James D Batteas and Muhammad Delwar Hussain
DOI: 10.1039/C3NR34242E

Scientists in India have developed a platform to identify the food toxin aflatoxin B₁, a fungus found in rice, dried fruits and cocoa beans. The toxin can be carcinogenic. The team’s system involved depositing reduced graphene oxide (RGO) onto indium tin oxide and covalently attaching antibodies for the toxin to the RGO layer. The label-free system displays high sensitivity with a detection limit of 0.12 ngmL^-1.

Read more of this Nanoscale article today:

Electrophoretically deposited reduced graphene oxide platform for food toxin detection
Saurabh Srivastava, Vinod Kumar, Md Azahar Ali, Pratima R. Solanki, Anchal Srivastava,
Gajjala Sumana, Preeti Suman Saxena, Amish G. Joshi, B. D. Malhotra
DOI: 10.1039/C3NR32242D