Nanoscale & Nanoscale Advances Blog

Functionalised graphene nanosheets have been produced in a green, fast and controllable method by scientists in China. The team used aqueous polycation electrolyte branch poly(ethylenimine) as both a stabiliser and a reducing agent to make the graphene nanosheets, which displayed high solubility and long-term stability in aqueous solution.

The nanosheets did not aggregate and they could be dispersed in aqueous solutions, alkaline solutions, salt solutions and organic solvents. The nanosheets can be used as effective and controllable building templates for applications in various fields, they say.

Read this HOT research in Nanoscale today:

Highly concentrated polycations-functionalized graphene nanosheets with excellent solubility and stability, and its fast，facile and controllable assembly of multiple nanoparticles
Zhaozi Lv, Xuan Yang and Erkang Wang
DOI: 10.1039/C2NR33395C

Diatoms are photosynthetic microorganisms, found in marine and fresh water environments, which possess a porous silica exoskeleton called a frustule. Scientists in Australia and Canada coated the frustule with titanium dioxide nanoparticles – well known for their light harvesting properties – and incorporated the resulting material into dye sensitised solar cells (DSSCs). The DSSCs containing the frustules showed an efficiency increase of 30% compared to the titania coating alone, which the authors attribute to enhanced light scattering and trapping. The synthetic procedure is also inexpensive and simple.

Read the full details of this exciting Nanoscale communication today:

Diatom frustules as light traps enhance DSSC efficiency
Jeremiah Toster, K. Swaminathan Iyer, Wanchun Xiang, Federico Rosei, Leone Spiccia and Colin L. Raston
DOI: 10.1039/C2NR32716C

Folding DNA to make new nanoscale shapes – so called DNA origami – has potential applications including in drug delivery and immobilising enzymes. The 7249 nucleotide-long M13mp18 strand is frequently used in DNA origami, but it is expensive, its long length makes it more prone to strand cleavage and it can be difficult to analyse on the molecular level.

Scientists in Germany have come up with a convenient method for making a 704 nucleotide-long fragment, which is suitable for making small origami structures, is large enough to analyse by TEM and is more affordable.

Read this HOT Nanoscale article in full today:

M1.3 – A Small Scaffold for DNA Origami
Clemens Richert, Hassan Said, Verena Schüller, Fabian Eber, Christina Wege and Tim Liedl
DOI: 10.1039/C2NR32393A

Researchers based at the Chinese Academy of Sciences have prepared a  composite electrode of organic–inorganic polymers and Pyronin Y-doped silica nanoparticles, which was coated with poly (3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT), in the presence of phosphododecamolybdic acid (PMo₁₂).

The fluoresence of the nanoparticles can be switched on and off in aqueous solution by oxidation and reduction of the PEDOT, with fast colouration and bleaching of the film.

The materials have potential applications in organic LEDs and other photoelectric devices.

Reversible electroswitchable luminescence in thin films of organic–inorganic hybrid assemblies
Yanling Zhai, Lihua Jin, Chengzhou Zhu, Peng Hu, Lei Han, Erkang Wang and Shaojun Dong
DOI: 10.1039/C2NR32623J

The RSC has teamed up with an Oxford University spin-out to sponsor six challenges on Marblar – a radical new online platform for finding applications for unused scientific discoveries.

More than 95% of technologies developed in universities never make it to market, leaving publicly or philanthropy-funded research collecting dust on the shelf.  Often, given that academic research can be so ahead of its time, the commercial relevance of these technologies isn’t immediately obvious.

Marblar aims to remove this bottleneck by crowdsourcing ideas for real-world applications from the global science and technology community, with the ultimate goal to create new products and new companies that will drive job creation around these innovative discoveries.

One of the projects to be selected is based on an article in Nanoscale: Take Two is an exciting new technique developed by Dr Sergio Bertazzo in Professor Molly Stevens’ lab at Imperial College London. It enables bioengineers to study interactions between cells and biomaterials by combining two forms of microscopy in an innovative way.

You can find more details on the Marblar website and read the Nanoscale article for free by following the link below:

Correlative light-ion microscopy for biological applications
Sergio Bertazzo, Thomas von Erlach, Silvia Goldoni, Pelin L Çandarlıoğlu and Molly M Stevens
DOI: 10.1039/C2NR30431G

We would like to share with you some recent high impact graphene articles, published in Nanoscale.

Graphene expert and Nanoscale Editorial Board member Prof. Andrea Ferrari

With an international readership, across the many disciplines involved with nanoscience and nanotechnology and a first (2011) Impact Factor of 5.91, Nanoscale is the ideal place to publish your research.

Nanoscale has very fast times to publication. Our Accepted Manuscript service means research is published and can be cited on average within 1 day of acceptance – we invite you to submit your best research to Nanoscale.

Sign up to receive our free table-of-contents e-alert at www.rsc.org/alerts and be among the first to read our newest articles.

Read this high-impact graphene research today:

Review Articles

Graphene transfer: key for applications
Junmo Kang, Dolly Shin, Sukang Bae and Byung Hee Hong
DOI: 10.1039/C2NR31317K

Graphene edges: a review of their fabrication and characterization
Xiaoting Jia, Jessica Campos-Delgado, Mauricio Terrones, Vincent Meunier and Mildred S. Dresselhaus
DOI: 10.1039/C0NR00600A

Graphene: a versatile nanoplatform for biomedical applications
Yin Zhang, Tapas R. Nayak, Hao Hong and Weibo Cai
DOI: 10.1039/C2NR31040F

Modeling of graphene nanoribbon devices
Jing Guo
DOI: 10.1039/C2NR31437A

Original research

Percolation scaling in composites of exfoliated MoS2 filled with nanotubes and graphene
Graeme Cunningham, Mustafa Lotya, Niall McEvoy, Georg S. Duesberg, Paul van der Schoot and Jonathan N. Coleman
DOI: 10.1039/C2NR31782F

Flexible photovoltaic cells based on a graphene–CdSe quantum dot nanocomposite
Jing Chen, Feng Xu, Jun Wu, Khan Qasim, Yidan Zhou, Wei Lei, Li-Tao Sun and Yan Zhang
DOI: 10.1039/C2NR11656A

Facile synthesis of metal oxide/reduced graphene oxide hybrids with high lithium storage capacity and stable cyclability
Jixin Zhu, Ting Zhu, Xiaozhu Zhou, Yanyan Zhang, Xiong Wen Lou, Xiaodong Chen, Hua Zhang, Huey Hoon Hng and Qingyu Yan
DOI: 10.1039/C0NR00744G

Graphene based gene transfection
Liangzhu Feng, Shuai Zhang and Zhuang Liu
DOI: 10.1039/C0NR00680G

Real-time DNA detection using Pt nanoparticle-decorated reduced graphene oxide field-effect transistors
Zongyou Yin, Qiyuan He, Xiao Huang, Juan Zhang, Shixin Wu, Peng Chen, Gang Lu, Peng Chen, Qichun Zhang, Qingyu Yan and Hua Zhang
DOI: 10.1039/C1NR11149C

Surface plasmon resonance-induced visible light photocatalytic reduction of graphene oxide: Using Ag nanoparticles as a plasmonic photocatalyst
Tongshun Wu, Sen Liu, Yonglan Luo, Wenbo Lu, Lei Wang and Xuping Sun
DOI: 10.1039/C1NR10128E

In situ synthesis of high-loading Li₄Ti₅O₁₂–graphene hybrid nanostructures for high rate lithium ion batteries
Laifa Shen, Changzhou Yuan, Hongjun Luo, Xiaogang Zhang, Sudong Yang and Xiangjun Lu
DOI: 10.1039/C0NR00639D

Graphene decoration with metal nanoparticles: Towards easy integration for sensing applications
Albert Gutés, Ben Hsia, Allen Sussman, Willi Mickelson, Alex Zettl, Carlo Carraro and Roya Maboudian
DOI: 10.1039/C1NR11537E

Enhanced photocatalytic H₂-production activity of graphene-modified titania nanosheets
Quanjun Xiang, Jiaguo Yu and Mietek Jaroniec
DOI: 10.1039/C1NR10610D

Highly dispersed ultrafine Pt and PtRu nanoparticles on graphene: formation mechanism and electrocatalytic activity
C. Nethravathi, E. A. Anumol, M. Rajamathi and N. Ravishankar
DOI: 10.1039/C0NR00664E

Fabrication of hybrids based on graphene and metal nanoparticles by in situ and self-assembled methods
Fu-An He, Jin-Tu Fan, Fei Song, Li-Ming Zhang and Helen Lai-Wa Chan
DOI: 10.1039/C0NR00672F

Controlled assembly of Fe₃O₄ magnetic nanoparticles on graphene oxide
Yi Zhang, Biao Chen, Liming Zhang, Jie Huang, Fenghua Chen, Zupei Yang, Jianlin Yao and Zhijun Zhang
DOI: 10.1039/C0NR00776E

Synthesis of reduced graphene oxide-anatase TiO2 nanocomposite and its improved photo-induced charge transfer properties
Ping Wang, Yueming Zhai, Dejun Wang and Shaojun Dong
DOI: 10.1039/C0NR00714E

Check out our previous collection of graphene reviews and our graphene web collection for even more fascinating articles in this exciting research area.