The Material Chemists

Magnetic Skyrmion_LINK to UCLA Santa Cruz

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 12 Jun 2017 16:40:00 +0000

LINK

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The 2016 Nobel Prize in Chemistry - "The design and synthesis of molecular machines"

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 06 Oct 2016 15:20:00 +0000

A much awaited prize announcement , the most prestigious award for Chemistry and Chemists.

"5 October 2016

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2016 to

Jean-Pierre Sauvage
University of Strasbourg, France

Sir J. Fraser Stoddart
Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA

and

Bernard L. Feringa
University of Groningen, the Netherlands

"for the design and synthesis of molecular machines"

They developed the world's smallest machines.

A tiny lift, artificial muscles and miniscule motors. The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2016 is awarded to Jean-Pierre Sauvage, Sir J. Fraser Stoddart and Bernard L. Feringa for their design and production of molecular machines. They have developed molecules with controllable movements, which can perform a task when energy is added." from The Nobel Prize website.

READ more

LINK_There is some good chemisry here, please visit my page

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 15 Sep 2016 16:39:00 +0000

READ some good chemistry at the folloing link to my related blog on Materials Science

Optimizing deoxidation and desuIphurization during vacuum induction melting of alloy 718 is now online and free to members of IOM3.

EU’s REACH Called "Threat" to Chemical Innovation | Engineering360

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 14 Jul 2016 17:06:00 +0000

"REACH, the European Union’s system of regulations governing the Registration,Evaluation, Authorization and restriction of CHemicals. The set of rules took effect in June 2007 and calls for the phasing in of requirements governing the manufacture, tracking, transportation and eventual ban of chemicals deemed to be harmful to health and the environment.

Now, as additional mandates loom, the European chemical industry association, known by the acronym CEFIC, is calling the regulations an over-REACH that threatens to stymie innovation."

Poor and dangerous Complaint? :

"CEFIC Vice President Tony Bastcok goes even further, complaining, that chemical companies are now spending more money on regulatory compliance than innovation at a time when Europe is struggling to compete globally." (Underdevelopped Country Stance!?)

I kindly ask participants and readers:

"Who would wish to innovations which are possibly, or worse, potenially dangerous with no safety net!?"

NB.

"However, not all chemical companies want to see the European Commission delay the REACH registration requirements or alter the current list of substances to be brought into regulatory compliance.

German chemical maker BASF, ranked as one of the world’s largest chemical companies, remains supportive of the regulations.

“REACH aims to ensure that chemicals are handled in the EU without risks for human health and the environment,” the company said in a statement. “BASF welcomes the EU Commission’s decision not to impede the ongoing implementation of REACH and not to propose legal revisions to the regulation before 2018.”

The company says, however, that it’s concerned that REACH’s complexity may jeopardize the goal of strengthening innovation and competitiveness of EU’s chemical industry.

NB I trust that the BASF company calling for simplification is not another attempt at passing the buck to avoid necessary health and saftey testing preferably by independent authorities?

EU’s REACH Called "Threat" to Chemical Innovation | Engineering360

Solar hydrogen production on a roll with 2D films reported by Chemistry World of the Royal Society of Chemistry

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 16 Jun 2016 10:45:00 +0000

Solar hydrogen production on a roll with 2D films from Chemistry World

Renewable Energy: Progress in Solar PVs published 2015 (blogged here b"better late than nevers?)

NB. slim on strategic materials, and hence on cost.

"Swiss researchers have developed an affordable and scalable way to make atom thin films of tungsten diselenide for converting solar energy into hydrogen. The method, which exploits the interface of two layers of liquid to act as a ‘rolling pin’ to form the films, could bring the goal of cheap solar cells for hydrogen production a step closer."

One of a number of such approaches is reported Chemistry World with interviews and comments from reputable critics in the field.

COMMENTS in Chem World by

John Turner, who investigates hydrogen energy at the US government's National Renewable Energy Laboratory, is unimpressed.

Co-author of the paper, Kevin Sivula underlines the advantage of low cost processing
While agreeing that improvement is needed but argues that it is difficult to imagine a less-expensive technique than solution-based processing.

REFERENCES

Self-assembled 2D WSe2 thin films for photoelectrochemical hydrogen production

X Yu et al, Nat. Commun., 2015, DOI: 10.1038/ncomms8596

LINK: Theme Issue 'Plastics, the environment and human health_COP21?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 21 Jan 2016 18:45:00 +0000

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences | Table of Contents — July 27, 2009, 364 (1526): "Theme Issue 'Plastics, the environment and human health' compiled by R. C. Thompson, C. J. Moore, F. S. vom Saal and S. H. Swan"

Repeat :"Theme Issue 'Plastics, the environment and human health'

Super-repellent coating ready in seconds from Chemistry World and University of Massachusetts_Beating Macintosh.

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 05 Dec 2015 17:46:00 +0000

THE CHALLENGE

"In recent years, several strategies have been attempted to prepare omniphobic surfaces that repel both polar and apolar liquids. However, they are complex owing to the challenge of creating surfaces with ultra-low contact angle hysteresis, which is what causes liquids to bead and easily slide off a surface. One method is to covalently attach flexible groups onto smooth surfaces to create a slippery liquid-like layer. But this approach is usually time-consuming and involves complicated synthetic chemistry." writes James Urquhart in Chemistry World, house journal of the RSC The Royal Chemical Society,UK.

THE SOLUTION

Now Liming Wang and Thomas McCarthy at the University of Massachusetts, US, have devised a way to create such smooth and slippery coatings without complex synthetic chemistry and long reaction times. Their method so simple it involves just one step and takes minutes to achieve at room temperature.

Super-repellent coating ready in seconds | Chemistry World

Penn News | Penn Research Simplifies Recycling of Rare-earth Magnets

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 28 Jun 2015 18:04:00 +0000

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have now pioneered a process that could enable the efficient recycling of two of these metals, neodymium and dysprosium. These elements comprise the small, powerful magnets that are found in many high-tech devices.

In contrast to the massive and energy-intensive industrial process currently used to separate rare earths, the Penn team’s method works nearly instantaneously at room temperature and uses standard laboratory equipment.

Sourcing neodymium and dysprosium from used electronics rather than the ground would increase their supply at a fraction of the financial, human and environment cost.

The research was lead by Eric J. Schelter, assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry in Penn’s School of Arts & Sciences, and graduate student Justin Bogart. Connor A. Lippincott, an undergraduate student in the Vagelos Integrated Program in Energy Research, and Patrick J. Carroll, director of the University of Pennsylvania X-Ray Crystallography Facility, also contributed to the study.

It was published in Angewandte Chemie, International Edition.

“Neodymium magnets can’t be beat in terms of their properties,” Schelter said. “They give you the strongest amount of magnetism for the smallest amount of stuff and can perform at a range of temperatures.”

Penn News | Penn Research Simplifies Recycling of Rare-earth Magnets:

'via Blog this'

New materials repel oil underwater, could better clean up oil spills by David Lynn,The University of Wisconsin-Madison

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 16 Apr 2015 11:03:00 +0000

New materials repel oil underwater, could better clean up oil spills

This work brought back to memory past "Innovation Challenges" whereby improved oil spill lean up solutions were sought. Envronmental disasters are always a recurrent problem. Solvers are much sought after. I usually blog such issues in my related blog Conversations-on-Innovations

University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers have announced a significant step forward in the development of materials that can ward off oil — a discovery that could lead to new protective coatings and better approaches to cleaning up oil spills.

In a new paper in the journal Advanced Functional Materials, professor of chemical and biological engineering David Lynn and assistant scientist Uttam Manna describe new coatings that are extremely oil-repellant (or "superoleophobic") in underwater environments.

Looking forward to learning of full size application in order to respond sucessfully to any oil spills. Of course preventive action is preferable. Worldwide Pollution whatever the nature and its human source remains an issue which world leaders cannot be proud of!

'via Blog this'

2014 The Nobel Prize for Chemistry_NOBEL PRIZE AWARDS 2014-blog up dates and links

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 23 Oct 2014 17:46:00 +0000

Eric Betzig, Stefan W. Hell and William E. Moerner share the 2014 Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy".

Read all about the 2014 Chemistry Prize, and this years winners:

cf also Materials Science and Engineering Defined

Battery Particle Simulation_Advances on explaining why batteries fail and hence how they may be improved

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 18 Sep 2014 09:42:00 +0000

Published on 15 Sep 2014 Two simulations show the differences between a battery being drained at a slower rate, over a full hour, versus a faster rate, only six minutes (a tenth of an hour). In both cases battery particles go from being fully charged (green) to fully drained (red), but there are significant differences in the patterns of discharge based on the rate.

REFS and People Involved:

Current-induced transition from particle-by-particle to concurrent intercalation in phase-separating battery electrodes

W. Chueh et al., Nature Materials, 14 September 2014 (10.1038/NMAT4084)

Others work:
Distinct charge dynamics in battery electrodes revealed by in situ and operando soft X-ray spectroscopy

Gao Liu,

Zhi Liu,

& Wanli Yang

An 'F' to Fracking_A new look at what’s in “fracking” fluids raises red flags

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 15 Aug 2014 15:43:00 +0000

"As the oil and gas drilling technique called hydraulic fracturing (or “fracking”) proliferates, a new study on the contents of the fluids involved in the process raises concerns about several ingredients. The scientists presenting the work today at the 248th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS) say that out of nearly 200 commonly used compounds, there’s very little known about the potential health risks of about one-third, and eight are toxic to mammals."

A new look at what’s in “fracking” fluids raises red flags

Should strengthen France's reticence to"easy money" Fracking.

Wish I could say the same for UK.

Then again if the major players show a bad example what is one to expect from the smaller economies

And this applies to all activities so badly battered by the poor example of the "so called powers to be from politics (leading by 'bad' example) to athletics (IAAF's interpretation of sportsmanship in the 3000m steeple in Zurich 2014) through the major offender- Soccer (blind to obvious benefits to sportsmanship through video support for refereeing_well proven in Rugby).

Who said we must green our economies: control GHG emissions, keep our seas & oceans free from pollution, prepare or avoid sea level increases.....

A budget was calculated by ex-World Bank Chief Ecomomist_Sir Nicolas Stern

Business as Usual is Not an Option - NYU Stern School of Business

Overwhelming but necessary task of Robotisation of Organic Materialss Synthesis

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 07 Aug 2014 15:09:00 +0000

A growing band of chemists is now trying to free the field from its artisanal roots by creating a device with the ability to fabricate any organic molecule automatically. “I would consider it entirely feasible to build a synthesis machine which could make any one of a billion defined small molecules on demand,” declares Richard Whitby, a chemist at the University of Southampton, UK.

Even a menu of one billion compounds would encompass just an infinitesimal fraction of the estimated 1060 moderately sized carbon-based molecules that could possibly exist. But it would still be at least ten times the number of organic molecules that have ever been synthesized by humans. Such a device could thus offer an astonishing diversity of compounds for investigation by researchers developing drugs, agrochemicals or materials

People Involved:

“A synthesis machine would be transformational,” says Tim Jamison, a chemist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge. “I can see challenges in every single area,” he adds, “but I don't think it's impossible”.

A British project called Dial-a-Molecule is laying the groundwork. Led by Whitby, the £700,000 (US$1.2-million) project began in 2010 and currently runs until May 2015. So far, it has mostly focused on working out what components the machine would need, and building a collaboration of more than 450 researchers and 60 companies to help work on the idea. The hope, says Whitby, is that this launchpad will help team members to attract the long-term support they need to achieve the vision.

Bartosz Grzybowski, a chemist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, who has ambitious plans for a synthesis machine of his own.

Yuichi Tateno, an automation researcher at pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline in Stevenage, UK, and a member of the Dial-a-Molecule collaboration. “The hardware has always been there, but the software and data have let it down,” he says.

Elias Corey, a chemist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who formalized the rules of retrosynthesis in the 1960s.

Grzybowski has spent the past decade building a system called Chematica to address those problems. He started by creating a searchable network of about 6 million organic compounds, connected by a similar number of reactions, drawn from one of the main databases behind Reaxys. His team then spent years cleaning up the data — identifying entries that lack crucial information about reagent compatibility or reaction conditions.

FULL STORY IN NATURE

Climate science: Why the world won't listen - opinion - 26 September 2013 - New Scientist

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 11 Apr 2014 18:21:00 +0000

Climate science: Why the world won't listen - opinion - 26 September 2013 - New Scientist

When it comes to climate change, facts don't speak for themselves. Communicators need to find better ways to connect

Editorial: "Gun control: We need a new conversation"

WHEN scholars of the future write the history of climate change, they may look to early 2008 as a pivotal moment. Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truthwas bringing the science to the masses. The economist Nicholas Sternhad made the financial case for tackling the problem sooner rather than later. And the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had just issued its most unequivocal report yet on the link between human activity and climatic change.

The scientific and economic cases were made. Surely with all those facts on the table, soaring public interest and ambitious political action were inevitable?

The exact opposite happened. Fast-forward to today, the eve of the IPCC's latest report on the state of climate science, and it is clear that public concern and political enthusiasm have not kept up with the science. Apathy, lack of interest and even outright denial are more widespread than they were in 2008.

How did the rational arguments of science and economics fail to win the day? There are many reasons, but an important one concerns human nature.

Through a growing body of psychological research, we know that scaring or shaming people into sustainable behaviour is likely to backfire. We know that it is difficult to overcome the psychological distance between the concept of climate change – not here, not now – and people's everyday lives. We know that beliefs about the climate are influenced by extreme and even daily weather.

One of the most striking findings is that concern about climate change is not only, or even mostly, a product of how much people know about science. Increased knowledge tends to harden existing opinions (Nature Climate Change, vol 2, p 732).

These findings, and many more, are increasingly available to campaigners and science communicators, but it is not clear that lessons are being learned. In particular, there is a great deal of resistance towards the idea that communicating climate change requires more than explaining the science.

The IPCC report, due out on 27 September, will provide communicators with plenty of factual ammunition. It will inevitably be attacked by climate deniers. In response, rebuttals, debunkings and counter-arguments will pour forth, as fighting denial has become a cottage industry in itself.

None of it will make any real difference. This is for the simple reason that the argument is not really about the science; it is about politics and values.

Consider, for example, the finding that people with politically conservative beliefs are more likely to doubt the reality or seriousness of climate change. Accurate information about climate change is no less readily available to these people than anybody else. But climate policies such as the regulation of industrial emissions often seem to clash with conservative political views. And people work backwards from their values, filtering the facts according to their pre-existing beliefs.

Research has shown that people who endorse free-market economic principles become less hostile when they are presented with policy responseswhich do not seem to be as threatening to their world view, such as geoengineering. Climate change communicators must understand that debates about the science are often simply a proxy for these more fundamental disagreements.

Some will argue that climate change discourse has become so polluted by politics that we can't see the scientific woods for the political trees. Why should science communicators get their hands dirty with politics? But the solution is not to scream ever louder at people that the woods are there if only they would look properly. A much better, and more empirically supported, answer is to start with those trees. The way to engage the public on climate change is to find ways of making it resonate more effectively with the values that people hold.

My colleagues and I argued in a recent report for the Climate Outreach and Information Network that there is no inherent contradiction between conservative values and engaging with climate change science. But hostility has grown because climate change has become associated with left-wing ideas and language.

If communicators were to start with ideas that resonated more powerfully with the right – the beauty of the local environment, or the need to enhance energy security – the conversation about climate change would likely flow much more easily.

Similarly, a recent report from the Understanding Risk group at Cardif University in the UK showed there are some core values that underpin views about the country's energy system. Whether wind farms or nuclear power, the public judges energy technologies by a set of underlying values – including fairness, avoiding wastefulness and affordability. If a technology is seen as embodying these, it is likely to be approved of. Again, it is human values, more than science and technology, which shape public perceptions.

Accepting this is a challenge for those seeking to communicate climate science. Too often, they assume that the facts will speak for themselves – ignoring the research that reveals how real people respond. That is a pretty unscientific way of going about science communication.

The challenge when the IPCC report appears, then, is not to simply crank up the volume on the facts. Instead, we must use the report as the beginning of a series of conversations about climate change – conversations that start from people's values and work back from there to the science.

This article appeared in print under the headline "The world won't listen"

Adam Corner is a research associate in the School of Psychology at Cardiff University, UK, and leads the Talking Climate programme for the Climate Outreach and Information Network

"Climate report 2013: Your guide to the big questions"

The scientific and economic cases were made. Surely with all those facts on the table, soaring public interest and ambitious political action were inevitable?

How did the rational arguments of science and economics fail to win the day? There are many reasons, but an important one concerns human nature.

None of it will make any real difference. This is for the simple reason that the argument is not really about the science; it is about politics and values.

This article appeared in print under the headline "The world won't listen"

Adam Corner is a research associate in the School of Psychology at Cardiff University, UK, and leads the Talking Climate programme for the Climate Outreach and Information Network

Gun control: We need a new conversation

26 September 2013
Magazine issue 2936. Subscribe and save
For similar stories, visit the Editorials and US national issues Topic Guides

THE murder of 12 people at the Naval Yard in Washington DC last week was both very familiar and very strange. Familiar in the sense that mass shootings have become part of life in the US. Strange in the sense that the calls for action that usually follow such events were muted, with President Obama's reiterated support for gun control seeming half-hearted.

It seems the failure to enact any legislation after the shootings at Sandy Hook elementary school has emasculated the gun control lobby: if the massacre of 20 young children can't shift the argument, nothing will. As The Washington Post concluded: "The issue, for the foreseeable future, is settled: Gun control is dead."

One oft-stated explanation is that the gun lobby has quashed federal funding for research into firearms violence. President Obama tried to put that rightafter Sandy Hook. But the new funding he ordered is a modest $10 million and it comes with strings: using the findings of any resulting research to advocate gun control would be a crime (see "The doctor treating the US gun epidemic").

Perhaps that will force gun control advocates to think harder about what they would do with such findings. We know that on "culture war" issues, evidence alone won't win over die-hard opponents – climate change being a prime example. Simply laying out anti-gun evidence, however forcefully and eloquently, may not only fail to change gun enthusiasts' minds, but could cause them to dig their heels in further.

Instead, gun control advocates could learn from climate activists who are devising new strategies to win over the hearts and minds of doubters. That means finding ways to convey the issues that don't instantly clash with the cherished values of those they are trying to persuade (see "Climate science: Why the world won't listen").

Rather than make the classic mistake of assuming that evidence alone will carry the day, gun control advocates need clever communication strategies to shift the debate. If they don't develop them, gun control will not only be dead – it will be buried, too.

This article appeared in print under the headline "Gun control is dead but not yet buried"

New Model Should Expedite Development of Temperature-Stable Nano-Alloys

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 11 Apr 2014 18:20:00 +0000

Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a new theoretical model that will speed the development of new nanomaterial alloys that retain their advantageous properties at elevated temperatures.

The model correctly predicted the material on the left would not be stable at high temperatures and that the material on the right would retain its nanoscale grain size. Click to enlarge. (Image: Mostafa Saber.)

Nanoscale materials are made up of tiny crystals, or grains, that are less than 100 nanometers in diameter. These materials are of interest to researchers, designers and manufacturers because two materials can have the same chemical composition but very different mechanical properties depending on their grain size. For example, materials with nanoscale grains can be harder and stronger than chemically identical materials with larger grains.

But widespread use of nanoscale materials has long been handicapped by the tendency of nanoscale grains to grow when exposed to elevated temperatures – thereby losing their desired mechanical properties.

This is a problem because creating bulk materials from powdered nanomaterials involves exposure to high temperatures, and even nanomaterials made using other techniques may be exposed to elevated temperatures. The grains in some nanomaterials can even grow – and lose their desired properties – when exposed to room temperature for an extended period of time.

A team of NC State researchers decided to tackle the problem by exploring a concept that had been discussed in the research community for some time: stabilizing nanomaterials by introducing small amounts of an additional element. The idea is that this additional element would serve as a stabilizing agent, migrating to the grain boundaries – or interfaces between grains – and preventing the grains from growing at elevated temperatures. Implementing that concept had been daunting, since there are thousands of possible combinations of these elements.

To turn that idea into a practical solution, the researchers developed a theoretical model to identify suitable candidates that can be used as stabilizing agents.

The theoretical model focuses on alloys that consist of two elements, such as iron and chromium, then allows users to see what would happen if a third element is added to the mix. If users plug the atomic size and thermodynamic properties of each element into the model, the model predicts the grain size of the alloy at any given temperature.

“This model allows anyone to design alloys in a targeted and effective way without having to resort to a trial-and-error approach,” says Dr. Ron Scattergood, a professor of materials science and engineering at NC State and senior author of a paper describing the work. “And our experimental results confirm the accuracy of the model.”

“We are already using the model in our investigations into lightweight aluminum alloys and high-temperature alloys for nuclear energy applications,” says Dr. Mostafa Saber, lead author of the study and a postdoctoral research scholar in materials science and engineering at NC State.

The paper, “A Predictive Model for Thermodynamic Stability of Grain Size in Nanocrystalline Ternary Alloys,” was published online Sept. 12 in the Journal of Applied Physics. The paper was co-authored by Dr. Hasan Kotan, a former Ph.D. student and postdoctoral researcher at NC State, and Dr. Carl Koch, Kobe Steel Distinguished Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at NC State. The research was supported by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy.

-shipman-

Note to Editors: The study abstract follows.

“A Predictive Model for Thermodynamic Stability of Grain Size in Nanocrystalline Ternary Alloys”

Authors: Mostafa Saber, Hasan Kotan, Carl C. Koch, and Ronald O. Scattergood, North Carolina State University

Published: online Sept. 12, Journal of Applied Physics

DOI: 10.1063/1.4821040

Abstract: This work presents a model for evaluating thermodynamic stabilization of ternary nanocrystalline alloys. It is applicable to alloy systems containing strongly segregating size misfit solutes with a significant enthalpy of elastic strain and/or immiscible solutes with a positive mixing enthalpy. On the basis of a regular solution model, the chemical and elastic strain energy contributions are incorporated into the mixing enthalpy [delta]Hmix, and the mixing entropy [delta]Smix is obtained using the ideal solution approximation. The Gibbs mixing free energy [delta]Gmix is minimized with respect to simultaneous variations in grain size and solute segregation parameters. The Lagrange multiplier method is used to obtain numerical solutions for the minimum [delta]Gmix corresponding to an equilibrium grain size for given alloy compositions. The numerical solutions will serve as a guideline for choosing solutes and assessing the possibility of thermodynamic stabilization. The temperature dependence of the nanocrystalline grain size and interfacial solute excess can be evaluated for selected ternary systems. Model predictions are presented using available input data for a wide range of solvent-solute combinations. The model predictions are compared to experimental results for Cu-Zn-Zr, Fe-Cr-Zr and Fe-Ni-Zr alloys where thermodynamic stabilization might be effective.

New Model Should Expedite Development of Temperature-Stable Nano-Alloys

Defect Analysis of 316LSS during the PIM Process by Ali Samer due to Academia.edu

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 11 Apr 2014 18:19:00 +0000

Gen-up on Powder Metallurgy, specifically Powder Injection Moulding thanks to a paper made available by an international team from Malaysia & USA via the site "Academia.edu"

Defect Analysis of 316LSS during the PIM Process | Ali Samer - Academia.edu

I am sure readers especially metallurgist will enjoy further updating via papers such as this, a nice addition to our IOM3

Langmuir Laureates and Lectureships 2013

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Sep 2013 11:20:00 +0000

Congratulations to Prashant V. Kamat and Nicholas A. Kotov, Langmuir Laureates 2013. The 2013 Langmuir Lectures will be presented at the Fall ACS National Meeting in Indianapolis, IN.

The Langmuir Lectureship is co-sponsored by the ACS Division of Colloid & Surface Chemistry and the journal Langmuir.

Prashant V. Kamat

2013 ACS Langmuir Lecturer

Nicholas A. Kotov

2013 ACS Langmuir Lecturer

Nicholas A. Kotov
2013 ACS Langmuir Lecturer

Prof. Nicholas A. Kotov graduated from Moscow State University where he started working on biomimetic interfaces for solar energy conversion. He is currently the Joseph and Florence Cejka Professor of Engineering at University of Michigan. Prof. Kotov serves as an Associate Editor for ACS Nano, and as a member of Advisory Boards of several nanotechnology journals.

The focus of his current research projects is self-organization of nanoparticles into complex biomimetic systems – chains, sheets, helices, and others. Such assemblies enable integration with microscale technologies and energy-conservative production of biosensing, energy conversion, and electronic devices as well as protection coatings and catalysts. His ongoing research projects also include advanced composites made by the layer-by-layer (LBL) assembly that represent another example of biomimetic nanoscale materials. Mechanical properties of LBL multilayers from nanoparticle of clay and other materials replicating those of nacre as the unique natural composite material were at the onset of his studies in this area. Ultrastrong composites produced in his lab are currently being tested for structural, automotive, and aviation applications.

Prashant V. Kamat
2013 ACS Langmuir Lecturer

Professor Prashant V. Kamat earned his doctoral degree in Physical Chemistry from the Bombay University, and carried out postdoctoral research at Boston University and the University of Texas at Austin. He is currently the Zahm Professor of Science in the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry and Radiation Laboratory at the University of Notre Dame. Prof. Kamat serves as Deputy Editor of theJournal of Physical Chemistry Letters. He is a Fellow of the American Chemical Society, the AAAS, the Electrochemical Society, and the Japan Society for Promotion of Science.

For the past 25 years Prof. Kamat has been conducting DOE-BES supported research in the areas of photochemistry and photoelectrochemistry of semiconductor nanostructures and organic-inorganic hybrid assemblies at Notre Dame. His current research efforts are mainly focused on harvesting light energy using semiconductor nanocrystals, metal nanostructures, and carbon nanostructures as building blocks.

Free for Chemweb members:Strategies for CO2 capture in microporous organic polymers is reviewed by a team of distinguished research chemists

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 12 Jul 2013 17:38:00 +0000

Robert Dawson, Prof. Andrew I Cooper and Dave J Adams review the design and use of microporous polymers for pre- and post-combustion capture of CO2.

-Microporous organic polymers are promising candidates for CO2 capture materials due to their good physicochemical stabilities and high surface areas.
-They predict that ultrahigh-surface-area microporous organic polymers are good candidates for use in pre-combustion capture, while networks with lower surface areas but higher heats of sorption for CO2 might be more relevant for lower pressure, post-combustion capture.
- In their paper "Chemical functionalization strategies for carbon dioxide capture in microporous organic polymers"made available for free via ChemWeb the authors discuss strategies for enhancing CO2 uptakes including increasing surface area, chemical functionalization to provide high-enthalpy binding sites and the potential for pore size tuning.

REFERENCES:
1. Chemical functionalization strategies for carbon dioxide capture in microporous organic polymers (pdf)

2. Learn more about Polymer Functionalization
Introduction to Polymer Functionalization: Motivations, Yield, Crystallinity, Solubility Issues, Common
Functionalization Approaches (pdf) by Prof. Paula Hammond .

Latest News on Raman Spectrometry now reaches the single molecule level, publised in Nature 06 June 2013

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 07 Jul 2013 11:47:00 +0000

Chemical mapping of a single molecule by plasmon-enhanced Raman scattering was accomplished by an international team of researchers from China, Spain, and Sweden:

Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, University of Science and Technology of China, Material Physics Center CSIC-UPV/EHU and Donostia International Physics Center DIPC, Spain,Theoretical Chemistry and Biology, School of Biotechnology, Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden.

Let me underline the scientific approach to ethics and probity as :

Competing financial interests:The authors declare no competing financial interests.

R. Zhang, Y. Zhang, Z. C. Dong, S. Jiang, C. Zhang, L. G. Chen, L. Zhang, Y. Liao, J. Aizpurua, Y. Luo, J. L. Yang & J. G. Hou

Figure 1. Schematic drawing of our home-built experimental setup.

This setup is composed of four sub-systems: 1. a laser source for light excitation, a dark-box for optical filtering and alignment, 2. low-temperature ultrahigh-vacuum (UHV) scanning tunneling microscope (STM) for sample preparation and characterization with 3. a built-in lens for both light excitation and collection, and 4. a spectrometer equipped with a highly sensitive CCD detector for Raman spectral measurements.

REFERENCE:

1. Chemical mapping of a single molecule by plasmon-enhanced Raman scattering, R. Zhang, Y. Zhang, Z. C. Dong, S. Jiang, C. Zhang, L. G. Chen, L. Zhang, Y. Liao, J. Aizpurua, Y. Luo, J. L. Yang & J. G. Hou,

Nature,

498,82–86 (06 June 2013) doi:10.1038/nature12151

Charge carriers in rechargeable batteries: Na ions vs. Li ions - Energy & Environmental Science (RSC Publishing)

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 09:23:00 +0000

Sodium, Na not so salty, This paper is just the stuff that may provide the basis for truely large scale innovation, taking the "salt" out of the bill. If any of my readers would like to share the full paper please do not hesitate to get in touch.

Charge carriers in rechargeable batteries: Na ions vs. Li ions - Energy & Environmental Science (RSC Publishing)

Reference: RSC's feed which can be read on my blog

Northwestern prof is Turner Alfrey lecturer

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 08:14:00 +0000

Northwestern prof is Turner Alfrey lecturer

Michigan Molecular Institute’s (MMI) Turner Alfrey Visiting Professorship (TAVP) will open a week’s worth of expert instruction in the field of materials science on June 17-21 from 3 to 6 p.m. at MMI’s lecture hall.

MMI's TAVP- series has invited Professor Kenneth R. Shull who is professor of materials science and engineering at Northwestern University. At MMI, he will give a course entitled Elasticity and Fracture of Soft Materials to local scientists and other interested parties.

Michigan Molecular Institute, founded in 1971, is a non-profit organization dedicated to polymer research and education. In addition to its research activity, MMI has served as the incubator for several successful business divisions, including Dendritech, the world leader in commercial dendrimer production; Impact Analytical, a premier analytical testing lab; Oxazogen, a supplier of advanced specialty films, coating materials and polymers; and MITCON, which serves the information technology needs of more than 35 local non-profit organizations. For more information, visit www.mmi.org.

Sustainable Chemistry Strategic Research Agenda brings Innovative Solutions to Societal Demands

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 12:30:00 +0000

Stakeholders of the Technology Platform on Sustainable Chemistry (SusChem) today unveiled their Strategic Research Agenda (SRA) and three future scenarios demonstrating the value of innovations in chemistry. Based on a common vision, the SRA aims at responding to the challenges faced by the chemical sector in the next 20 years, while shaping solutions to critical societal demands.

Read more on this commendable EU initiative started in 2004 cf the following links

Sustainable Chemistry Strategic Research Agenda brings Innovative Solutions to Societal Demands

EU Suschem link

2011 The International year of CHEMISTRY

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 08:30:00 +0000

This much belated post is aimed at readers, who like me, have had an extremely busy year 2011, failing miserably in my self appointed tasks of bringing subjects of importance to the attention of the specialised and general public, Science especially: Metallurgy, Materials Science,Modelling, Materials Chemistry and Thermodynamics
and the benefits of the scientific method to improve the well-being of humanKind and objective shared by the initiatives of my colleagues in chemistry and related. In order to bring information, invention into practice I blog on Innovation and Management with a distinct focus on Materials Science (Technology) and Engineering.

2011 The International year of CHEMISTRY

Thanks to a tweet by IYC poster designer: Simon C. Page - Excites

The French Journal, "La Recherche award for Chemistry 2011" goes to a team from the Co-ordination Chemistry Lab,Univ Paul Sabatier Toulouse .

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 16:33:00 +0000

The winning paper :

"A novel approach for fluorescent thermometry and thermal imaging purposes using spin crossover nanoparticles" was published by the Royal Society for Chemistry (RSC) in it's Journal of Materials Chemistry by

Lionel Salmon, Gábor Molnár, Djelali Zitouni, Carlos Quintero, Christian Bergaud, Jean-Claude Micheau and Azzedine Bousseksou

J. Mater. Chem., 2010, 20, 5499-5503

DOI: 10.1039/C0JM00631A
Received 08 Mar 2010, Accepted 04 May 2010
First published on the web 26 May 2010

Abstract

"Temperature plays a fundamental role in all fields of science; hence the development of methods for measuring this property remains in vogue. Within this vast field, fluorescent thermometry appears as a simple, noninvasive and cost-effective method for providing good spatial, temporal and thermal resolution in both solid and liquid phases, even in distant or inaccessible environments. "

MORE...cf the Journal of Materials Chemistry