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71 nanotimes News in Brief
The researchers from the IPC PAS and the IRI used graphene oxide manufactured at Materials Science Division in North East Institute of Science and Technology (NEIST) in Dispur, India. "One-atom-thick graphene oxide colloids were a good starting material, but numerous oxygen-containing functional groups became a real difficulty. The problem was that they changed dramatically the physico-chemical properties of the material. Instead of an excellent conductor we had... an insulator," explains Izabela Kaminska (see image), a PhD student from the IPC PAS, a scholarship holder of the Foundation for Polish Science within the International PhD Projects Programme. Kaminska has carried out her experiments. To remove oxygen from graphene flakes, the researchers from the IPC PAS and the IRI decided to use non-covalent pi-pi stacking interactions between the carbon rings of graphene oxide and the aromatic rings of a compound called tertathiafulvalene (TTF). A TTF molecule is composed of two rings containing three carbon and two sulphur atoms each. "Practically, it was sufficient to mix graphene oxide with tertathiafulvalene, and then put the whole in an ultrasonic cleaner. The interactions between the TTF rings and the graphene oxide rings resulted in a reduction of graphene oxide to graphene with a simultaneous oxidation of the TTF molecules," describes Izabela Kaminska.
Izabela Kaminska, Manash R. Das, Yannick Coffinier, Joanna Niedziolka-Jonsson, Patrice Woisel, Marcin Opallo, Sabine Szunerits and Rabah Boukherroub: Preparation of graphene/tetrathiafulvalene nanocomposite switchable surfaces, Chemical Communications, Vol. 48, Issue 9, 2012, Pages 1221-1223, DOI: 10.1039/C1CC15215G:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1039/C1CC15215G
Image: left: Izabela Kaminska, a PhD student from the IPC PAS, presenting the graphene structure. © IPC PAS, Grzegorz Krzyzewski
Agencies participating in the US National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) announced their fourth Nano-technology Signature Initiative. This signature initiative will stimulate the development of models, simulation tools, and databases that will enable the prediction of specific properties and characteristics of nanoscale materials.