Nanocellulose: Recent advances and its prospects in environmental remediation

• Katrina Pui Yee Shak,
• Yean Ling Pang and
• Shee Keat Mah

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 2479–2498, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.232

• nanocellulose, which could be particularly useful for particle aggregation of negatively charged pollutants to coagulate and flocculate kaolin colloids as reported by Liimatainen et al. [79]. On the other hand, the utilization of green solvents (ionic liquids) as both solvent and catalyst for cellulose

• hydrolysis has become a popular alternative method for nanocellulose extraction. The extraction of nanocellulose using ionic liquids, such as 1-butyl-2-methyllimidazolium hydrogen sulphate (BmimHSO4), has been considered as a green approach for its economical process (due to high recovery of ionic liquid for

Nanotribology

• Enrico Gnecco,
• Susan Perkin,
• Andrea Vanossi and
• Ernst Meyer

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 2330–2331, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.217

• including nanodiamonds [1] and novel materials such as nitrogen-doped graphene oxide [2] and imidazolium-based ionic liquids [3] used as additives to mineral oils. Standard large-scale applications to steel surfaces, but also to a material of key importance in micro- and nanoelecromechanical systems, i.e

Surface energy of nanoparticles – influence of particle size and structure

• Dieter Vollath,
• Franz Dieter Fischer and
• David Holec

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 2265–2276, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.211

• point. Molecular dynamics calculations using gold as an example resulted in a similar behavior. Qiao et al. [47] used, similarly as Chang and Johnson [35], an order parameter defined as the “translational order parameter” [48], which is 1 for perfectly crystallized materials and 0 for liquids, as a

Filling nanopipettes with apertures smaller than 50 nm: dynamic microdistillation

• Evelyne Salançon and
• Bernard Tinland

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 2181–2187, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.204

• ; Introduction Nanopipettes and nanocapillaries are often used as a manipulation tool for single molecules in liquids. A wide range of studies use capillaries with nanometer-sized apertures [1][2][3][4][5][6]. For example, simulated translocation with nanopipettes is currently being explored worldwide [7]. A

Recent highlights in nanoscale and mesoscale friction

• Andrea Vanossi,
• Dirk Dietzel,
• Andre Schirmeisen,
• Ernst Meyer,
• Rémy Pawlak,
• Thilo Glatzel,
• Marcin Kisiel,
• Shigeki Kawai and
• Nicola Manini

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 1995–2014, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.190

• . Focusing initially on liquid lubrication, research has investigated the possibility of controlling friction in unconventional fluids, in particular the room-temperature ionic liquids (RTILs). The RTIL microscopic structuring [106][107], and in particular their layering near surfaces [108][109][110][111

Synthesis of rare-earth metal and rare-earth metal-fluoride nanoparticles in ionic liquids and propylene carbonate

• Marvin Siebels,
• Lukas Mai,
• Laura Schmolke,
• Kai Schütte,
• Juri Barthel,
• Junpei Yue,
• Jörg Thomas,
• Bernd M. Smarsly,
• Anjana Devi,
• Roland A. Fischer and
• Christoph Janiak

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 1881–1894, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.180

• -earth tris(N,N′-diisopropyl-2-methylamidinato)metal(III) complexes [RE{MeC(N(iPr)2)}3] (RE(amd)3; RE = Pr(III), Gd(III), Er(III)) and tris(2,2,6,6-tetramethyl-3,5-heptanedionato)europium(III) (Eu(dpm)3) induced by microwave heating in the ionic liquids (ILs) 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium tetrafluoroborate

• diameters of (1.5 ± 0.5) to (5 ± 1) nm. The characterization was completed by energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX). Keywords: ionic liquids; metal amidinates; rare-earth metal-fluoride nanoparticles; rare-earth metal nanoparticles; soft wet-chemical synthesis; Introduction Rare-earth (RE) elements

• . Microwave heating and employing suitable ILs and PC as inert reaction media proved to be crucial. Ionic liquids are used as stabilizing reagents and as solvents in syntheses of nanoparticles [27][28][29][30][31]. In contrast to conventional stabilizers, such as surfactants or polymers, the ILs stabilize the

Quantitative comparison of wideband low-latency phase-locked loop circuit designs for high-speed frequency modulation atomic force microscopy

• Kazuki Miyata and
• Takeshi Fukuma

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 1844–1855, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.176

• enables atomic-scale measurements to be performed in vacuum and in liquids, its imaging speed is relatively slow (ca. 1 min/frame). High-speed amplitude modulation AFM has been developed [23] and employed to visualize the dynamic behavior of biomolecules in liquids at 10–100 ms/frame [24]. However, its

• atomistic mechanisms of various interfacial phenomena, including thin-film formation, crystal growth and dissolution, metal corrosion, and catalytic reactions in vacuum and in liquids. This problem could be solved by enhancing the FM-AFM operation speed. The development of high-speed FM-AFM requires

• performance in FM-AFM experiments performed in liquids for both the NCH and USC cantilevers. High-speed FM-AFM imaging with true atomic resolution To investigate the applicability of the developed S-PLL to high-speed atomic-resolution imaging in a liquid, we imaged calcite dissolution in water. Figure 9a

SO₂ gas adsorption on carbon nanomaterials: a comparative study

• Deepu J. Babu,
• Divya Puthusseri,
• Frank G. Kühl,
• Sherif Okeil,
• Michael Bruns,
• Manfred Hampe and
• Jörg J. Schneider

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 1782–1792, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.169

• conventional techniques such as absorption in liquids, the adsorptive removal of environmentally toxic gases, e.g., SO2, offers several advantages such as ease of regeneration, low maintenance and simple plant design [1][2]. Consequently, in the last few years a wide variety of adsorbents has been investigated

Cryochemical synthesis of ultrasmall, highly crystalline, nanostructured metal oxides and salts

• Elena A. Trusova and
• Nikolai S. Trutnev

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 1755–1763, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.166

• out at 60–80 °C using a magnetic stirrer (500–600 rpm). N,N-dimethyloctylamine (DMOA), monoethanolamine (MEA) or hexamethylenetetramine (HMTA) were used to obtain and stabilize the sols. The resulting liquids were fed into a cryogranulator where they were sprayed into a container with liquid nitrogen

• -dispersed NiO, Fe2O3, CeO2 and NaNO3 nanopowders were obtained. Figure 1 provides a description of the synthesis process of nanopowders using cryotreatment of solutions or colloids. The salt solutions, sols and microemulsions were used as liquids for further cryogenic processing. In the synthesis of metal

Electrostatically actuated encased cantilevers

• Benoit X. E. Desbiolles,
• Gabriela Furlan,
• Adam M. Schwartzberg,
• Paul D. Ashby and
• Dominik Ziegler

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 1381–1389, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.130

• resonances of the chip, chip holder, or dither piezo [1] along with modes of fluid vibration when working in liquids [2]. The problem is accentuated at high frequencies when operating in high-viscosity liquids. A user can easily select the wrong peak resulting in increased tip–sample interaction forces or

• fluid. Magnetic excitation [13][14][15] or photothermal excitation [16][17][18][19] are more common in liquids, but require specialized instruments. Although frequently applied in microelectromechanical systems, electrostatic actuation is rarely used in scanning probe force microscopy. Reliable

• ≈ 90 μm) with a stiffness of k = 4 N·m−1 and a resonance frequency of f0 = 144.525 kHz and Qair = 36.5 is used. After immersion in water the quality factor remained high Qwater = 27.4, which enables high-resolution imaging with small interaction forces in liquids. Moreover, the clean electrostatic

Imaging of viscoelastic soft matter with small indentation using higher eigenmodes in single-eigenmode amplitude-modulation atomic force microscopy

• Miead Nikfarjam,
• Enrique A. López-Guerra,
• Santiago D. Solares and
• Babak Eslami

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 1116–1122, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.103

• the deformation-rate-dependence of viscoelastic materials. We encourage further research in this area, especially in liquids, where the softest (biological) samples find their native environment. Generalized Maxwell or Wiechert mechanical model diagram representing the relationship between stress and

A simple extension of the commonly used fitting equation for oscillatory structural forces in case of silica nanoparticle suspensions

• Sebastian Schön and
• Regine von Klitzing

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 1095–1107, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.101

• observed in molecular liquids [1][2], but also in complex fluids such as liquid crystals [22][23], micellar or polyelectrolyte solutions [3][24][25][26][27][28][29] and particle suspensions [19][30][31][32][33]. Recent studies showed that for colloidal suspensions of charged silica nanoparticles the period

• Equation 2, is dominated by the parameter B. As mentioned already, the superposition of oscillatory structural forces and an additional repulsive term has been investigated before. The group of Perkin investigated ionic liquids in polar solvents [57][58]. In the latter using the same type of generic

Bioinspired self-healing materials: lessons from nature

• Joseph C. Cremaldi and
• Bharat Bhushan

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 907–935, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.85

• of the exterior of a plant is the top priority, so the cells at the wound site seek to close off access to the plant interior. The lack of blood or hemolymph removes the need for clotting to prevent any loss of liquids, so the cells at the wound use hypertrophy (increase in cell size) and/or

Comparative study of antibacterial properties of polystyrene films with TiO_x and Cu nanoparticles fabricated using cluster beam technique

• Vladimir N. Popok,
• Cesarino M. Jeppesen,
• Peter Fojan,
• Anna Kuzminova,
• Jan Hanuš and
• Ondřej Kylián

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 861–869, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.80

• directly after the deposition and by in-flight oxidation prior the deposition on substrates. The annealing favours partial embedding of the NPs into polymer films thus ensuring a high resistance against wash-out in procedures involving liquids. Controlling the deposition time gives a possibility to tune

Heavy-metal detectors based on modified ferrite nanoparticles

• Urszula Klekotka,
• Ewelina Wińska,
• Elżbieta Zambrzycka-Szelewa,
• Dariusz Satuła and
• Beata Kalska-Szostko

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 762–770, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.69

• ions from liquids, aqueous model solutions were prepared. The solutions and particles were analyzed by IR spectroscopy, EDX and AAS measurements after the tests. For this purpose, approx. 8 mg of surface-modified nanoparticles were added to a 0.1 M aqueous solution of Pb2+, Cu2+ and Cd2+. This mixture

• . Therefore, ferrite nanoparticles were added to the aqueous heavy-metal solutions and stirred. The liquids were separated from the solid particles, which were dried at room temperature. Powdered samples after the adsorption experiment were examined by EDX and the results are given in Figure 7. It can be seen

Cyclodextrin-assisted synthesis of tailored mesoporous silica nanoparticles

• Fuat Topuz and
• Tamer Uyar

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 693–703, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.64

• change of MSNs from rods to platelets with depending on the concentration of heptane and NH4F [15]. MSNs were also synthesized in ellipsoidal and tubular forms using room-temperature ionic liquids (RTILs) as pore-templates [16]. Recently, single-walled carbon nanotube functionalized MSNs with grape-like

Fabrication and photoactivity of ionic liquid–TiO₂ structures for efficient visible-light-induced photocatalytic decomposition of organic pollutants in aqueous phase

• Anna Gołąbiewska,
• Marta Paszkiewicz-Gawron,
• Aleksandra Sadzińska,
• Wojciech Lisowski,
• Ewelina Grabowska,
• Adriana Zaleska-Medynska and
• Justyna Łuczak

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 580–590, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.54

• at the surface of the IL–TiO2 material under visible-light illumination, and is responsible for the effective phenol degradation. Keywords: heterogeneous photocatalysis; ionic liquids; TiO2; visible light catalysis; Introduction The development of heterogeneous photocatalysis to degrade organic

• achieve visible-light-activated photocatalysts. Another, actually surprising, way to improve the efficiency of solar-driven photocatalysis appeared in an application of ionic liquids (ILs) for TiO2 preparation [12][13][14]. Sometimes referred to as “solvents of the future”, ILs have induced a large and

• IL. Results and Discussion Twelve novel TiO2 photocatalysts prepared in the presence of two ionic liquids containing different alkyl chain lengths in the imidazolium cation ([ODMIM][Cl] and [TDMIM][Cl]) were obtained by the solvothermal method. All samples were prepared in six different molar ratios

Facile synthesis of ZnFe₂O₄ photocatalysts for decolourization of organic dyes under solar irradiation

• Arjun Behera,
• Debasmita Kandi,
• Sanjit Manohar Majhi,
• Satyabadi Martha and
• Kulamani Parida

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 436–446, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.42

• , hydrothermal [15][16][17] solid-state combustion, sol–gel, co-precipitation, mechanochemical [18] and microwave-hydrothermal assisted ionic liquids have been reported for the synthesis of metal ferrite [10][13][19]. Recently, Sharma et al. reported the synthesis of ZnFe2O4 nanoparticles by an urea combustion

Engineering of oriented carbon nanotubes in composite materials

• Razieh Beigmoradi,
• Abdolreza Samimi and
• Davod Mohebbi-Kalhori

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 415–435, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.41

• of CNTs. The mesoscopic size scale of scattering techniques has been used to reveal information about the alignment of CNTs in CNT fibers [131], the average diameter and orientation of CNTs grown on substrates [132][133], dispersion of CNTs in liquids [134], and the sorting of CNTs in CNT bundles

Review on optofluidic microreactors for artificial photosynthesis

• Xiaowen Huang,
• Jianchun Wang,
• Tenghao Li,
• Jianmei Wang,
• Min Xu,
• Weixing Yu,
• Abdel El Abed and
• Xuming Zhang

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 30–41, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.5

• materials with high energy efficiency while circumventing all the problems. Optofluidic technology has recently exploded with new concepts to enable fine control of light and liquids in microscale structures [39][40][41]. In fact, NPS is naturally an optofluidic system as it is carried out in microscale

L-Lysine-grafted graphene oxide as an effective adsorbent for the removal of methylene blue and metal ions

• Yan Yan,
• Jie Li,
• Fangbei Kong,
• Kuankuan Jia,
• Shiyu He and
• Baorong Wang

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 2680–2688, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.268

• collected at different time points (5–250 min), and then centrifuged at 12,000 rpm for 10 min. The liquids were analyzed for MB or Cu2+ concentration measurements. The obtained data in batch mode studies were used to calculate for each sample of Cu2+ or MB as follows: where qe is the equilibrium adsorption

The role of ligands in coinage-metal nanoparticles for electronics

• Ioannis Kanelidis and
• Tobias Kraus

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 2625–2639, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.263

• by gold nanoparticles to create interconnected gold-nanoparticle assemblies with a homogeneous coverage and a film conductivity of 4.2 × 10−3 S/cm [118]. Cross-linking works for particles that are not prepared in liquids, too. A discontinuous film of gold was evaporated onto a mica substrate and

Interface conditions of roughness-induced superoleophilic and superoleophobic surfaces immersed in hexadecane and ethylene glycol

• Yifan Li,
• Yunlu Pan and
• Xuezeng Zhao

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 2504–2514, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.250

• modification for the calculation of effective slip length is presented. Preparation of surfaces and liquids For the preparation of the superoleophilic surface, multilayered composite surfaces were synthesized [29]. Soda-lime glass (CAT. NO. 7101, SAIL BRAND, China) with 1.0 mm thickness was used as substrates

• dried in air and left for 10 h. There were ten groups of samples: “a1” to “a5” with superoleophilic surfaces and “b1” to “b5” with superoleophobic surfaces. The concentration of the SiO2 suspension increased from a1 to a5 and b1 to b5, respectively. The properties of the liquids used in the experiment

• of ethylene glycol is larger than that of hexadecane as the results are related to the viscosity of the liquids given in Table 2. Slip length: The slip length is obtained from the hydrophobic forces according to Equation 1. Figure 7a shows the measured slip length as a function of the RMS roughness

Refractive index sensing and surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy using silver–gold layered bimetallic plasmonic crystals

• Somi Kang,
• Sean E. Lehman,
• Matthew V. Schulmerich,
• An-Phong Le,
• Tae-woo Lee,
• Stephen K. Gray,
• Rohit Bhargava and
• Ralph G. Nuzzo

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 2492–2503, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.249

• acquired experimentally because the mounted PDMS flow cell is not considered in the calculation. To allow solution flow and direct contact with liquids during measurements, a closed sampling cell is required and, in such cases, presents a glass–solution interface through which the incident radiation passes

Synthesis of metal-fluoride nanoparticles supported on thermally reduced graphite oxide

• Alexa Schmitz,
• Kai Schütte,
• Vesko Ilievski,
• Juri Barthel,
• Laura Burk,
• Rolf Mülhaupt,
• Junpei Yue,
• Bernd Smarsly and
• Christoph Janiak

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 2474–2483, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.247

• 50 mA/g, including a significant interfacial charge storage contribution. The obtained nanomaterials show a good rate capacity as well (220 mAh/g and 130 mAh/g) at a current density of 200 and 500 mA/g, respectively. Keywords: ionic liquids; material synthesis; metal-fluoride nanoparticles

• nanocomposite materials in ionic liquids (ILs) to yield selectively phase-pure metal-fluoride nanoparticles (MFx-NPs) supported on the TRGO as stable colloids (Scheme 1). The used TRGO starting materials differed in the temperatures at which they were reduced (300, 400 or 750 °C) and in the presence of sulfur