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Supported metal nanoparticle (NP) catalysts are vital for the sustainable production of chemicals, but their design and implementation are limited by the ability to identify and characterize their structures and atomic sites that are…
Hypotheses: Additives are commonly used to tune macromolecular conformational transitions. Among additives, trehalose is an excellent bioprotectant and among responsive polymers, PNIPAM is the most studied material. Nevertheless, their…
Poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAM) is a synthetic polymer that is widely studied for its thermoresponsive character. However, recent works also reported evidence of a low temperature (protein-like) dynamical transition around 225 K in…
Nanopores are both a tool to study single-molecule biophysics and nanoscale ion transport, but also a promising material for desalination or osmotic power generation. Understanding the physics underlying ion transport through nano-sized…
Many ligands commonly used to prepare nanoparticle catalysts with precise nanoscale features contain nitrogen (e.g., oleylamine); here, we found that the use of nitrogen-containing ligands during the synthesis of metal oxide nanoparticle…
Polymers are usually considered as thermal insulators and their applications are limited by their low thermal conductivity. However, recent studies showed that certain polymers have surprisingly high thermal conductivity, some of which are…
We describe a general theory for surface-catalyzed bimolecular reactions in responsive nanoreactors, catalytically active nanoparticles coated by a stimuli-responsive 'gating' shell, whose permeability controls the activity of the process.…
Light-driven plasmonic enhancement of chemical reactions on metal catalysts is a promising strategy to achieve highly selective and efficient chemical transformations. The study of plasmonic catalyst materials has traditionally focused on…
Nanoporosity in silicon results in an interface-dominated mechanics, fluidics and photonics that are often superior to the ones of the bulk material. However, their active control, e.g. as a response to electronic stimuli, is challenging…
In order to make a densely packed assembly of undoped semiconductor nanocrystals conductive, it is usually gated by a room temperature ionic liquid. The ionic liquid enters the pores of the super-crystal assembly under the influence of an…
The key component of nanoplasmonics is metals. For a long time, gold and silver have been the metals of choice for constructing plasmonic nanodevices because of their excellent optical properties. However, these metals possess a common…
Selective spatial control of chemical reactions at the level of individual nanostructures remains a significant challenge. We introduce a light-activated system that combines plasmonic gold nanorods with a poly(N-isopropylacrylamide)…
Polymersomes, vesicles self-assembled from amphiphilic polymers, are promising nanocarriers for the targeted intracellular delivery of therapeutics. Integrating inorganic light-absorbing materials with plasmonic properties, such as gold,…
Bimetallic catalysts provide new routes toward sustainable ammonia synthesis, but the structural dynamics controlling their performance under real-world conditions remain poorly understood. Here, we combine in situ gas-cell and multimodal…
Polymers are increasingly used in the transport sector due to their many advantages; lightness, corrosion resistance, ease to process... However, most of them have limited mechanical properties. To improve these latter, one of the solutions…
Bimetallic nanoalloys such as nanoparticles and nanowires are attracting significant attention due to their vast potential applications such as in catalysis and nanoelectronics. Notably, Pd-Pt nanoparticles/nanowires are being widely…
The use of biomaterials - with techniques such as DNA-directed assembly or bio-directed synthesis - can surpass top-down fabrication techniques in creating plasmonic superstructures, in terms of spatial resolution, range of functionality…
Dielectrophoresis (DEP), the motion of polarizable particles in non-uniform electric fields, has become an important tool for the transport, separation, and characterization of microparticles in biomedical and nanoelectronics research. In…
Metals are highly opaque, yet we show that densely packed arrays of metallic nanoparticles can be more transparent to infrared radiation than dielectrics such as germanium, even for arrays that are over 75% metal by volume. Despite strong…
We report temperature-responsive soft composites of semiflexible biopolymer networks (fibrin) containing dispersed microgel colloidal particles of poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (pNIPAM) that undergo a thermodynamically driven de-swelling…