updated 2.3.09



current research

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ISIS (the Institute of Surface and Interface Science) is one of 16 Organized Research Units (ORUs) on the University of California, Irvine (UCI) campus. Through collaborative projects it brings together faculty and researchers in  multiple departments.







january, 2008



                     

Interfacial Velocity-Dependent Plasmon Damping in Colloidal Metallic Nanoparticles
On the cover of the Journal of Physical Chemistry C, Vol. 111, Apkarian-Corn groups, in collaboration with Newport Corporation report that “the interfacial velocity-induced electrophoretic potential leads to plasmon damping in colloidal nanoparticles”. and
[ Link ]





                     

In one of the most-accessed papers published in Nano Letters, Ken Shea
and his graduate student Mariya Khiterer report a general method for the synthesis of uniform functional hybrid nanoparticles. Spherical bridged polysilsesquioxane nanoparticles are prepared utilizing microemulsion technology. The electrochemically active charged nanoparticles are being utilized in solid state electrochromic devices and as carriers for polyanions such as DNA. Nano Letters, 2007, 7, 2684-2687           [ Link ]




august, 2007




                     

Novel Cyclophane Catalyst for Valuable Materials

A “Holy Grail” in olefin polymerization catalysis field is to discover transition metal catalysts that can efficiently copolymerize polar olefins. In a Communication to J. Amer. Chem. Soc. that is currently in press, Professor Guan and his graduate student Chris Popeney, and former postdoctoral fellow Drexel Camacho, have reported a cyclophane-based Pd(II) complex that is highly efficient in incorporating polar olefins like acrylates. Furthermore, low temperature NMR studies have revealed a unique mechanistic origin for the increased efficiency for polar olefin incorporation.  
[ Link ]

Journal of the American Chem. Soc. | http://pubs.acs.org/journals/jacsat/index.html

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ISIS (the Institute of Surface and Interface Science) is one of 16 Organized Research Units (ORUs) on the University of California, Irvine (UCI) campus. Through collaborative projects it brings together faculty and researchers in  multiple departments.
fax: (949) 824-8125



may, 2007



                     

May 9th, 2007, VOL 2, Nature Nanotechnology "News&Views" - Nanofuidic Diode: Will Fluidic electronics take off?

With applications ranging from molecular detection to the control of chemical reactions, synthetic nanochannels and nanopores are the focus of growing scientific interest.  Now, two groups of researchers have shown that nanochannels filled with an electrolyte behave like the electrical diodes that regulate the direction of current in power supplies and surge protectors.

Writing in Nano Letters, Ivan Vlassiouk and Zuzanna Siwy of the University of California, Irvine, and Arun Majumdar and co-workers at the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Tokyo and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory report that when a positive voltage is applied to a nanofluidic diode, the ion current is several hundred times larger than with the corresponding negative voltage.
[ Link ]

nature nanotechnology | VOL 2 | MAY 2007 | www.nature.com/naturenanotechnology

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ISIS (the Institute of Surface and Interface Science) is one of 16 Organized Research Units (ORUs) on the University of California, Irvine (UCI) campus. Through collaborative projects it brings together faculty and researchers in  multiple departments.
fax: (949) 824-8125


january, 2007


                     
What is the smallest possible circuit that could ever be made?   Researchers at UCI have made a circuit out of a single molecule using a technique so versatile that the molecule can be almost anything -- a protein, an antibody or a virus.  The new technique, described in the Jan. 5 issue of Science, merges biochemistry with nanoscale electronics to control chemical reactions one bond at a time and detect chemical bonding with single-molecule precision. The remarkable sensitivity provides a new research tool for science at the nanoscale -- for studying complex biomolecules and building novel electronics.

This step forward for nanotechnology required close collaboration among physics, chemistry and molecular biology. The research team is led by Philip Collins, assistant professor of physics and astronomy, and Gregory Weiss, associate professor of chemistry.
[ Link ]

................................................................................................................................................................................
ISIS (the Institute of Surface and Interface Science) is one of 16 Organized Research Units (ORUs) on the University of California, Irvine (UCI) campus. Through collaborative projects it brings together faculty and researchers in  multiple departments.
fax: (949) 824-8125

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december, 2006



                     
In a recent communication in JACS, R. B. Gerber and coworkers L. Sheng and A. Cohen have predicted by electronic structure calculations the existence of the chemically bonded molecules H-Ar-C≡ C-C≡ C-H and H-Ar-C≡ C-C≡ C-C≡ C-H. These are the first predictions of chemically bound compounds made of argon and hydrocarbons. So far, H-Ar-F is the only experimentally known covalently bound compound of argon. The predicted H-Ar-C6-H is expected to be more stable than H-Ar-F.      [ Link ]

................................................................................................................................................................................
ISIS (the Institute of Surface and Interface Science) is one of 16 Organized Research Units (ORUs) on the University of California, Irvine (UCI) campus. Through collaborative projects it brings together faculty and researchers in  multiple departments.
fax: (949) 824-8125



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november, 2006


                     
Professors Doug Tobias and Barbara Finlayson-Pitts along with AirUCI international collaborator, Professor Pavel Jungwirth of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, edited a special issue of Chemical Reviews on the "Structure and Chemistry of Aqueous Interfaces." In this issue, Jungwirth and Tobias review their theoretical development and experimental validation of a new view of ion solvation at the air-water interface and its implications for the chemistry of aqueous particles in the atmosphere.
[ Link ]

................................................................................................................................................................................
ISIS (the Institute of Surface and Interface Science) is one of 16 Organized Research Units (ORUs) on the University of California, Irvine (UCI) campus. Through collaborative projects it brings together faculty and researchers in  multiple departments.
fax: (949) 824-8125





june, 2006


                     
Cover illustration by Robert Corn.   Surface plasmon resonance imaging (SPRI) is an
extremely versatile method for detecting the adsorption of DNA, RNA,  and proteins onto biopolymer microarrays. The array image shown on the cover arises from the SPRI response to the hybridization adsorption of a 16 base DNA oligonucleotide onto a 64 element DNA  microarray created on a gold thin film surface. Each array element is 500 by 500 microns; half of the array elements are perfectly complementary to the 16mer. Our
recent work has focused on achieving greate specificity and sensitivity from the SPRI measurements by coupling the surface bioaffinity process to an enzymatic transformation such as ligation or polymerase extension.


................................................................................................................................................................................
ISIS (the Institute of Surface and Interface Science) is one of 16 Organized Research Units (ORUs) on the University of California, Irvine (UCI) campus. Through collaborative projects it brings together faculty and researchers in  multiple departments.
fax: (949) 824-8125




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