Tag Archives: Toshiaki Enoki

Should October 2013 be called ‘the month of graphene’?

Since the Oct. 10-11, 2013 Graphene Flagship (1B Euros investment) launch, mentioned in my preview Oct. 7, 2013 posting, there’ve been a flurry of graphene-themed news items both on this blog and elsewhere and I’ve decided to offer a brief roundup what I’ve found elsewhere.

Dexter Johnson offers a commentary in the pithily titled, Europe Invests €1 Billion to Become “Graphene Valley,” an Oct. 15, 2013 posting on his Nanoclast blog (on the IEEE [Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers] website) Note: Links have been removed,

The initiative has been dubbed “The Graphene Flagship,” and apparently it is the first in a number of €1 billion, 10-year plans the EC is planning to launch. The graphene version will bring together 76 academic institutions and industrial groups from 17 European countries, with an initial 30-month-budget of €54M ($73 million).

Graphene research is still struggling to find any kind of applications that will really take hold, and many don’t expect it will have a commercial impact until 2020. What’s more, manufacturing methods are still undeveloped. So it would appear that a 10-year plan is aimed at the academic institutions that form the backbone of this initiative rather than commercial enterprises.

Just from a political standpoint the choice of Chalmers University in Sweden as the base of operations for the Graphene Flagship is an intriguing choice. …

I have to agree with Dexter that choosing Chalmers University over the University of Manchester where graphene was first isolated is unexpected. As a companion piece to reading Dexter’s posting in its entirety and which features a video from the flagship launch, you might want to try this Oct. 15, 2013 article by Koen Mortelmans for Youris (h/t Oct. 15, 2013 news item on Nanowerk),

Andre Konstantin Geim is the only person who ever received both a Nobel and an Ig Nobel. He was born in 1958 in Russia, and is a Dutch-British physicist with German, Polish, Jewish and Ukrainian roots. “Having lived and worked in several European countries, I consider myself European. I don’t believe that any further taxonomy is necessary,” he says. He is now a physics professor at the University of Manchester. …

He shared the Noble [Nobel] Prize in 2010 with Konstantin Novoselov for their work on graphene. It was following on their isolation of microscope visible grapheme flakes that the worldwide research towards practical applications of graphene took off.  “We did not invent graphene,” Geim says, “we only saw what was laid up for five hundred year under our noses.”

Geim and Novoselov are often thought to have succeeded in separating graphene from graphite by peeling it off with ordinary duct tape until there only remained a layer. Graphene could then be observed with a microscope, because of the partial transparency of the material. That is, after dissolving the duct tape material in acetone, of course. That is also the story Geim himself likes to tell.

However, he did not use – as the urban myth goes – graphite from a common pencil. Instead, he used a carbon sample of extreme purity, specially imported. He also used ultrasound techniques. But, probably the urban legend will survive, as did Archimedes’ bath and Newtons apple. “It is nice to keep some of the magic,” is the expression Geim often uses when he does not want a nice story to be drowned in hard facts or when he wants to remain discrete about still incomplete, but promising research results.

Mortelmans’ article fills in some gaps for those not familiar with the graphene ‘origins’ story while Tim Harper’s July 22, 2012 posting on Cientifica’s (an emerging technologies consultancy where Harper is the CEO and founder) TNT blog offers an insight into Geim’s perspective on the race to commercialize graphene with a paraphrased quote for the title of Harper’s posting, “It’s a bit silly for society to throw a little bit of money at (graphene) and expect it to change the world.” (Note: Within this context, mention is made of the company’s graphene opportunities report.)

With all this excitement about graphene (and carbon generally), the magazine titled Carbon has just published a suggested nomenclature for 2D carbon forms such as graphene, graphane, etc., according to an Oct. 16, 2013 news item on Nanowerk (Note: A link has been removed),

There has been an intense research interest in all two-dimensional (2D) forms of carbon since Geim and Novoselov’s discovery of graphene in 2004. But as the number of such publications rise, so does the level of inconsistency in naming the material of interest. The isolated, single-atom-thick sheet universally referred to as “graphene” may have a clear definition, but when referring to related 2D sheet-like or flake-like carbon forms, many authors have simply defined their own terms to describe their product.

This has led to confusion within the literature, where terms are multiply-defined, or incorrectly used. The Editorial Board of Carbon has therefore published the first recommended nomenclature for 2D carbon forms (“All in the graphene family – A recommended nomenclature for two-dimensional carbon materials”).

This proposed nomenclature comes in the form of an editorial, from Carbon (Volume 65, December 2013, Pages 1–6),

All in the graphene family – A recommended nomenclature for two-dimensional carbon materials

  • Alberto Bianco
    CNRS, Institut de Biologie Moléculaire et Cellulaire, Immunopathologie et Chimie Thérapeutique, Strasbourg, France
  • Hui-Ming Cheng
    Shenyang National Laboratory for Materials Science, Institute of Metal Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 72 Wenhua Road, Shenyang 110016, China
  • Toshiaki Enoki
    Department of Chemistry, Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan
  • Yury Gogotsi
    Materials Science and Engineering Department, A.J. Drexel Nanotechnology Institute, Drexel University, 3141 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA
  • Robert H. Hurt
    Institute for Molecular and Nanoscale Innovation, School of Engineering, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912, USA
  • Nikhil Koratkar
    Department of Mechanical, Aerospace and Nuclear Engineering, The Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 110 8th Street, Troy, NY 12180, USA
  • Takashi Kyotani
    Institute of Multidisciplinary Research for Advanced Materials, Tohoku University, 2-1-1 Katahira, Aoba-ku, Sendai 980-8577, Japan
  • Marc Monthioux
    Centre d’Elaboration des Matériaux et d’Etudes Structurales (CEMES), UPR-8011 CNRS, Université de Toulouse, 29 Rue Jeanne Marvig, F-31055 Toulouse, France
  • Chong Rae Park
    Carbon Nanomaterials Design Laboratory, Global Research Laboratory, Research Institute of Advanced Materials, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Seoul National University, Seoul 151-744, Republic of Korea
  • Juan M.D. Tascon
    Instituto Nacional del Carbón, INCAR-CSIC, Apartado 73, 33080 Oviedo, Spain
  • Jin Zhang
    Center for Nanochemistry, College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China

This editorial is behind a paywall.

Launching new open access (!) journal: Nanomaterials and Nanotechnology

I just got an email from someone at InTech about a new journal they are launching. There’s a call for papers for the first issue of Nanomaterials and Nanotechnology. The deadline is May 10, 2011 and the first issue will go live in June. From the email notice I received March 25, 2011,

Since all the journal’s content will be available online for free full-text download, will be fully indexed and promoted using social networks and other media, we hope that it will provide an outlet for researchers to publish their findings rapidly and at no cost to a wide global audience.

Here’s more about the journal, Nanomaterials and Nanotechnology, (drat! my linking capability disappeared again: http://www.intechweb.org/about-nanotechnology-journal.html),

Nanomaterials and Nanotechnology publishes articles that focus on, but are not limited to, the following areas:

* Synthesis of nanosized materials

* Bottom-up, top-down, and directed-assembly methods for the organization of nanostructures

* Modeling and simulation of synthesis processes

* Nanofabrication and processing of nanoscale materials and devices

* Novel growth and fabrication techniques for nanostructures

* Characterization of size-dependent properties

* Nano-characterization techniques

* Properties of nanoscale materials

* Structure analysis at atomic, molecular, and nanometric range

* Realization and application of novel nanostructures and nanodevices

* Devices and technologies based on the size-dependent electronic, optical, and magnetic properties of nanomaterials

* Nanostructured materials and nanocomposites for energy conversion applications

* Nanophotonics and nanoplasmonics materials and devices

* Nanosystems for biological, medical, chemical, catalytic, energy and environmental applications

* Nanodevices for electronic, photonic, magnetic, imaging, diagnostic and sensor applications

* Nanobiotechnology and nanomedicine

Readership

The journal is addressed to a cross-disciplinary readership including scientists, researchers and professionals in both academia and industry with an interest in nanoscience and nanotechnology. The scope comprises (but is not limited to) the fundamental aspects and applications of nanoscience and nanotechnology in the areas of physics, chemistry, materials science and engineering, biology, energy/environment, and electronics.

Type of contributions

The journal publishes a complete selection of original articles, selected as regular papers, review articles, feature articles and short communications.

Here are some important points for both readers and contributors (from the email notice),

Points of uniqueness:

1) FREE FOR ALL – Open Access and no publishing fees

2) Fast review process and online publication – One at a time model

3) International Editorial Board:

Editor-in-Chief: Paola Prete

Editorial Board: C. N. R. Rao*, Toshiaki Enoki, Stephen O’Brien, Wolfgang Richter, Federico Rosei, Jonathan E. Spanier, Leander Tapfer

*C. N. R. Rao is Linus Pauling Research Professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research and Honorary Professor at the Indian Institute of Science (both at Bangalore). His research interests are in the chemistry of materials. He has authored nearly 1000 research papers and edited or written 30 books in materials chemistry. A member of several academies including the Royal Society and the US National Academy of Sciences, he is a recipient of the Einstein Gold Medal of UNESCO, the Hughes Medal of the Royal Society, and the Somiya Award of the International Union of Materials Research Societies (IUMRS). In 2005, he received the Dan David Prize for materials research from Israel and the first India Science Prize.

I went to find out more about the editorial board and found this list of names and affiliations (from http://www.intechweb.org/nn-editorial-board.html),

Editorial Board

C. N. R. Rao Fellow Royal Society, National Research Professor, Linus Pauling Research Professor and President of Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research Bangalore, India

Toshiaki Enoki Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan

Stephen O’Brien The City College of New York, USA

Wolfgang Richter University of Rome Tor Vergata, Italy and Technischen Universität Berlin, Germany

Federico Rosei Université du Québec, Varennes, Canada [emphasis mine]

Jonathan E. Spanier Drexel University, Philadelphia, USA

Leander Tapfer Technical Unit of Materials Technologies Brindisi, ENEA, Italy

I’ve emphasized Federico Rosei’s name as he and his work have been featured here in a few postings: Aug. 11, 2008 (http://www.frogheart.ca/?p=50); June 15, 2010 (http://www.frogheart.ca/?p=1356); and November 17, 2010 (http://www.frogheart.ca/?p=2433).

Interestingly and finally, the journal’s corporate offices are in Croatia. That’s one of the things I find so interesting about nanotechnology; it’s a very international affair.