Off The Road

Everybody learn how to click

2007-06-06T13:40:00.000+08:00

Till February this year, 'Click Chemistry' was still able to appear in the Top Topic, of the Essential Science Indicators. It is 6 years after the phrase was used in the pioneer review on ACIE (2001, 40, 2004-2021. DOI: 10.1002/1521-3773(20010601)40:11<2004::AID-ANIE2004>3.0.CO;2-5), so I thought the time has gone when you can easily put your communication on Adv Mater or ACIE only by tagging it with the word 'click'; the field has become just as ordinary as what any average journal may oversee. Even Sigma-Aldrich has caught up to host a specific page for its click chemicals. But it is still heated in 2007, and there is recently a tutorial review on Chem Soc Rev (DOI: 10.1039/b613014n). Someone did some lbl polyelectrolyte capsules, something everyone should know for quite a while and Langmuir would probably refuse to accept, and he published it on Nano Lett (DOI: 10.1021/nl070698f), only because he clicked between the layers a bit.

So everybody is to learn something about how to click your reaction into an ACIE VIP paper or something like that.

ACS Feed Goes Wrong

2007-05-31T19:14:00.000+08:00

ACS's feed burner goes wrong every now and then. It will feed you a whole pile of papers from a journal you never subscribe in a the name of one of your subscription, for example a pile of Bioconjugate Chem. papers in your Macromolecules subscription. This time as the snapshot shows, it feed me with JACS in my Nano Lett. folder, both of which I have subscripted.

Cell: Ouch! Nanowires: Oops!

2007-05-26T19:27:00.000+08:00

Scientists have successfully had some cells lying on a nail bed consist of silicon nanowires. The silicon nails penetrates the cells but does not stop them from living, differentiating and functioning (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2007. DOI: 10.1021/ja071456k).

Silicon nanowires are prepared by conventional methods and used without further modification except necessary sterilization. Mouse embryonic stem (mES) cells were directly cultivated on the nanowire substrate. Scary SEM images show that the cell bodies are penetrated by several nanowires per cell, but green fluorescent protein (GFP) tests show that the cells are still alive. If the substrate is coated with tissue culturing materials, the mES cells can differentiate into cardiac myocytes and start beating! By penetrating through the cell body, the nanowires can even deliver DNA carriers (PEI) into the cell. This research tells us that dangerous stuff in macroscale can be friendly in nanoscale.

Update: C&EN just released an account of this research: Cells On A Bed Of Nails.

Chinese graduate students

2007-05-22T23:32:00.000+08:00

This is a poll for the post on my blog in Nature Network.

Which deficiency of Chinese graduate students do you hate most?
Poor spoken English
No sense of lab safety
Poor lab skills and instrumental operation
Lazy
Weak basic knowledge
Dishonest
Other...

The doi.org delay

2007-05-22T21:50:00.000+08:00

Sometimes new papers on journals from John Wiley & Son failed to link with doi.org in time. And when you click a DOI url you may see:

But if you search for this DOI in Wiley Interscience website you can get the paper:

Breath figure

2007-05-15T23:03:00.000+08:00

Personally I don't like breath figure (J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys. 1990, 23, 1265-1266. doi: 10.1088/0022-3727/23/9/021) approach because it has nothing to do with self-assembly, I mean at molecular scale, therefore it is old-fashioned. Previous papers of breath figure approach appear only on journals like Macromolecules or Langmuir. But recently I came across one on ACIE (2007. DOI: 10.1002/anie.200604889); someone yield rings of gold nanorods via breath figure effect. It is significant because it is the first achievement of ring-like assembly of nano object, 'in stark contrast, self-assembly of nano-building blocks into mesoscale structures with long range order has been a challenge since people were tired of simply synthesis of these nano objects. Fortunately the author did not call their work as self-assembly 'spontanous' assembly instead) because it is not a self-assembly, but a breath-figure-aided assembly. True self-assembly of gold nanorods into rings is still unachieved. And the authors only report the morphology they obtained; no answers to whether some spectial effects are shown due to the ring-like assembly of nanorods, e.g. surface enhanced raman sepectra where gold nanorods are known to be very sensitive.

Annoucement (continued)

2007-05-15T18:16:00.000+08:00

... and following the old posts of this blog I will write really random nonsense about any aspects of chemistry which are not suitable to post on the great nature.com website. Note the change of the title and subtitle, and the feed address has been burnt.

Annoucement

2007-05-07T14:28:00.000+08:00

I have moved my blog to Nature Network (feed), and will not update here anymore, though new comments and the archive posts still work. Please change your bookmark and rss subscription (if any). Thank you!

Morality vs Legality, Loud Bloggers, etc.

2007-04-27T15:32:00.000+08:00

Recently Shelley Batt, a blogger of one of the Scienceblogs, Retrospectacle, encountered a legal trouble due to misuse of table and figure of a copyright paper on her post. After reading other blogs that discussed this event I am surprised that so many westerners support Shelley so strongly. Living in a country which is often severely blamed for its deficiencies in legal regime of patent and copyright (a recent example), I am told many times that illegal utilization of patent material will never be decriminalized by the morality of the deed. And when I began writing science stories in my blog, I asked Science writer David Bradley, who is fairly conversant with the rules and regulations pertaining to image use having worked on both sides of the fence, as publisher and freelance journalist.His reply is very instructive:

Basically, unless it states somewhere that you can use an image without limitations, you must assume that the publisher and/or the authors reserve all rights, this means you usually cannot re-publish an image without express permission of the copyright holder, regardless of the benefits wider dissemination of the image and its associated context might bring. This also extends to 'hotlinking' images from other people's websites, which is poor netiquette in the first place. In most cases, copyright holders are only too pleased to receive permissioon requests and to grant re-use rights so long as proper credit is given. There are exceptions: images produced by the US government or its employees are copyright free, other public domain images, and images with a creative commons or other openaccess or copyleft statement. But, don't take my word for it, you need to check each specific image and if in doubt, request permission for re-use, whether you're a blogger, journalist or publisher.

... especially the reply to one of my question:

(Andrew: ... I used to directly crop the figures in the published papers and use in my blog for description, following the similar ways of other blogs...) Lots of other sites do it, doesn't make it legal. Any images I use in articles are done with permission of the author and copyright holder.
All that said. Don't sweat it, I doubt anyone will come crashing down on you, they may ask you to remove an image from your site, but they would be wasting their time and money trying to sue, wouldn't they?

Always be warned, that the blogosphere is always a minor group of people, (young) grassroots in many fields. They base their attitudes more on morality and tend to support the weak, the most natural reactions of human. Although voices of the bloggers are augmenting, they should not be regarded as average or general views. Take Shelley's issue for example, if copyright holders, publishers, or employees of a patent department in the government hold blogs, their views may be totally different. There are still part of the population (seniors, officials, etc.) who, although well benefit from Internet information, seldom express their views on blogs or other kind of personal websites. I'm disappointed with the media nowadays which add or even highlight the reaction of bloggers after every report of any event, and refer them to more generally 'people online' or 'view from the Internet', omitting the fact that this is only minor opinions.

Personally I don't wish the voice of bloggers to become too loud for official institutions to ignore. If one day an organization held a press conference to reply to the severe reaction of bloggers, this should also be time when the they lost the freedom of blogging. We can talk freely only because we are all anonymous online (although you disclose your nation, institute, fields of interest, and even contact, etc.) and seldom break the law. We can talk about everything online including the offline events. But if a blogger is involved offline, he/she lost the anonymity immediately. There are also bloggers that disclose his real identity; they write more carefully and formally, and are responsible for the content. So please decide which way you like before blogging. If you just want to let out anything in your mind but don't want it to be seriously examined, be careful not to break some offline regulations, or attack offline persons too explicitly, or get into any other situations that may force you to identify yourself to take some responsibility. That is, keep everything online. If, alternatively, you would like your blog to be more involved in the community, disclose your offline identity, or at least write responsibly and be ready for any social response.

Update to 'Developing Government Fears Disclosure?'

2007-04-27T00:52:00.000+08:00

Please refer to my earlier post first: 'Developing Government Fears Disclosure?'.

Yesterday (24 April) the Chinese government released the 'Regulations on Government Information Openness', signed by Premier Wen Jiabao and praised by government officials as a landmark step to increase transparency in key issues in the public interest.
-- New rules ensure government transparency in China, SciDev.net

Here I just add some imperfect aspects of this regulation:

No.8 of the regualtion: Government information is not allow to disclose if this would harm the national or public safety. This means to prevent leakage of top secrets of the country, but may also provide an excuse for government to conceal general information.
Public right of knowing is explicitly protected, while journalist's right of interview is vaguely defined. Media's oversight on government is thus not enhanced.
Official/formal and informal ways of disclosing govenment information are not distinguished. Such informal methods as letures, press conference, website, or even SMS messages may be legally enough for a local government to be called 'informatively transparent'.

Besides these imperfections in the regulation itself, the current social environment in China, that is, public unawareness of their right of knowing and the convention of covert operation among government functionaries, also renders the implementation of this regulation a challenging task to accomplish.

Lab Clock DIY

2007-04-26T23:22:00.000+08:00

04-26-2007 Clock

There is no any clock in my lab, so I DIY one, using SCM (AT87C51) fused with a few lines of codes. I want to thank Backfire (zealous fan of Mao Zedong, USSR and Nazi lover, another orthodox Marxist, military and weapon expert, badminton athlete, physicist, part-time AFM assistant of the institute. Fields of interest: photovoltaic material and solar cell, organic/polymeric light-emitting diode, nano-architecture and self-assembled monolayer) for guiding me all the way during the fabrication of this clock. He told me to read textbooks of digital logic circuits, assembly language, and manual of the MCS-51 series SCM (I had already known something about analogue circuits and Visual Basic/C programming), and guided me during practically assembling the devices in order and debugging the system.

Now let's have a look at the clock (photos are available in my Picasaweb album. Click the album cover on top left). Besides the main SCM, I use a buffer (74LS244P) and a series of triodes to drive the segment and digit select lines, respectively, of the 7-segment LED arrays. Two INT inputs (buttons) are employed responsible for date/time display switching and date/time setting functions. Wires on the backside of the circuits board and their junctions are immobilzed by hot melt adhesive.

As a chemist I do the chemical part of job by myself of course. Two rubber stoppers is attached to a poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) board synthesized via radical polymerization initiated with benzoyl peroxide (BPO) and molded into a plain board of the same size as the circuit board (notice there is no bubble in this board which is generally quite hard to achieve in terms of bulk polymerization). Then the PMMA board is attached to the backside of the circuit board as a back cover, the two lateral walls of the clock made of as-received foam of ethylene vinyl acetate copolymer (EVA). The inside of the PMMA board is covered with a paper displaying the circuit diagram of the clock system. Ethyl-2-cyanoacrylate (ECA) based adhesive is empolyed wherever needed.

The system need a DC supply of about 4.5-6V to work. To meet this condition I use a AC/DC adapter which is the schoolwork of a friend of Backfire. The clock runs well, with less than 1s error per day compared with my computer clock. Moreover, the LEDs make it visible in dark ambiance, a very useful feature sometimes.

Developing Government Fears Disclosure?

2007-04-26T00:28:00.000+08:00

Exploring SciDev.net sometimes I can find some consolation, knowing that the inequality and lack of civil freedom we currently suffered is not exclusive in my country:

In a session at the World Conference of Science Journalists in Melbourne, Australia, delegates were told that governments are interfering with science reporting in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
-- Government interference 'impeding science reporting', SciDev.net

This report is actaully an interview with a attendant from Sri Lanka, who further explain that the most interfered scientific reporting is those of public-funded research. In fact public-funded anything is likely to suffer censorship in developing countries, the 'developing' governments generally fearing that the disclosure of their failure may dilute, if not dissolve, their power. So they have to conceal every major or minor blunder by manipulating media, at least the 'official' ones.

However, things have become better in the past few years in China, especially after the crisis of SARS in 2003. Chinese government has realized that safety of their power can be strengthened rather than weakened by honestly disclosing significant information to the public. Confidence from the public is the real power. People may forgive a honest government for its error, but can hardly stay calm if they realize they have been cheated. Public confidence is also crucial in critical periods when the government has to calm the crowd and direct them in order. Official guide malfunctions when the government lost the trust by its people, leading to severe disorder which is what the government really fears.

All governments wish to hold their power as long as possible, while cheating is by no means a long-term strategy because to save a lie you always have to create a bigger one. Honesty is the real wiseness.

Changes in Morphology and Bulk

2007-04-25T23:13:00.000+08:00

The 'morphology' of this blog has changed, and the blogger changed back to me, Andrew Sun. Initially I started this blog only to strengthen my English but later as it appears this blog in effect established the identity of me on the Internet. I was shocked that a professor earlier offered me a PhD opportunity and mentioned my blog in his replying email. It seemed the content of the blog impressed him to some extent. After this event I started to consider this blog more seriously. I re-wrote the profile which now better describes me, and changed the style-sheet into a more active one. I also canceled some nonsense widgets such as Flikr badge, and the weather man picture, re-organized the subscription section, and added a 'Selected Posts' section where I pick some posts that worth reading.

Changes in the 'bulk' are also being observed. In the future, besides posts of paper inspiration, I wish to blog more on experimental issues. But I am not going to follow what some other chemical bloggers are doing - posting about the interesting, funny but not necessarily significant aspects of experiment (e.g. odd equipments, beautiful colors of the reagents or products, etc.). But I am not criticizing them; in fact I love these funny chemical nonsenses. I don't do so only because my English is not strong enough to maintain such a sense of humor. What I may fluently talk about is something like the 'Materials and Methods' or 'Experimental Section' in an article. Of course I don't simply write a draft of Experimental Section here; instead I concentrate the reason of the selected materials and methods, that is, the progress of designing an chemical experiment. This is a significant aspect of a chemist's life but one cannot learn from formal literature sources. So it is blog's turn to fill this gap.

The Chemspider Efforts

2007-04-25T21:45:00.000+08:00

Prelude:

Spinneret's host, Chemspider.com, got slated on the Peter Murray-Rust blog. One of the Chemspider team has already responded to some of PMR's comments.

I have to say (shamely) that I am generally mute on molecular-informatics-related issues. I am a poor chemist synthetically (or experimentally) speaking so I am not familiar with chemical structure database. It's already music to me that Chemical Abstracts provide molecular structure and reaction searching(!) and I actually don't use it much. Now I even seldom SEARCH for something; mostly I just RETRIEVE the reference cited in a given paper. When I have to search about something mostly it is an approach, a property, etc., not necessarily a substance. If I have to search a substance, it is most likely a polymer.

Polymer, yes, long chain of covalently linked repeating units - that's what I should interested in as a graduate student of the 'Polymer Chemstry and Physics' direction in a college of materials science & engineering. But up till now I don't know how to draw a polymer in any of the structure-drawing tools. And by polymer I mean all the repeating phenomena in chemistry, for example β-cyclodextrin with repeated glucose units cyclically linked by α-1,4-glucan bonds. Moreover, I don't know whether those molecular-informatics guys want to calculate the molecular weight from a given code of a molecule? Then how can they calculate the average molecular weight of a polymer denoted in the form of its repeating unit? What about copolymers, be they graft-, block-, gradient-, or random-one?

Another example of the tremendously variable chemical phenomena is supramolecular chemistry which reveals even more structures that are stable but consist of more than one molecules, the so-called supramolecules. They behave as the smallest unit that affects the chemical properties of a substance (this is the old definition of the term molecule in high school textbooks). So how to digitalize in a code system such supramoecular interactions as π-π stacking, H-bond, electrostatic force, van der Waals force, hydrophobic interaction, and metal ion coordination in a supramolecules?

Yes maybe now we are capable to describe all these digitally. But what I'm trying to say is, to develop a descriptive code system for chemical objects, one always relies on known knowledge and spends a long time, during which many new chemistry findings continue to emerge. How could such effort possibly meet the need of its prospective users, a group of chemists who are always going to find something newer to do?

Maybe I'm too pessimistic. Maybe it just worths a try. I very much appreciate people like Chemzoo and what they are trying to do. And I support them to go further. They are heroes. No one should blame them for low quality.

Why Chemists Blog?

2007-04-25T03:13:00.000+08:00

People blog for many reasons, but I'm asking specifically why chemists blog; for what chemical purpose. And this is not quite the same as asking why graduate students blog, considering there are so many chemistry blogs held by graduate students of chemistry, while these blogs reflect mainly their graduate lives and sometimes limited aspects of chemistry research (paper inspirations, experiment log, etc.).

Maybe this current situation of chemistry blogosphere lead to some negative conclusions about the web 2.0 effect on the 'online chemical reaction' between chemists. The latest post on Sciencebase Science Blog discloses an interview with a senior researcher, Steve Bachrach of Trinity University, who mentioned:

My personal hesitancy to adopt Web 2.0 technologies is that I don’t have the time to read random thoughts by random individuals. I barely have time to keep up with the old-school (i.e., traditional journals) literature in my field. The blogosphere just seemed to me to be filled with the rantings of people who have nothing better to do with their time. Peter Murray-Rust’s blog was the first to demonstrate to me that real chemistry content could be had, that interesting and novel ideas could be found and shared and discussed.

Before rushing to type my comment I did a google search on Peter Murray-Rust's blog. Forgive me but the only feature I can notice of this blog comparing with others is that it tends to interact more with other blogs and ideas thereof. And I suppose Prof. Bachrach find this blog interesting mostly because the blogger is also a senior research (by senior I mean not a student of any kind anymore) and he is blogging a kind of life that Prof. Bachrach is familiar with, in the same way the graduate students like reading The Chem Blog, Carbon-Based Curiosities, or the earlier shut-down Tenderbutton. Interestingly, 'the rantings of people who have nothing better to do with their time' sounds exactly like my advisor's criticism on me.

Therefore the difference here is only personal interest, while the general question still exist: in what way chemists can benefit from blogs for their research? Things seem to go equally well without web 2.0 networks. Certainly weblog as a new form of website does not necessarily mean much. What counts is its content. Traditional journal, or the old-school literature by Prof. Bachrach's word, seems already to provide almost all that a chemist needs for further research at any time (I also discuss what we can learn by only reading papers), while implicitly we need more to do so, something beyond the known facts and theories. Beautiful science is always the combination of careful, critical thinking, and such non-rational factors as wild fantasy, conjecture or intuition. But scientists only disclose the former, via old-school literature. My point is, blog provides the opportunity for scientists (or chemists in this discussion) to disclose the latter. At least we are not alone any more when it comes to creativity. Chemical bloggers may blog their own lives as they wish, be they graduate students or professors, but should also infuse into the objective narration some non-rational factors as much as possible. For example a post about a piece of paper should not end with only re-elucidation of the work but also your wildest fantasy based on the result of this work, or the implication of implication behind it, or at least the most personal, most subjective comment on it. If blog is regarded as 'random thoughts by random individuals', so just let it be.

Spreading Molecular Biology Techniques among Chemists

2007-04-25T02:22:00.000+08:00

Peptide and DNA sequences are showing their potential in supramolecular chemistry at an increasing frequency these months. I have blogged about a work of DNA block copolymer self-assembly, and mentioned the current practice of molecular biology can enable us more versatile control on the self-assembling properties of the molecule by carefully designing the nucleotide sequence. This is also true for amino-acid sequence of peptides. In fact these two classes of biomacromolecules have find many applications in nano-devices and novel material (recently a series of reviews on this topic appear on Nanotoday 2007, 2, 18-52). But the molecular biology protocols are hard to follow for synthesis chemists in the conventional organic chemistry labs, especially when the above mentioned controllability of the sequence is to pursue. Freedom in manipulating DNA and peptide sequences means plenty of hours for a full coverage on the 3-volume Molecular Cloning, which even a graduate student in this field may not afford. Or if he can, he seldom show interest in the non-biological concept and application of these macromolecules. To have more contribution to the DNA/peptide based supramolecular chemistry, essential molecular biology techniques need spreading among chemists.

Are you on a DNA-related project that is not biology-oriented? How do your lab cope with the biological parts in the experiment?

A Group of Chemical Cowboys

2007-04-18T00:41:00.000+08:00

In the latest C&EN story Moldable Metals the reporter described the researchers as 'a group of chemical cowboys'. That seems very creative to me. Can I also speak English like this - a group of chemical gentlemen/idiots/kids/... I remember not long ago on The Sceptical Chymist there was a post discussing phases for description of a group of chemists. But I don't take it seriously. Now I am considering applying this idea to later posts...for example:

A mole of chemical cowboys have successfully demonstrated the distinction between normal bulk materials and nano-assamblies - metal can be molded at 50°C.

By the way, is this moldable metal reversible? The news story didn't mention that.

English Education in China

2007-04-16T08:03:00.000+08:00

Catherine posted on The Sceptical Chymist a discussion non-English-speaking chemists. Though I have commented a few lines under it about the language problem I encounter during blogging, there is more to say when it comes to the English education I've seen and received in China.

I hear that Chinese students are said to be more proficient in English compared with other non-English-speaking people. I don't know if it is true or not, but I believe they must spend the most time on English. English classes starts from kindergarten, and many parents give English lessons to their babies once they can speak. Until the end of high-school study, all the grammar is taught. In almost every university, one cannot get his BS degree if he/she cannot pass the College English Test (CET) Band 4, and no opportunity of a good job after graduation if he/she cannot pass CET Band 6. Proficient oral and aural English increases the possibility of offers from big companies like P&G, GE, Dow, BP, etc.

In fact the level of CET Band 4/6 is quite low. The grammar and reading tests are okay but the listening comprehension and the composition are too simple, sometimes naive. There is no oral test in CET system. With this level, practically one can only read simple texts and write short messages, and be actually deaf and blind in English. To study abroad, it's far from enough and one still has to fight for TOEFL or IELTS, or maybe GRE for universities in US and Canada. Such tests as CET 4/6 have killed many lives, not because of its difficulty but the vital role it plays in one's career. 80% of the suicides committed in the campus is due to CET 4 failure (and another 20% is of course love). With a CET certification you can prove nothing because everyone has one; but without that you are sentenced to death in the job market because again everyone has one! And you probably also fail to get the BS degree because of this. And the irony is, remember, you can do almost nothing with CET 4/6-leveled English. And in China most jobs don't require any English ability.

English education has been one of the most controversy discussions for years in China. People are questioning the necessity of such a strong policy of English learning, while our mother language, Chinese, is witnessing its withering. Our children are spending too much of their time on a foreign language, and find it totally useless after they grow up. Youth, especially students, strongly oppose the English education they have been receiving by posting long angry articles on every forums. They argue that the Americans don't need to know any second language, so don't we (something nationalistic here). There is a nationwide appeal for a revolution towards a lighter while effective English education.

There are also supporters for English education. Their points are basically the platitude of China being a developing (or 'less developed' as the UN recommends) country and the globalization taking place today. These are quite true, but what role do languages play in globalization? If two persons from two different countries happen both to know French, there is nothing involving English here. But if any two persons from any two non-English-speaking countries meet each other, to increase the possibility that they can communicate, we can only wish they both know English. English is simply a choice of the common second language to meet the need of globalization, a choice that ease as many people as possible, that is, so that less people have to learn a second language instead of more.

However, from the post on The Sceptical Chymist, and the comments under it, I saw another trend: Native-English-Speaking friends are considering to learn a second language besides English. This information is definitely invaluable for the nationalistic youth in China who think 'the Americans don't learn second languages'. It very well shows the bilateral nature of communication. Language is only a necessary tool, be it a good or bad one.

We are the descendants of the workers of the Babel, and it seems that we are now building a new Tower of Babel with science, despite that our language was confused by God thereby preventing any such future efforts and stimulate conflicts among us. It is after ages of separation and war that we come to the opportunity of global peace and cooperation today. To show the wisdom of human against God, however, it is better to construct this Babel directly based on the confused languages, rather than a re-uniformed one again.

Imagination limited by technology?

2007-04-15T01:59:00.000+08:00

As to a way to cater human curiosity, I always consider science better than religion or theology. As human history developes, however, the role of science is somewhat reduced; today it can be easily considered as a career,among others such as engineer, lawer, or dentist. It is also the result of modernization that science becomes increasingly dependent on technology. Chemists cannot imagine working without NMR or mass spectroscopy, for instance.

And they seem able to imagine less. One cannot start a SAM project without convenient access of an ATM, nor can someone consider any possibility of nano-lithography without the suitable devices. At least in China, these devices are not always available,especially in an average university, like the one I'm in. We are too accustomed to develop our new ideas based on the current condition of our lab rather than the most concerning or urgent problems to solve in the academic circle. Research is more like just exploring as wide the application of the given machines as possible; one cannot enter a new field of study without the representing devices of that field. A new technology can open up a new and long-lasting study as well as a profound and foreseeing question.

It should not be forgotten that technologies are designed for and by scientific research. Take nanoscience for example. People need a top-down method of nano-fabrication so there are these nano-lithographies, and they seem so inevitable in labs only because we are currently interesting in nanoscience, which I suspect will continue for less than 5 years. At that time maybe another Nobel-Prize-Winning field, as well as the corresponding technology, will take the place of nanoscience, and all these nano-lithographies will be reduced to general industrial set-ups.

At least in China, many professors and research group leaders still believe in new technology and devices very much. These 'things' that can be saw an touched (as well as the number of papers published on journals with IF greater than, say, 3, something that can be counted) are essential for the routine examinations of the education department of the government. They answer where the money went to and what it produced, and if well answered, more money flows in, and more room in the lab for more new devices.

Researchers should first ask their questions, then design the method and device for the solution (by themselves as much as possible). It is also a good manner to practice DIY in lab - to let technology work for science.

What's the case in other countries?

Self-Assembled, Soft, and Smart

2007-04-08T23:53:00.000+08:00

The concept of so-called 'bottom-up' method has been parallel with its counterpart 'top-down' one for years. In term of controllability the latter is somewhat superior; we have already got the devices and theories needed to control the nano-patterns thus formed. But when it comes to self-assembly we can only utilize or combine a limited number of known procedures, and explain them with classic surface and interface thermodynamics, which are themselves most suitable for equilibrium state problems. This unfit and unprepared theoretical basis has hindered the development of the 'bottom-up' method in fabricating materials with unique functions.

This is only the situation within the circle of chemists, though, especially before P. G. de Gennes, laureate of the Nobel Prize in physics, 1991, put forward the term 'soft matter' as the title of his Nobel lecture. Soft matter includes everything that characterizes between solid and fluid, and that generally responses largely to small stimuli (where the word 'soft' comes from).

Among the members of soft matter we can find many interfacial phenomena and self-assembled structures: droplet, bubble, polymer solution, gel, etc. Polymer, in particular, is unique as a kind of material with its time-dependent mechanic properties, but classical in terms of theoretical model for the theory or physics of soft matter. Its chain-like repeating structure establishes a typical fractal model, based on which the mathematic description of colloidal assembly could be developed.

One of the pioneers in this field is T. A. Witten, who started to pay attention to the mathematical treatment to soft matter in early 1970s and was the founder of the model of diffusion-limited aggregation (the Witton's model, legendary paper Phys. Rev. Lett. 1981, 47, 1400-1403. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.47.1400). He and another physicist, D. Quéré, kindly provided some drafts of their books for a group of Chinese physicists, authors of Introduction to Soft Matter Physics (translated from Chinese title), 2004, in advance of the publication of their own books (Witten T A, Pincus, P A Structured Fluids-Polymers, Colloids and Surfactants. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004; de Gennes P G, Brochard-Wyart F, Quéré D Capillarity and Wetting Phenomena-Drops, Bubbles, Pearls, Waves. New York: Springer-Verlag, 2004). It is an intensive survey of the physical aspects of all known phenomena of soft matter. Besides classical examples such as bubbles, polymer gels and liquid crystals, novel findings in supramolecular self-assembly, microphase separation, electro-/magnetorheological fluids, biomacromolecules, and colloidal particles are also subjected to detailed theoretical analysis.

This book effectively collects all findings in the field of soft matter from the most significant physics and physical chemistry journals (tons of Phys. Rev. Lett., Phys. Rev. E, J. Chem. Phys., or Faraday Trans.) in a systematic way, and a low price (RMB 35.00). Although the maths involved is as terribly complex as the things (soft matter) it intends to describe, it is worth dwelling on. Whenever controllability is necessary, physics or maths is needed because they correlate structures and functions, the cause and the result. The time is near when engineers cross their hands and read their RSS subscription of the day during work hour - 'self-assembly kettles' always give and only give the right products!

Mesoporous carbon from block copolymer (and why I haven't blogged things for weeks)

2007-04-07T22:58:00.000+08:00

Block copolymers with immiscible blocks form periodic patterns in their bulk products (e.g. films) at mesoscale. If one of the phases is degradable (e.g. Poly(ε-caprolactone), PCL), mesopores with the same periodicity may yield after the degradation. If another phase is a carbon-rich polymer (e.g. poly(acrylonitrile), PAN), continuous carbon phase may be formed after carbonization at high temperature, e.g. mesoporous carbons from PAN-b-PCL block copolymers (Macromolecules 2007. DOI: 10.1021/ma062798y). That's it.

I have been busy in lab protecting Andrew these days during the dehydration of THF, toluene, etc., and the copolymerization of lactide with PEG5000 monomethyl ether. I get up early and leave the lab at around 10:30pm everyday. The building is locked at 11:00, so I leave beforehand if Andrew's not going to sleep in the lab. In fact many of his labmates sleep in the lab. They typically finish their experiment at 2 or 3 am, and spend the rest of the night on Internet or movies, esp. scary movies. Watching scary movies in a hollow building in the midnight is dramatically funny.

I will try my best to blog more from now on. Some days ago Andrew received a reply from a professor of National University of Sigapore (NUS), long after he had contacted him 6 months earlier. He said he will offer Andrew a PhD opportunity with scholarship, (partly) because he is 'impressed' by Andrew's interest in supramolecular chemistry and biodegradable polymers via my blog. Unfortunately he was providing a scholarship for this August, while Andrew is supposed to graduate in the next August. So Andrew apologized for not being able to accept his offer and promised he'd still try once again next year. But I cannot believe this little humor-lacking full-of-naive-English paper-echoing blog may possibly call attention of the serious researchers and professors. It is only a place showing my abnormal interest in reading and only reading papers. What a wonder if one can get paid by sitting there only reading papers, for the entire life?!

Self-Cleaning/-Degrading Hair

2007-03-28T21:56:00.000+08:00

Andrew blogged about a 'nano TiO₂' shampoo some time ago; he didn't know the new application of the photocatalytic properties of TiO₂ in coating industry, the self-cleaning coating!

Self-cleaning coatings can be realized by either hydrophobic approach, the well-known Lotus-Effect^®, or the hydrophilic approach, the Activ^™ coating which mainly consists of TiO₂ photocatalyst. An 2005 paper (J. Mater. Chem. 2005, 15, 1689-1694. DOI: 10.1039/b412803f) has summed up the current research of this field. In the latter approach, photocatalysis causes the coating to chemically break down organic dirt adsorbed onto the window, while hydrophilicity causes water to form 'sheets' rather than droplets - contact angles are reduced to very low values in sunlight and the dirt is washed away (by this meaning I suggest the term 'easy-cleaning' rather than 'self-cleaning').

So introduction of TiO₂ into shampoo does make sense considering the self-cleaning and water-keeping properties thus gained (shampoo ads says hair to be best in the state of 80-90% dried rather than totally, one of a few things from ads that I do believe). But...how does the TiO₂ distinguish the organic dirt from hair (an organic host) and not subject the latter to photocatalysis as well?

Chemistry on a Compact Disc

2007-03-27T22:50:00.000+08:00

Compact Discs(CDs) have proven to be versatile for modern chemical research. The recordable CD technology has been utilized to fabricate bio-CDs storing both numeric and genomic information (BioTechniques 2002 33, 435-439). Ligands are also 'burnt' on CDs to selectively bind proteins (Org. Biomol. Chem. 2003, 1, 3244-3249. DOI: 10.1039/b306391g). Besides utilization of the traditional CD technology, treating CD as a plastics surface and the subsequent nanofabrication is also interesting, e.g. SAMs (Anal. Chem. 2001, 73, 4743-4747. DOI: 10.1021/ac015521z) and oxide thin film (Anal. Chem. 2002, 74, 5742-5747. DOI: 10.1021/ac025686n) deposited on CD surface, and CDtrodes (electrodes prepared from CD-Rs, Anal. Chem. 2000, 72, 5503-5506. DOI: 10.1021/ac000437p). A mini-review written by the pioneer of this field, Hua-Zhong Yu, is available in Chem. Commun. 2004, 2633-2636. DOI: 10.1039/b412784f.

These days Andrew and his roommate, a part-time AFM manager, are considering possible cooperation between their fields, cyclodextrin and AFM. Cyclodextrin has successfully self-assembled into monolayers (Self-Assembled Monolayers, SAMs), the so-called 'molecular printboard' (Chem. Eur. J. 2000, 6, 1176-1183) and been subjected to multiple supramolecular interaction, by David N. Reinhoudt and co-workers. But if SAMs can formed on plastics with the current high-speed laser recording technology it would be more exciting. My new colleague, the ferrocene T-Shirt suggests the β-cyclodextrin SAM/ferrocene pair on CD surface in the hope of some redox sensitive properties. Quite fun, isn't it?

My new colleague

2007-03-26T20:49:00.000+08:00

Ferrocene T-Shirt

Andrew bought a ferrocene T-shirt on SpreadShirt.com. He will wear it as much as possible. I suggest he add a β-cyclodextrin on the back so that the two can form a pair of inclusion complex (J. Chem. Soc., Chem. Commun. 1984 645-646. DOI: 10.1039/C39840000645) because the ferrocene on the front side is of the reduced form (without a little plus superscript). Anyway, how do you do my new colleague?

Recently the ACS Chicago gathering has attracted vast interest among the chemistry blogosphere. I am not in America and thus cannot engage in this event. But I still checked the agenda disclosed on The Chem Blog and found one speech which must be Andrew's favorite: Bioinspired supramolecular polymer chemistry by Steven C. Zimmerman at 3:05PM. Which chemical blogger will attend this lecture?

Best ad for chemistry

2007-03-25T23:55:00.000+08:00

In the 19th century, chemists gave the world dyes and made our lives more colourful, in the 20th century, chemists gave the world drugs (pharmaceuticals), so lengthening our lives and making them more bearable, and, in the 21st century, chemists will give the world devices, making our lives much more fulfilled and immensely more enjoyable. These three d's are made possible by chemistry which is, in turn, about three m's – making, measuring, and modeling – and a lot more which could make our world a better place for better living for all of us.
--Sir Fraser Stoddart

This statement is quoted from the post series Reactions on Nature's blog The Sceptical Chymist. Sir Stoddart also disclosed in this interview that he admires literature very much and always dreams to be a novelist. He did show this passion in this statement by rendering the contribution of chemistry to modern human a romantic and vivid sense. If he is really going to write a novel I hope it is about a chemist or something that can sharpen the public recognition of chemistry. Maybe a sci-fic is a good choice because I seldom see chemistry-themed sci-fics. For example how will molecular switches and motors he is currently working on develop into a totally different life style of future human?