Archive for the ‘Gold Bulletin’ Category
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December 23rd, 2009
Gold Bulletin online now
The latest issue of Gold Bulletin 42(4) has just been published online. This issue is a really special one – to acknowledge the magnificent contribution of Dr David Thompson to the development and promotion of the science of gold catalysis. David, co-author of the book Catalysis by Gold and Technical Editor of Gold Bulletin worked tirelessly in this field for many years. A full appreciation of his life can be found here.Blogging will be a bit lighter over the next week or so, with Christmas and the New year celebrations…
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December 10th, 2009
MRS Fall meeting 2009
I’ve spent the week at the Materials Research Society Fall meeting, and have been really impressed by much of the research presented. Gold-related work has been prominent, with literally hundreds of oral presentations and posters on offer. In fact, I’ve not been able to see everything!
There have been many highlights – Michael Natan gave an excellent overview of Oxonicas work on SERS active particles. Naomi Halas (and students) from Rice University have given a series of good presentations on plasmonics and nanotechnology, and Kimberly Hamad-Schifferli spoke about her groups work at MIT on gold nanorods. There was also an entire session devoted to gold catalysis, with contributions from the labs of Kung, Haruta and Flyzani-Stephanopoulos.
All in all an excellent meeting… Look out for a more thorough review in the next issue of Gold Bulletin.
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November 30th, 2009
Memorable research papers
According to the BBC, The Royal Society, one of the world’s oldest scientific institutions, is marking the start of its 350th year by putting 60 of its most memorable research papers online. The archive will include work by Sir Issac Newton, Benjamin Franklin and Stephen Hawking. I haven’t yet been able to establish whether Michael Faraday’s early work on gold colloid will be included, but don’t worry……you can read the late David Thompson’s account of this seminal piece of research here in Gold Bulletin.
As David explain’s, in the paper in Philosophical Transactions entitled ‘Experimental relations of gold (and other metals) to light’, which was based on Faraday’s Bakerian lecture to the Royal Society in London on 5 February 1857, it is clear that Michael Faraday was fascinated by the ruby colour of colloidal gold. This paper is definately worth a read……
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September 29th, 2009
Gold Bulletin – Advance Online Publication?
The Gold Bulletin Editorial Team is considering introducing an advance online publication process for the journal. This would allow papers to appear on the journal’s website before they have a formal issue/page number. Many journals already operate this system including Nature. We would welcome your views on this potential development.
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September 21st, 2009
The use of gold for fabrication of nanowire structures
A few weeks ago I mentioned IBM were growing silicon nanowires using gold nanoparticles. An excellent review of why gold is by far the most widely used seed particle material for growth of semiconductor nanowires has just been published by a team from Lund University (Maria E Messing, Karla Hillerich, Jonas Johansson, Knut Deppert and Kimberly A Dick) in Gold Bulletin.
The review explains that although a couple of other materials have been reported to successfully initiate growth of nanowires, gold is the most universal particle material, capable of seeding a variety of different types of nanowires at a wide range of growth conditions. In the review the group identified and described the production and deposition methods of different types of gold particles used for nanowire growth including:
gold particles made from thin films
aerosol-generated gold particles
gold particles made by lithographic methods
and colloidal gold particles.
They also discussed the different advantages and disadvantages of each particle type if the nanowires are to be used for large scale production of semiconductor devices and perhaps most importantly, the fundamental reason for gold being superior to other materials for initiating growth of nanowires. Their conclusion? The ability of gold to easily form alloys with the growth precursors, its inertness to oxygen and the high diffusivities through gold are all important and added together are what make gold such a suitable material for nanowire seed particles.
Schematic demonstrating particle-assisted nanowire growth. (a) The seed particles are formed/deposited on the substrate and (b) by heating the substrate to a desired temperature and introducing growth materials an alloy is formed. (c) When a supersaturation of the alloy particle with growth material is achieved, nucleation occurs at the particle-substrate interface. (d) Nanowire growth occurs at the particle-wire interface as long as growth material is provided. (e) By switching to growth conditions favoring planar growth radial heterostructures, known as core-shell nanowires, can be grown. (f) Nanowires containing axial heterostructures with very sharp interfaces can be formed by switching between different growth materials. (g) If a second generation of gold particles is deposited onto the as-grown nanowires and (h) the growth process is repeated, branched nanowires for formation of nanowire networks can be grown.Copyright: Gold Bulletin
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September 18th, 2009
Gold Bulletin 42(3). Available now !!!!!
Hi everyone. What a great couple of months we have had in the Gold community. A fantastic Gold 2009, conference in Heidelberg with lots of stimultaing papers and posters and whats even more important lots of science being disscussed over a few beers!
To continue the good few months you can now access the new issue of Gold Bulletin 42(3). Whats in it ? I hear you say. Well we have an editorial by our new Editor. Although he is obviously not new to the Gold Council and Gold Bulletin I am sure he will make a his own mark and style on the future issues of GB.
We have 7 exciting scientific papers covering differing aspects of nanoparticles, nanowires, thin films, metallurgy and nanosphere synthesis. We also have a review of the new Book “Gold Chemistry: Applications and future directions in the life sciences.”. There are two conference reports from the 23rd Santa Fe Symposium on jewelry Manufacturing Technology and also on The Fourth Taylor Conference on new work on gold catalyst. We also have a summary of Gold 2009 in Heidelberg and of couse our every popular section on Highlights from the recent literature.
Go on have a look and let me know what you think !!!!!
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July 16th, 2009
Cleaning drinking water using gold nanoparticles
The new issue of Gold Bulletin describes an innovative approach to remove metal ions from drinking water by researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology. See here.
A novel adsorbent, gold nanoparticles supported on alumina, was developed for the removal of inorganic mercury from water. The observed adsorption capacity for mercury was 4.065 gm per gm of gold nanoparticles, which is ~10 times higher metal adsorption capacity than previously reported adsorbents.
While the authors studied the removal of mercury from drinking water, they also believe the technology can be extended to the extraction of mercury from other sources such as industrial waste water.
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July 8th, 2009
Next issue of Gold Bulletin now available!!
Hi everyoneIt’s here at last, Issue 42(2) of Gold Bulletin.
We have an issue bursting with lots of gold news and science and a superb Guest Editorial from Prof James (Jim) Johnstone from Victoria University of Wellington New Zealand.
We have all the lastest information about Gold 2009 ; the Keynote presentations , the opening Plenary presentations and all the info on the main conference sessions
We have seven wonderful scientific papers from a range of disciplines including Metallurgy, Catalysis, Analytical and also Nanotechnolgy. Also a book review of Mark Grimwade’s Introduction to Precious Metals – Metallurgy for Jewellers and Silversmiths.
Also our regular features of Highlights from Recent Literature and a summary of Calendar Events comming up in the near future.
Hope you enjoy it. Let me know what you think. I always like to hear your views.
Richard Holliday
Trevor Keel
Tricia Harris
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