Growth of graphene from solid carbon sources.

Monolayer graphene was first obtained as a transferable material in 2004 and has stimulated intense activity among physicists, chemists and material scientists. Much research has been focused on developing routes for obtaining large sheets of monolayer or bilayer graphene. This has been recently achieved by chemical vapour deposition (CVD) of CH(4) or C(2)H(2) gases on copper or nickel substrates. But CVD is limited to the use of gaseous raw materials, making it difficult to apply the technology to a wider variety of potential feedstocks. Here we demonstrate that large area, high-quality graphene with controllable thickness can be grown from different solid carbon sources-such as polymer films or small molecules-deposited on a metal catalyst substrate at temperatures as low as 800 °C. Both pristine graphene and doped graphene were grown with this one-step process using the same experimental set-up.

Incorporating optical bistability into a magnetically bistable system: a photochromic redox isomeric complex.

A photochromic cobalt-bis(dioxolene)spirooxazine metal complex has been synthesized which exhibits both photochromic and redox-active behavior, providing a potentially powerful approach to the development of optically induced changes in redox, magnetic, or optical properties of a metal center.

Ruthenium(II) coordination chemistry of a fused donor-acceptor ligand: synthesis, characterization, and photoinduced electron-transfer reactions of [{Ru(bpy)2}(n)(TTF-ppb)](PF6)(2n) (n = 1, 2).

A pi-extended, redox-active bridging ligand 4',5'-bis(propylthio)tetrathiafulvenyl[i]dipyrido[2,3-a:3',2'-c]phenazine (L) was prepared via direct Schiff-base condensation of the corresponding diamine-tetrathiafulvalene (TTF) precursor with 4,7-phenanthroline-5,6-dione. Reactions of L with [Ru(bpy)(2)Cl(2)] afforded its stable mono- and dinuclear ruthenium(II) complexes 1 and 2. They have been fully characterized, and their photophysical and electrochemical properties are reported together with those of [Ru(bpy)(2)(ppb)](2+) and [Ru(bpy)(2)(mu-ppb)Ru(bpy)(2)](4+) (ppb = dipyrido[2,3-a:3',2'-c]phenazine) for comparison. In all cases, the first excited state corresponds to an intramolecular TTF --> ppb charge-transfer state. Both ruthenium(II) complexes show two strong and well-separated metal-to-ligand charge-transfer (MLCT) absorption bands, whereas the (3)MLCT luminescence is strongly quenched via electron transfer from the TTF subunit. Clearly, the transient absorption spectra illustrate the role of the TTF fragment as an electron donor, which induces a triplet intraligand charge-transfer state ((3)ILCT) with lifetimes of approximately 200 and 50 ns for mono- and dinuclear ruthenium(II) complexes, respectively.