ChemNanoMat-A New Journal for Small Science with a Big Impact

Abstract

Off to a strong start! Read all about the launch of ChemNanoMat and the Editorial Board members in the inaugural ChemNanoMat Editorial. The unusual properties of materials at the nanoscale have led to a surge of interest in nanoscience across the globe. Whether they are being used in high-capacity battery electrodes that can withstand repeated cycling, as multifunctional probes to understand and image biological processes, or in catalysis, nanomaterials have shown unique advantages over bulk materials. Although nanoscience benefits from insights from a wide variety of disciplines, chemistry plays a central role and gives scientists of all backgrounds the powerful tools they need to optimize the properties of nanomaterials for specific applications. Without chemical insights and a molecular-level understanding of the processes at work, it would have been impossible to synthesize the wide variety of nanomaterials that are now known. In many systems, it is also possible to finely control the size, morphology, and surface chemistry of nanostructures. However, as researchers become more ambitious and the applications of nanomaterials move from the proof-of-concept stage to real-life products, the need for tailored synthetic strategies and precise characterization methods will continue to increase. It is with these thoughts in mind that we are excited to announce the launch of ChemNanoMat, our new journal focused on the chemistry of nanomaterials. The journal will cover a wide range of topics from fundamental studies to the latest applications. Due to the interdisciplinary nature of nanoscience, we expect our audience to include scientists from a variety of fields, including chemists of all disciplines, materials scientists, biomedical and chemical engineers, and physicists. The idea to launch ChemNanoMat was born during the annual meeting between Wiley-VCH and the Asian Chemical Editorial Society (ACES), a group of 13 major chemical societies in Asia and the Pacific. This partnership started in 2005, and has already led to two successful journals: Chemistry - An Asian Journal, which celebrates its 10th volume this year, and the Asian Journal of Organic Chemistry, which was launched in 2012. Both of these journals have been well received in the scientific community and have established themselves as forums for high-quality research from across the globe. Importantly, ChemNanoMat is also produced in the same neighborhood as Angewandte Chemie and Advanced Materials, as well as both their respective sister journals. The strength of the Asian nanomaterials research community and the rapid increase in research activity in recent years all over the world made this topic a natural choice for a third journal in the ACES family. Although the journal is rooted in Asia, the initial submissions to ChemNanoMat have come from around the globe, reflecting the international nature of both modern scientific research and the journal′s audience. Over the first two months of submissions, manuscripts were received from twelve different countries spanning four continents. ChemNanoMat is fully electronic and reproduces color figures free of charge. Colorful schemes and illustrations are highly encouraged. Nanoscience is a rapidly moving field, so we will also follow the lead of our sister journal, the Asian Journal of Organic Chemistry, in publishing Accepted Articles directly following acceptance, ensuring that results published in the journal become available very quickly, usually within 24 hours. ChemNanoMat will also be free to read in 2015 and 2016. Just register for free access on our website. The launch of a new journal requires help from many people, and we would like to express our sincere thanks to our Editorial Board Chairs, Susumu Kitagawa (Kyoto University, Japan), Huisheng Peng (Fudan University, China), and Hua Zhang (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore), as well as our Editorial Board and our International Advisory Board members for all their advice and help in getting the journal off to a strong start. To learn more about our boards, see the Editorial Board member biographies on the following pages, and the full list of International Advisory Board members is available on our website (www.chemnanomat.org). We look forward to working with many more of you in the years to come as we establish ChemNanoMat as a top-tier journal in nanoscience with a strong focus on chemistry. Thank you in advance for your support, whether it is through submitting high-quality papers, providing rigorous and fair peer review, or spreading the word about this exciting new forum for materials chemistry research in your communities. Dr. Theresa Kueckmann Editor Dr. Claire M. Cobley Associate Editor P.S. Follow us on Twitter (@ChemNanoMat) or Facebook, or sign up for e-alerts to keep up to date with all the latest developments. Susumu Kitagawa obtained his Ph.D. in magnetic resonance and quantum chemistry studies of porphyrin complexes at Kyoto University in 1979. He started working in coordination chemistry of late transition metal complexes as an assistant professor in Kinki University. He studied cluster chemistry as a visiting scientist in the laboratory of Professor F.A. Cotton in 1985–1986. In 1992, he moved to Tokyo Metropolitan University as full professor and developed chemistry of coordination polymers. Then he moved to Kyoto University as Professor of Inorganic Chemistry in 1998. He is now Director of the Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences (WPI-iCeMS) at Kyoto University with a joint appointment as Professor in Faculty of Engineering, Kyoto University. He was the first to discover and to demonstrate “porosity” for coordination polymer materials with gas sorption experiments (1997), which are called porous coordination polymers (PCPs) or metal–organic frameworks (MOFs). His main interest is the functional aspects of PCPs, and he discovered flexible PCPs and coined soft porous crystals, dissimilar to those of other porous crystalline materials. He is developing a new field, “The Chemistry of Coordination Space”, which promotes the comprehensive structural and functional chemistry towards practical use in purification, storage, and transportation, separation, and conversion, focusing mainly on gas substances. He was awarded the Japan Society of Coordination Chemistry Award (2007), Alexander Humboldt Research Award, Germany (2008), the Chemical Society of Japan Award (2009), Thomson Reuters Citation Laureate (Chemistry) in 2010, the Medal with Purple Ribbon 2011 (Japanese Government), RSC de Gennes Prize (2013) and Ezaki Award (2013). He is a member of Science Council of Japan, President of Japan Society of Coordination Chemistry, and a fellow of the UK Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC). Huisheng Peng received his B.Eng. in Polymer Materials from Donghua University in China in 1999, M.Sc. in Polymer Science from Fudan University in China in 2003 and Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Tulane University in USA in 2006. He worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory, US Department of Energy, in 2006–2008. Dr. Peng has been appointed as a Professor at the Department of Macromolecular Science and Laboratory of Advanced Materials at Fudan University from October 2008 until now. He served as an Associate Chair at Department of Macromolecular Science since 2012 and Director of the Center of Polymers and Their Advanced Composite Materials (also called “2011 Project” in China) since 2014. His research focuses on the development of novel energy materials and devices particularly based on polymers. He is a pioneer in the field of fiber-shaped energy harvesting and storage devices. Hua Zhang obtained his B.S. and M.S. degrees at Nanjing University in China in 1992 and 1995, respectively, and completed his Ph.D. with Prof. Zhongfan Liu at Peking University in China in July 1998. He joined Prof. Frans C. De Schryvers group at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KULeuven) in Belgium as a Research Associate in January 1999. Then he moved to Prof. Chad A. Mirkins group at Northwestern University as a Postdoctoral Fellow in July 2001. He started to work at NanoInk Inc. (USA) as a Research Scientist/Chemist in August 2003. After that, he worked as a Senior Research Scientist at the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology in Singapore from November 2005 to July 2006. Then he joined the School of Materials Science and Engineering in Nanyang Technological University (NTU) as an Assistant Professor. He was promoted to a tenured Associate Professor on March 1, 2011, and Full Professor on Sept. 1, 2013. In Nov. 2014, he was elected as a Fellow of Royal Chemical Society (FRSC). Moreover, he was selected to The World′s Most Influential Scientific Minds and the Highly Cited Researchers 2014 (Thomson Reuters, 2014) and listed as one of 17 “Hottest Researchers of Today” in the world, and got the World Cultural Council (WCC) Special Recognition Award (2013), the ONASSIA Foundation Lectureship (Greece, 2013), Asian Rising Stars (15th Asian Chemical Congress, 2013), Small Young Innovator Award (Wiley-VCH, 2012) and Nanyang Award for Research Excellence (2011). Dr. Zhangs research is highly interdisciplinary. His current research interests focus on synthesis of two-dimensional nanomaterials (graphene and transition metal dichalcogenides), carbon materials (graphene and CNTs) and their hybrid composites for various applications in nano- and biosensors, clean energy, water remediation, etc.; controlled synthesis, characterization and application of novel metallic and semiconducting nanomaterials; scanning probe microscopy; lithography-based fabrication of surface structures from micro- to nanometer scale; self-assembly and self-organization of nano- and biomaterials; self-assembled monolayers; etc. Lifeng Chi received her B.S degree in physics and M.S. degree in physical chemistry from Jilin University, China and earned her Ph.D. degree in 1989 in Göttingen, Germany. After a postdoctoral tenure at the University of Mainz and BASF, she moved to the University of Münster and received a Lise Meitner Award in 1997. In 2000, she finished her habilitation in physics in the area of nanostructuring through self-organization. She became a professor in physics at the University of Münster in 2004 and was appointed as Chair Professor at Soochow University, China, in 2012. Her research interests include surface (nano)patterning, molecular self-assembly on structured surfaces, and on-surface chemistry. She has co-authored approximately 300 original scientific papers, co-authored 7 books, edited 1 book, and filed more than 10 patents. Insung S. Choi obtained his B.S. and M.S. degrees in organic chemistry at Seoul National University (Seoul, Korea) under the supervision of E. Lee, and did his Ph.D. degree at Harvard University (Cambridge, USA) in 2000 under the supervision of G. M. Whitesides. After postdoctoral work with R. Langer at MIT (Cambridge, USA), he was appointed as assistant professor at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST; Daejeon, Korea) in 2002 and professor in 2007. He is currently Professor of Chemistry and of Bio and Brain Engineering, and Director of the Center for Cell-Encapsulation Research. Jang Wook Choi is an Associate Professor at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Republic of Korea. He received his Ph.D. in the Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at California Institute of Technology (Caltech), USA in 2007 under the supervision of James R. Heath. From 2008–2010, he worked as a postdoctoral scholar in the Yi Cuis group at Stanford University, USA. Prof. Chois main research interest lies in the understanding, design, synthesis, and analysis of various materials including ceramics, polymers, and organic molecules, and their application in rechargeable batteries and wearable/flexible electronic devices. Yu-Guo Guo is Professor of Chemistry and Materials Science at the Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). He completed his Ph.D. under the supervision of Chun-Li Bai and Li-Jun Wan at the Institute of Chemistry, CAS before moving to the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart, Germany as a postdoctoral researcher and then a staff scientist with Joachim Maier. He returned to China in 2007 to take up a full professor position at the Institute of Chemistry, CAS. Guo′s research focuses on electrochemical energy storage with rechargeable batteries (e.g., Li-ion and Li-S batteries), ion/electron storage and transport in nanoscaled systems, as well as kinetics and thermodynamics of nanostructured energy materials. He has received several awards including the MIT Technology Reviews TR35 Award, the Distinguished Young Chemist Award in Physical Chemistry of the Federation of Asian Chemical Societies, and the International Society of Electrochemistry Tajima Prize. He also serves as an Editorial Board Member of ChemElectroChem, ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, Nano Research, and Scientific Reports. Jwa-Min Nam received his Ph.D. in chemistry from Northwestern University and worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He is currently Associate Professor at the Department of Chemistry, Seoul National University. He received the Chinese Academy of Sciences Fellowship for International Young Scientists (2014), Distinguished Lectureship Award from the Chemical Society of Japan (2013), the Presidential Young Scientist Award from the President of the Republic of Korea (2012), the Young Inorganic Chemist Award from the Korean Chemical Society (2012) and the Victor K. LaMer award from the American Chemical Society (2006). His major research interests include the design, synthesis and optics of plasmonic nanostructures, nanocarriers for bio-imaging, delivery and therapeutics, nanoprobe-tethered lipid bilayers, cell-nanostructure interfaces, and biosensors. “I think the topic and scope of ChemNanoMat are very promising and timely. I should be able to help set up the scope of the journal to be a leading journal in nanoscience and nanotechnology and establish a fast, fair and stringent review process at ChemNanoMat to quickly publish the very best papers in nanomaterials and their applications.” Narayan Pradhan and his research group at the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science, Kolkata, have been working on developing new nanomaterials to study their exciting materials properties, and to implement those in various leading device based applications. The group also works on transition metal ion doping in semiconductor nanocrystals and studies changes in their photophysical properties.1 In addition, they have also successfully unveiled the effect of doping on the crystal growth and shape variation in the host nanocrystals. Apart from this, the group has recently studied the shape architecture in nucleation density controlled processes in the formation of various nanostructures, developed several hetero-structures and investigated the hetero-epitaxy formation at different hetero-junctions.2, 3 N. Pradhan has obtained his Ph.D. degree from the Department of Chemistry, IIT Kharagpur, India and pursued his postdoctoral research at Ben-Gurion University of Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel and University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR, USA. He has also received the prestigious Swarnajayanti Fellowship from Govt. of India for developing new doped nanomaterials. One of his recent works stating the growth mechanism in formation and sealing of nanotubes is published in Angewandte Chemie.2 Toshiharu Teranishi received his Ph.D. in physical chemistry at The University of Tokyo under the supervision of Prof. N. Toshima in 1994. He spent seven and a half years at Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology as an Assistant Professor and an Associate Professor. In 2004, he moved to University of Tsukuba as a Full Professor, and moved to Kyoto University in 2011. He is a Guest Professor at University of Jinan (2014–2016). Current research interests include precise structural control of inorganic nanomaterials and structure-specific functions for high-performance devices and photo-energy conversion. He says, “As a member of the Editorial Board, I would like to contribute to the deepening of nanoscience and nanotechnology.” Jun Wang is Professor of Life Sciences and Polymer Chemistry of University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), and an adjunct professor of Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale. He received his B.Sc. degree in Chemistry and Cell Biology in 1993 and a Ph.D. degree in Polymer Chemistry and Physics in 1999 from Wuhan University, China. From 1999 to 2004, he worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins Singapore and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. In 2004, he joined the faculty of USTC. Jun Wang and his research group at USTC carry out research in the area of polymer biomaterials, drug delivery and nanomedicine. Kimihisa Yamamoto received his Ph.D. degree from Waseda University in Polymer Chemistry in 1990. He was an Assistant and Associate Professor of Waseda University from 1993 to 1996. He has been a Professor of the Department of Chemistry at Keio University since 1997. He is now a Professor of Chemical Resources Laboratory at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. He received the Award for the Young Chemist and the Divisional Award from the Chemical Society of Japan in 1996 and in 2008 respectively, and the JSPS Wiley Award in 2005 from the Society of Polymer Science of Japan. He was also awarded the Commendation for Science and Technology by the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Japan in 2012. Hong Yang is Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC, Illinois, USA). He studied at the Tsinghua University in Beijing, China and received his Ph.D. from the University of Toronto in the area of thin film and morphogenesis of mesoporous materials under the guidance of Geoffrey A. Ozin. He received the Doctoral Prize from NSERC Canada for his Ph.D. thesis work. He worked as an NSERC postdoctoral fellow in George M. Whitesides group at Harvard University. Between 2001 and 2011, he worked at the University of Rochester and rose through the academic ranks. In 2012, he joined the faculty of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He was an NSF CAREER Award recipient. Dr. Yang is a Section Editor on Nanotechnology for Current Opinion in Chemical Engineering (Elsevier) and a member of the Editorial Advisory Boards of Nano Today (Elsevier) and Science China Materials (Springer-Chinese Academy of Sciences). He also served as a Guest Editor for Accounts of Chemical Research, Advanced Materials, and ChemSusChem. His research interests include understanding the formation of nanocrystals, surface modification, in situ techniques, catalysis, and nanomaterials for energy and biological applications. Yanli Zhao is currently a Nanyang Assistant Professor and a National Research Foundation Fellow at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He received his B.Sc. degree in Chemistry from Nankai University China in 2000 and his Ph.D. degree in Physical Chemistry there in 2005 under the supervision of Professor Yu Liu. He was a postdoctoral scholar with Professor Sir Fraser Stoddart at University of California Los Angeles (October 2005 to November 2008) and subsequently at Northwestern University (January 2010 to August 2010). In between (December 2008 to December 2009), he was a postdoctoral scholar with Professor Jeffrey Zink at University of California Los Angeles. His current research focuses on the development of advanced nanosystems for theranostics,4 gas storage,5 and heterogeneous catalysis.6 He has published over 150 scientific papers, and has received several honors, including the Young Researcher Award in 2013, the [email protected] Award in 2012, the Singapore National Research Foundation Fellowship in 2010, and the UCLA Exceptional Accomplishments in Postdoctoral Research in 2010. Nanfeng Zheng obtained his Ph.D. at the University of California–Riverside in 2005 under the supervision of P.Y. Feng. His Ph.D. work was on chalcogenide nanoclusters and their superstructures. During 2005–2007, he worked on gold catalysis with G. D. Stucky as a postdoctoral research associate at the University of California–Santa Barbara. In 2007, he moved to Xiamen University as a full professor. He is currently a Cheung Kong Scholar Chair Professor at Xiamen University. Zhengs research focuses on the development of advanced functional materials for both fundamental research and practical applications, particularly in the fields of catalysis and biology. Major research efforts of his group are directed to noble metal nanocrystals with well-defined exposed surfaces, interfacial chemistry of metal nanocrystals, hierarchical nanomaterials with enhanced catalysis and biological performances, and nanocluster chemistry.