On the Durability of Icephobic Coatings: A Review.

Ice formation and accumulation on surfaces has a negative impact in many different sectors and can even represent a potential danger. In this review, the latest advances and trends in icephobic coatings focusing on the importance of their durability are discussed, in an attempt to pave the roadmap from the lab to engineering applications. An icephobic material is expected to lower the ice adhesion strength, delay freezing time or temperature, promote the bouncing of a supercooled drop at subzero temperatures and/or reduce the ice accretion rate.

Using Plasma Etching to Access the Polymer Density Distribution and Diffusivity of Gel Particles.

In this paper we examine the polymer density distribution of gel particles and its effect on solvent diffusivity through the polymer network. In order to access the inner particle regions, external polymer layers were removed by plasma etching, thus reducing them from the outside. Higher polymer densities after erosion showed internal heterogeneity, with the density increasing towards the center of the particles.

Particles and nanovoids for plasmonics.

This article reviews and compares the optical properties of metallic nanoparticles and nanovoids, which have received great attention due to their ability to generate and control plasmon resonances. These systems are capable of concentrating and manipulating the fields at nanometer scale, being very attractive as building blocks for emerging applications. Metal particles and nanovoids present different plasmonics modes, strongly dependent on the size, shape and nature of the metal and dielectric.

First exfoliated Ru-Ru-Au organometallic polymer with layered structure.

A new water soluble heterometallic polymeric complex [{(PTA)2CpRu-μ-CN-1κC:2κ2N-RuCp(PTA)2}-μ-{Au(CN)4}4]n·2H2O (1) is synthesized and characterized by single crystal X-ray diffraction. This complex self-assembles forming 3D polymeric structures with large scale hexagonal conformation. They also organize as 3D stacks of polymer sandwiches that can be exfoliated providing mono heterometallic-3D layers, as shown by electron microscopy.

Novel Ruthenium-Silver PTA-Based Polymers and Their Behavior in Water.

New coordination polymers based on two metal-containing moieties Ru-Ag are synthesized: Na[RuCpX(PTA)-μ-(PTA)-1κ:2κ-AgX] (X = Cl (), Br (), I ()). Characterization is performed by NMR, UV-visible and FT-IR spectroscopy, optical-electron microscopy, and elemental analyses (C, H, N, S). Light scattering is employed to characterize the colloidal particles growth by polymer self-assembling.