Advanced Smart Nanomaterials with Integrated Logic-Gating and Biocomputing: Dawn of Theranostic Nanorobots.

Accurate and precise drug delivery is the key to successful therapy. Monoclonal antibodies, which can transport therapeutic payload to cells expressing specific markers, have paved the way for targeted drug delivery and currently show tremendous clinical success. However, in those abundant cases, when a disease cannot be characterized by a single specific marker, more sophisticated drug delivery systems are required.

Smart materials on the way to theranostic nanorobots: Molecular machines and nanomotors, advanced biosensors, and intelligent vehicles for drug delivery.

Background: Theranostics, a fusion of two key parts of modern medicine - diagnostics and therapy of the organism's disorders, promises to bring the efficacy of medical treatment to a fundamentally new level and to become the basis of personalized medicine. Extrapolating today's progress in the field of smart materials to the long-run prospect, we can imagine future intelligent agents capable of performing complex analysis of different physiological factors inside the living organism and implementing a built-in program thereby triggering a series of therapeutic actions. These agents, by analogy with their macroscopic counterparts, can be called nanorobots.

Surface plasmon resonance as a tool for investigation of non-covalent nanoparticle interactions in heterogeneous self-assembly & disassembly systems.

Biomolecule-driven assembly of nanoparticles is a powerful and convenient approach for development of advanced nanosensors and theranostic agents with diverse "on-demand" composition and functionality. While a lot of research is being devoted to fabrication of such agents, the development of non-invasive analytical tools to monitor self-assembly/disassembly processes in real-time substantially lags behind. Here, we demonstrate the capabilities of localized surface plasmon resonance (SPR) phenomenon to study non-covalent interactions not just between plasmonic particles, but between gold nanoparticles (AuNP) and non-plasmonic ones.

The advantages of covalently attaching organometallic catalysts to a carbon black support: recyclable Rh(i) complexes that deliver enhanced conversion and product selectivity.

Pure carbon black (CB) was covalently attached to a bidentate nitrogen coordination motif with a carbon-carbon bond by spontaneous reaction with an in situ generated ligand precursor. The functionalized support was treated with [Rh(CO)2(μ-Cl)]2 to form a heterogeneous carbon-based support covalently linked to a well defined Rh(i) coordination complex. The hybrid material was characterized using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), Infrared (IR) spectroscopy and inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS).

Solid-state NMR structure characterization of a 13CO-Labeled Ir(I) complex with a P,N-donor ligand including ultrafast MAS methods.

The structural characterization of a (13)CO-labeled Ir(I) complex bearing an P,N-donor ligand (1-[2-(diphenylphosphino)ethyl]pyrazole), [Ir(PyP)((13)CO)Cl] is demonstrated using a series of tailored solid-state NMR techniques based on ultrafast (60 kHz) Magic Angle Spinning (MAS), which facilitates correlations with narrow proton line-widths. Our 1D (1)H MAS and 2D (13)C and (31)P CP-MAS NMR spectra provided structural information similar to that obtained using NMR spectroscopy in solution. We employed high-resolution 2D solid-state correlation spectroscopy ((1)H-(13)C HETCOR, (1)H-(31)P correlation) to characterize the networks of dipolar couplings between protons and carbon/phosphorus.

Rh(I) complexes bearing N,N and N,P ligands anchored on glassy carbon electrodes: toward recyclable hydroamination catalysts.

A series of N,N-donor ligands (bis(pyrazol-1-yl)methane (bpm), bis(N-methylimidazol-2-yl)methane (bim), 1-(phenylmethyl)-4-(1H-pyrazol-1-yl methyl)-1H-1,2,3-triazole (PyT)), and one N,P-donor ligand precursor (1-(3,5-dimethylpyrazol-1-yl)(2-bromoethane) (dmPyBr)) were synthesized and functionalized with aniline. Diazotization of the aniline into an aryl diazonium, using nitrous acid in aqueous conditions, was performed in situ such that the ligands could be reductively adsorbed onto glassy carbon electrode surfaces. The N,N-donor ligands (bpm, bim, PyT) were immobilized in a single step, while several steps were required to immobilize the N,P-donor ligand (dmPyP) to prevent oxidation of the phosphine group.