Metallofullerenes as potential candidates for the explanation of astrophysical phenomena.

Detection of complex organic species in space has been one of the biggest challenges of the astrophysical community since the beginning of space exploration, with C-fullerene representing one of the largest molecules so far detected. The presence of small metal-containing organic molecules, like MgNC or CaCN, in space, promoted the idea that C may also interact with metals and form metallofullerenes based on the fact that in certain circumstellar and interstellar environments, the ingredients for the formation of metallofullerenes, , metal and fullerenes, are abundant. In this perspective, we summarized the current effort to explore the presence of metallofullerenes in space, which started soon after the discovery of fullerenes about 40 years ago.

Synergy Effects in Heavy Metal Ion Chelation with Aryl- and Aroyl-Substituted Thiourea Derivatives.

Detection and removal of metal ion contaminants have attracted great interest due to the health risks that they represent for humans and wildlife. Among the proposed compounds developed for these purposes, thiourea derivatives have been shown as quite efficient chelating agents of metal cations and have been proposed for heavy metal ion removal and for components of high-selectivity sensors. Understanding the nature of metal-ionophore activity for these compounds is thus of high relevance.

Density functional theory simulation of the adsorption of sulphur multilayers on Au(100).

The adsorption of sulphur multilayers on Au(100) has been studied using density functional theory (DFT) within the generalized gradient approximation (GGA). The first sulphur layer was adsorbed on the four-fold sites of the unreconstructed Au(100) surface forming a lattice. The experimental parameters of the lattice were reproduced taking into account the surface expansion of the topmost Au(100) layer.