Molecular devices/diversity

Nanotechnology is a broad area of applied science and technology that focuses on controlling and exploiting the structure of matter on a scale below 100 nm. It has applications as diverse as colloidal science, device physics, molecular biology and supramolecular chemistry. 

Enzymes are remarkable molecular devices that determine the pattern of chemical transformations in biological systems. The most striking characteristics of enzymes are their catalytic power and specificity. As a class of macromolecules, they are highly effective in catalyzing diverse chemical reactions because of their ability to specifically bind to a substrate and their ability to accelerate reactions by several orders of magnitude. Applying enzymes or organisms in... 

Colloidal crysfals can be viewed as the mesoscopic counterpart of atomic or molecular crystals. They have been used to explore diverse phenomena such as crystal growth [52-54] and glass transition [55,56], and have many interesting applications for sensors [57], in catalysis [58,59], advanced coatings [60], and for optical/electro-optical devices for information processing and storage [61,62]. In particular, their unusual optical properties, namely the diffraction of visible light and the existence of a photonic stop band, make them ideal candidates for the development of photonic materials [61,63-66]. They may lead to the fabrication... 

The diverse properties of organic molecular materials, of which the polymers are amongst the primary ones, will, without doubt, be intensively developed in the future. Photosensitive polymer semiconductors with pre-given properties and a broad spectrum of application will be created for various optoelectronic devices. 

There is little doubt that diverse physical properties common to polyoxometalates places them in an almost unmatched class of materials which could be extremely useful as hybrid materials and nanocomposites [31]. In this section we will focus on POM systems with properties that could be exploited in the development of molecular-scale devices. 

EET is observed in many diverse systems, including marine organisms that use EET to tune the color of their bioluminescence [18], giving them unique glow-in-the-dark patterns. EET is also used in man-made solar energy conversion devices that are based on molecular architectures, and is used to tweak pixel hue and saturation in polymer-based... 

Since mesoporous materials contain pores from 2 nm upwards, these materials are not restricted to the catalysis of small molecules only, as is the case for zeolites. Therefore, mesoporous materials have great potential in catalytic/separation technology applications in the fine chemical and pharmaceutical industries. The first mesoporous materials were pure silicates and aluminosilicates. More recently, the addition of key metallic or molecular species into or onto the siliceous mesoporous framework, and the synthesis of various other mesoporous transition metal oxide materials, has extended their applications to very diverse areas of technology. Potential uses for mesoporous smart materials in sensors, solar cells, nanoelectrodes, optical devices, batteries, fuel cells and electrochromic devices, amongst other applications, have been suggested in the literature.11 51... 

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