Physical properties and applications of liquid metals

Ordered (and partially ordered) arrays of metal sites and complexes enable the cooperation of their special electronic, magnetic and optical properties. Such materials have long been sought for their expected physical properties and applications in optics, electrooptics, superconductivity and sensors. The ordering can be by various mechanisms, such as adsorption on surfaces, intercalation into layered structures, formation of mesomorphic structures and liquid crystals, and adoption of specific crystal-packing motifs, all of which are supramolecular phenomena. Organic liquid crystals and their applications are now commonplace, and in recent years the incorporation of metal atoms into mesogenic molecules has demonstrated the occurrence of similar metallo-mesophases [20]. 

Since the first synthesis of mesoporous materials MCM-41 at Mobile Coporation,1 most work carried out in this area has focused on the preparation, characterization and applications of silica-based compounds. Recently, the synthesis of metal oxide-based mesostructured materials has attracted research attention due to their catalytic, electric, magnetic and optical properties.2 5 Although metal sulfides have found widespread applications as semiconductors, electro-optical materials and catalysts, to just name a few, only a few attempts have been reported on the synthesis of metal sulfide-based mesostructured materials. Thus far, mesostructured tin sulfides have proven to be most synthetically accessible in aqueous solution at ambient temperatures.6-7 Physical property studies showed that such materials may have potential to be used as semiconducting liquid crystals in electro-optical displays and chemical sensing applications. In addition, mesostructured thiogermanates8-10 and zinc sulfide with textured mesoporosity after surfactant removal11 have been prepared under hydrothermal conditions. 

The application of alkali metals at high temperatures can utilize chemical properties, or may be influenced by chemical reactions. The solutions of non-metallic elements in the alkali metals change physical properties of the pure metals. Dissolved elements are able to cause or to influence the corrosion phenomena. Some compounds are only formed or made stable in the presence of excess liquid alkali metal. Due to such an influence of chemical reactions on the behavior or metals, the new applications have initiated many studies in alkali metal chemistry. Interest has been concentrated on the elements lithium and sodium. The heavier alkali metals have found further interest in more recent work. 

While metallation-cross-coupling strategies dominate the construction of materials for the investigation of conduction, liquid crystal, transistor, fluorescence, electroluminescence, ion receptor, cluster catalysis, among other properties, the application of the DoM connection has not been widely tested. As evident from the discussion concerned with the synthesis of bioactive molecules and natural products (see above), DoM-cross-coupling synthetic design may lead to the provision of new molecules with unusual, and perhaps useful, physical and chemical properties because of the derived electronic and steric factors. 

Polyelectrolytes such as the ion exchange plastics form an interesting group of materials because of their ability to interact with water solutions. They have been used in medical applications involving the removal of heavy metal ions from the human body. They can be used to interact with external electric fields and change their physical properties drastically as is illustrated by the fact that some electrically active liquid crystals are polyelectrolytes of low molecular weight. 

A novel application of ionic liquids in biochemistry involved duplex DNA as the anion and polyether-decorated transition metal complexes. When the undiluted liquid DNA-or molten salt-is interrogated electrochemically by a microelectrode, the molten salts exhibit cyclic voltammograms due to the physical diffusion (D-PHYS) of the polyether-transition metal complex. These DNA molten salts constitute a new class of materials whose properties can be controlled by nucleic acid sequence and that can be interrogated in undiluted form on microelectrode arrays (Leone et al., 2001). 

---