Sol-gel immobilization of enzymes, which can improve considerably their properties, is now one of the most used techniques. By deposition of the entrapped lipase on a solid support, a new and improved biocatalyst was obtained, which can be used with excellent results in acylation reactions. In this paper, lipase B from Candida antarctica was double immobilized on different adsorbents. These bio...

We present here a microscopic study of the effect of shear on a dense purely repulsive colloidal suspension. We use multispeckle diffusing wave spectroscopy to monitor the transient motions of colloidal particles after being submitted to an oscillatory strain. This technique proves efficient to record the time evolution of the distribution of relaxation times. After a high oscillatory shear, we...

The preparation of a disulfide-tethered precipitative soluble support and its use for solution-phase synthesis of trimeric oligodeoxyribonucleotide 3´-(2-chlorophenylphosphate) building blocks is described. To obtain the building blocks, N-acyl protected 2´-deoxy-5´-O-(4,4´-dimethoxytrityl)ribonucleosides were phosphorylated with bis(benzotriazol-1-yl) 2-chlorophenyl phosphate. The "outdated" p...

Holographic gratings are recorded in colloidal suspensions of silver nanoparticles by utilizing interfering nanosecond pulses. The diffraction efficiency is measured with continuous-wave light. An instantaneous response together with a transient grating are observed: the nanoparticles absorb the pump light and heat up. Heat is transferred to the solvent, and a delayed thermal grating appears. T...

In very recent experimental work, diffusive motion of individual particles in a dense columnar phase of colloidal suspension of filamentous virus particles probed by means of fluorescence video microscopy [S. Naderi, E. Pouget, P. Ballesta, P. van der Schoot, M. P. Lettinga, and E. Grelet, Phys. Rev. Lett. 111, 037801 (2013)]. Rare events were observed in which the minority fluorescently labele...

This paper reviews the current state of the art related to the synthesis and characterization of hybrid organic-inorganic (O/I) coatings obtained through the exploitation of dual-cure processes, which involve a photo-induced polymerization followed by a thermal treatment: this latter allows the occurrence of sol-gel reactions of suitable alkoxy precursors already embedded in the UV-curable syst...

Single-wall fullerene nanotubes were converted from nearly endless, highly tangled ropes into short, open-ended pipes that behave as individual macromolecules. Raw nanotube material was purified in large batches, and the ropes were cut into 100- to 300-nanometer lengths. The resulting pieces formed a stable colloidal suspension in water with the help of surfactants. These suspensions permit a v...

We show that the substrate affects the interparticle spacing in monolayer arrays with hexagonal order formed by self-assembly of polymer grafted nanoparticles. Remarkably, arrays with square packing were formed due to convective shearing at a liquid surface induced by miscibility of colloidal solution with the substrate.

Spin crossover requires cooperative behavior of the metal centers in order to become useful for devices. While cooperativity is barely predictable in solids, we show here that solution processing and the covalent introduction of molecular recognition sites allows the spin crossover of iron(III) sal(2)trien complexes to be rationally tuned. A simple correlation between the number of molecular re...

We present measurements of the thermal fluctuations of the free surface of an aging colloidal suspension, Laponite. The technique consists in measuring the fluctuations of the position of a laser beam that reflects from the free surface. Analysing the data statistics, we show that, as the fluid ages, the dynamics becomes intermittent. The intermittent events correspond to large changes in the l...