Dissociation of ionizable ligands immobilized on nanopaticles (NPs) depends on and can be regulated by the curvature of these particles as well as the size and the concentration of counterions. The apparent acid dissociation constant (pK(a)) of the NP-immobilized ligands lies between that of free ligands and ligands self-assembled on a flat surface. This phenomenon is explicitly rationalized by a theoretical model that accounts fully for the molecular details (size, shape, conformation, and charge distribution) of both the NPs and the counterions.

Droplets emitting surface-active chemicals exhibit chemotaxis toward low-pH regions. Such droplets are self-propelled and navigate through a complex maze to seek a source of acid placed at one of the maze's exits. In doing so, the droplets find the shortest path through the maze. Chemotaxis and maze solving are due to an interplay between acid/base chemistry and surface tension effects.

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Millimeter-sized single MOF-5 crystals are used as "chromatographic columns" to effectively separate mixtures of organic dyes. Remarkably, owing to the nanoscopic pore dimensions and the molecular-level interactions between the migrating molecules and the MOF scaffold, the separations occur over a distance of only a few hundred micrometers which is unambiguously confirmed by fluorescence confocal microscopy.

Pattern formation is a frequent phenomenon in physics, chemistry, biology, and materials science. Bottom-up pattern formation usually occurs in the interaction of the transport phenomena of chemical species with their chemical reaction. The oldest pattern formation is the Liesegang phenomenon (or periodic precipitation), which was discovered and described in 1896 by Raphael Edward Liesegang, who was a German chemist and photographer who was born 150 years ago. The purpose of this feature article is to provide a comprehensive overview of this type of pattern formation. Liesegang banding occurs because of the coupling of the diffusion process of the reagents with their chemical reactions in solid hydrogels. We will discuss several phenomena observed and discovered in the past century, including reverse patterns, precipitation patterns with dissolution (due to complex formation), helicoidal patterns, and precipitation waves. Additionally, we will review all existing models of the Liesegang phenomenon including pre- and postnucleation scenarios. Finally, we will highlight several applications of periodic precipitation.

Controlling and engineering chemical structures are the most important scientific challenges in material science. Precipitation patterns from ions or nanoparticles are promising candidates for designing bulk structure for catalysis, energy production, storage, and electronics. There are only a few procedures and techniques to control precipitation (Liesegang) patterns in gel media (e.g., using an electric field, varying the initial concentration of the electrolytes). However, those methods provide just a limited degree of freedom. Here, we provide a robust and transparent way to control and engineer Liesegang patterns by varying gel concentration and inducing impurity by addition of gelatin to agarose gel. Using this experimental method, different precipitation structures can be obtained with different width and spatial distribution of the formed bands. A new variant of a sol-coagulation model was developed to describe and understand the effect of the gel concentration and impurities on Liesegang pattern formation.

Alternative methods, including green synthetic approaches for the preparation of various types of nanoparticles are important to maintain sustainable development. Extracellular or intracellular extracts of fungi are perfect candidates for the synthesis of metal nanoparticles due to the scalability and cost efficiency of fungal growth even on industrial scale. There are several methods and techniques that use fungi-originated fractions for synthesis of gold nanoparticles. However, there is less knowledge about the drawbacks and limitations of these techniques. Additionally, identification of components that play key roles in the synthesis is challenging. Here we show and compare the results of three different approaches for the synthesis of gold nanoparticles using either the extracellular fraction, the autolysate of the fungi or the intracellular fraction of 29 thermophilic fungi. We observed the formation of nanoparticles with different sizes (ranging between 6 nm and 40 nm) and size distributions (with standard deviations ranging between 30% and 70%) depending on the fungi strain and experimental conditions. We found by using ultracentrifugal filtration technique that the size of reducing agents is less than 3 kDa and the size of molecules that can efficiently stabilize nanoparticles is greater than 3 kDa.

Modeling of dispersion of air pollutants in the atmosphere is one of the most important and challenging scientific problems. There are several natural and anthropogenic events where passive or chemically active compounds are emitted into the atmosphere. The effect of these chemical species can have serious impacts on our environment and human health. Modeling the dispersion of air pollutants can predict this effect. Therefore, development of various model strategies is a key element for the governmental and scientific communities. We provide here a brief review on the mathematical modeling of the dispersion of air pollutants in the atmosphere. We discuss the advantages and drawbacks of several model tools and strategies, namely Gaussian, Lagrangian, Eulerian and CFD models. We especially focus on several recent advances in this multidisciplinary research field, like parallel computing using graphical processing units, or adaptive mesh refinement.