A very simple method of reductive amination, based on the Leuckart reaction, is reported. This method enables not only the reduction of graphite oxide, but also results in reduced graphene oxide functionalized with amine groups, where the amination degree is 3.2 at.% as determined by XPS. The dominant nitrogen functional group was primary amine, but pyridines and lactam groups were also observed. It was found that the aminofunctionalized reduced graphene oxide is a semimetallic material because of the lack of band gap, unlike the graphite oxide that presented a band gap of 2.16 eV.

The stability and properties of the monovacancy and the divacancy in single-walled carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are addressed by spin-density functional calculations. We study these defects in four nanotubes, the armchair (6,6) and (8,8) and the zigzag (10,0) and (14,0), which have diameters of about 8 and 11Å, respectively. We also study different defect concentrations along the tube axis by increasing the supercell in this direction in order to have one defect every 13 and 26Å of CNT length. Our results show that in the equilibrium geometry CNTs with a monovacancy exhibit ferromagnetism with magnetic moments ranging from 0.3 to 0.8 µB. On the other hand, CNTs with a divacancy do not exhibit magnetism due to the full reconstruction around the defect where all C atoms are three coordinated. We observe that the presence of a monovacancy does not change drastically the CNT electronic properties, preserving their corresponding metallic or semiconducting character. However, for the divacancy both armchair and zigzag CNT become semiconductors exhibiting a energy gap of about 0.15 eV.

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A series of luminescent phenoxo-bridged dinuclear TbIII complexes with tripodal ligands, 2,2′-[[(2-pyridinylmethyl)­imino]­di­(methylene)]-bis­(4-R-phenol), where R = CH3 (LCH3) (I), Cl (LCl) (II), CH3O (LCH3O) (III), COOCH3 (LCOOCH3) (IV), were prepared to probe the effect of para-substitution on the phenol ring of the ligand on the TbIII luminescence. For these TbIII complexes a complete suppression of the ligand-centered fluorescence is observed, which demonstrates an efficient ligand-to-metal energy transfer. Complex IV was found to be the one that shows the greater intensity of the emission at room temperature. The obtained quantum yields follow the trend IV > II ≫ I > III. The quantum yield for II and IV is approximately five times greater than those obtained for I and III, indicating that the LCl and LCOOCH3 are better sensitizers of the TbIII ions. These results were rationalized in terms of the variation of the energy gap between the triplet level (T1) of the ligand and the emissive 5D4 level of TbIII, due to the electron-acceptor or electron-donor properties of the substituents. The τav values are in the millisecond range for all the studied complexes and resulted independent of temperature. The Commission International d’Eclairage coordinates (CIE) for all complexes are in the green color region, being insensitive to the variation of temperature. Moreover, the color purity (CP) is ca. 90% for all complexes, being ca. 100% for IV. Thus, the introduction of electron-acceptor substituents on the ligand permitted us to improve the luminescent properties of the TbIII complexes.