Novel geometrical architectures of hybrid nanoparticle–protein complexes are generated by chemically synthesizing monodisperse metal nanoparticles in situ in the presence of a stable, stress‐related protein. The catalytic activity of the protein–particle hybrids is examined for the reduction of 4‐nitrophenol, providing future biofunctional nanoparticle labels for catalytic signal amplification in optical assays.

Over the last few years, ionic liquids (ILs) have emerged as an important class of reaction media for the synthesis of nanoparticles. The formation and stabilization of nanoparticles was investigated in different ILs to elucidate the effect of the chemical nature of the IL anion, cation and alkyl side chain of the imidazolium. In this context, Co 2 (CO) 8 was employed as a precursor and thermally decomposed to the metallic cobalt nanoparticles in a series of selected ILs, where either the IL cation or anion was varied while keeping all of the other parameters constant. The results show that both the molecular volume of the anion and cation and the steric configuration are important aspects to control the formation and stability of nanoparticles in ILs.

We introduce a novel electrochemical method for the purification of complex water-soluble functional polymers contaminated with copper salts originating from copper-catalyzed azide/alkyne ligation chemistry, for which no standard purification protocol is suitable. A triethylene glycol methyl ether methacrylate (TEGMA) star polymer with 2-ureido-4H-pyrimidone (UPy) end groups was prepared via an activator generated by electron transfer atom transfer radical polymerization (AGET ATRP) and copper-catalyzed azide/ alkyne cycloaddition (CuAAc) and selected as a model system for electrolysis of an aqueous polymer solution. We systematically investigate the influence of sample concentration, voltage, and time of electrolysis on the quality of the purification. Atom emission spectroscopy (AES) reveals almost quantitative removal of copper, and size exclusion chromatography (SEC) as well as proton nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy ( 1 H NMR) ensure the full integrity of the polymer under all selected conditions.

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