Preface pubs.acs.org/Langmuir
Preface to the Surfaces and Interfaces for Molecular Monitoring Special Issue
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Notes
ur society is more and more driven by knowledge and data collection. The healthcare system depends more and more on the fast quantitation of numerous components and biomarkers in bodily fluids. Environmental agencies continuously collect data on airborne noxious materials or contaminants in our food in order to prevent or limit their negative consequences on society. The acquisition of such data hinges on the interaction of an analyte and the transducing responsive surface, which generates a response of the sensing device. An ever-growing emphasis is placed on the construction, miniaturization and characterization of such a surface. This special issue of Langmuir is a tribute to the beauty and innovation of the chemistry at such surfaces that drive sensing devices. The cover page of this issue beautifully illustrates this feature by schematically depicting the results of Meder, Dawson and co-workers, who developed a simple and highly precise method to locate reactive groups on nanomaterials, e.g., 20 nm oxide nanoparticles, using 1.4 nm gold nanoclusters. Via highresolution transmission electron microscopy (HR-TEM) data this method makes clear how reactive groups are distributed over such nanomaterials, which of course affects any biological role such nanomaterials may play. Such detailed local studies are highly stimulating for novel attachment chemistries that continue to drive this field. This issue contains many examples thereof, including those of Teplyakov and co-workers that demonstrate the mild covalent attachment of C60 fullerene onto silicon surfaces, or by the Gates team that further explores the potential of alcohols to establish covalent links to silicon oxide. Many more application-driven studies build on such a combination of attachment and analysis, so as to construct highly biofunctional surfaces. Examples thereof include a method by Locklin’s group to construct glycosurfaces via the direct ligation of nonderivatized reducing saccharides and the construction of surfaces optimized for (local) cell adhesion by Jonkheijm and Vörös. Overall, these studies, deriving from four continents, illustrate both the power of the fundamental interface science that is the prime focus of Langmuir, as well as the need for further studies that drive future progress of this field. They form a deeply probing set of basic studies that yield both answers and many intriguing questions that are only slowly opening up on us, and stimulate in line with Irvin Langmuir’s famous quote that it is primarily curiosity and a desire of truth that drive science.
Views expressed in this editorial are those of the author and not necessarily the views of the ACS.
Han Zuilhof, Guest Editor
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Wageningen University Tianjin University
AUTHOR INFORMATION
ORCID
Special Issue: Surfaces and Interfaces for Molecular Monitoring
Han Zuilhof: 0000-0001-5773-8506
Published: September 5, 2017
© 2017 American Chemical Society
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DOI: 10.1021/acs.langmuir.7b02974 Langmuir 2017, 33, 8593−8593
