Materials Science at the Small Scale

EDITORIAL

By Esther Levy*

Whoever coined the term ªbigger is betterº cannot possibly Table 1. Ten most downloaded communications published in Advanced have imagined the small revolution that has recently taken Materials between January and October 2004. place in the scientific community, where the obsession with nanoscale science is growing dramatically. Nanoscience is of Title Authors Issue Page course not new, but the discipline really took off with the Highly Oriented and Ordered S. H. Kim, M. J. Misner, T. Xu, 3226 Arrays from Block Copolymers M. Kimura, T. P. Russell advent of advanced microscopy techniques such as transmis- via Solvent Evaporation sion electron microscopy and scanning probe microscopy, Self-Organized Organic H. Y. Choi, S. H. Kim, 8732 which allow the visualization of nanosized materials. As the Thin-Film Transistors on Plastic J. Jang potential of this fascinating field of research became more ap- Multiple-Walled Nanotubes Y. Sun, Y. Xia 3 264 parent, interest in nanoscience and associated technologies Made of Metals exploded. Oriented Assemblies of ZnS Y.-C. Zhu, Y. Bando, 9831 One-Dimensional Nanostructures D.-F. Xue, D. Golberg Indeed, many Advanced Materials authors have fully em- Semiconductive Polymer Blends: C. Ionescu-Zanetti, 5385 braced the concept that in many instances ªsmaller is betterº. Correlating Structure with A. Melcher, This is aptly illustrated by this issue of Advanced Materials, Transport Properties at the S. A. Carter, R. Lal which contains a number of communications dealing with Nanoscale nanoscale science. Starting from the cover story, which de- Two- and Three-Dimensional Z. Chen, P. Zhan, Z. L. Wang, 5417 scribes micro- and nanopatterning using counter-propagating Ordered Structures of Hollow J. H. Zhang, W. Y. Zhang, Silver Spheres Prepared N. B. Ming, C. T. Chan, reaction diffusion fronts (Grzybowski et al., page 1912), the by Colloidal Crystal Templating P. Sheng articles cover such varied topics as silicon nanowire transistors Organic Polarized Light-Emitting A. C. A. Chen, S. W. Culligan, 9783 (Lieber et al., page 1890), dendritic, temperature sensitive Diodes via Förster Energy Transfer Y. Geng, S. H. Chen, core±shell nanostructures (Hong et al., page 1953), and nano- Using Monodisperse Conjugated K. P. Klubek, K. M. Vaeth, Oligomers C. W. Tang porous gold films (Erlebacher et al., page 1897). Programmable Assembly of B. B. Yellen, G. Friedman 2 111 Of the ca. 300 communications that have appeared so far Heterogeneous Colloidal Particle this year in Advanced Materials, over 130 (43 %) contain Arrays ªnanoº in their title. Interestingly, a high percentage of these A Multidye Nanostructured H. H. Pham, I. Gourevich, 6516 are among the most downloaded articles published in this Material for Optical Data Storage J. K. Oh, J. E. N. Jonkman, and Security Data Encryption E. Kumacheva journal in 2004 (the top ten communications are listed in Table 1). As a comparison, only 22 % of the articles published Magnetic-Field-Induced Growth J. Wang, Q. Chen, C. Zeng, 2137 of Single-Crystalline Fe3O4 B. Hou in 2000 contain ªnanoº in their title. Thus, it is fair to say that Nanowires nanoscience has developed into a very hot research area. Nevertheless, it does not have an exclusive hold on our read- ership. Advanced Materials publishes innovative papers on ªnanoº plays a vital role, but not always, and the materials such diverse aspects of materials science as electronics, optics, aspects are necessarily of prime importance. semiconductors, magnetic materials, porous materials, soft With the current climate of interest in all things ªnanoº and matter, ceramics, metals, and energy storage. In some cases to cater for the many ªnanoº-related papers that we cannot publish in Advanced Materials, owing either to lack of space or because they do not fall into the scope of the journal (e.g., ± because the materials themselves are not a focus of the [*] Dr. E. Levy paper), Wiley-VCH has launched a new journal: Small, with Editor, Advanced Materials the subtitle Micro & Nano. Nanoscience, like materials Wiley-VCH Boschstrasse 12, D-69469 Weinheim (Germany) science, is an interdisciplinary area of research that has cap- E-mail: [email protected] tured the imagination of chemists, biologists, physicists, engi-

Adv. Mater. 2004, 16, No. 21, November 4 DOI: 10.1002/adma.200401830 2004 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim 1879 The fact that our readers not only appreciate the mix of materials science research presented within the pages of

EDITORIAL Advanced Materials but also find it highly relevant to their research is reflected in the journal's citation figures. The journal enjoyed a further substantial increase in Impact Factor[1] (IF) in 2003 to 7.305 (cf. 6.801 in 2002). Its sister journals Advanced Functional Materials and Chemical Vapor Deposi- tion have also faired well: The 2003 IF of Advanced Func- tional Materials was 4.798, which is very impressive for a full paper journal, and for the past several years the IF of Chemi- cal Vapor Deposition has been consistently steady at around 2 (2.071 in 2003Ðthe second highest in the films and coating category). This is a very good sign for the imminent indepen- dence of the journal (which can be subscribed to separately from Advanced Materials from 2005). Our author and referee services are also proving popular. The online submission and personal homepage system manu- scriptXpress has been used by our authors and referees since August 2003, and continual improvements are being made based on feedback from its users. Arecent questionnaire con- firmed the general acceptance and satisfaction with the system amongst our authors and referees alike. neers, and materials and medical scientists worldwide. This is In order to continue to provide the best service for our reflected in the choice of Chairmen of the Editorial Advisory readers and in recognition of the increasing number of users Board: Chad Mirkin, a chemist from North America (North- of our online platform Wiley InterScience, an electronic ver- western University), Harald Fuchs a physicist from Europe sion of the graphical table of contents of each issue of (Münster University and Research Center Karlsruhe), and Advanced Materials is now available online with a direct link Toshio Yanagida, a nanobiotechnologist from Asia (Osaka to the individual articles. (Previously it was only possible to University). Aprime aim of Small is to capture this interdisci- view the graphical table of contents as a PDF file, without a plinary flair in papersÐfrom reviews and concept articles to direct link to the article of interest.) The backfiles of communications and full papersÐthat cover all aspects of na- Advanced Materials from 1988±1997 are now also available noscience and -technology. In addition, and as indicated by online as part of the Materials Science backfiles package. the subtitle, the micro/nano interface is also covered as well as These backfiles are the retro-digitized version of articles pre- those aspects of microscience and -technology where minia- viously available only in print. turization leads to novel and important properties and capa- With all these developments, we wish you many happy bilities. To ensure a wide circulation from the outset, in its first hours of reading, both onscreen and in print, and look forward year Small will be delivered to all subscribers of Advanced to receiving your next contribution, whether it be for Ad- Materials. Indeed our readers have already received their first vanced Materials or Small! taste of this new monthly journal: The first issue of Small is With best wishes already available and was delivered with the last issue (20, 2004) of Advanced Materials. Issue 1, Volume 1 can also be viewed free of charge on Wiley InterScience, by going to http://www.small-journal.com, where further information about this exciting new journal is available. Dr. Esther Levy Advanced Materials will naturally continue to publish the best papers on innovative materials science research, irrespec- ± tive of scale. In terms of nanoscience and -technology, if the [1] The Impact Factor (IF) of a journal in 2003 is defined by the Institute emphasis is on the Materials aspects Ð and these are often for Scientific Information (ISI) as: (the number of citations made in all journals published in 2003 to articles published in the journal in dependent on the scale of the systems studied Ð then the 2002 and 2001) divided by (the number of articles published in the work would be suitable for Advanced Materials. Otherwise, journal in 2002 and 2001). Full details are available from the ISI, Phi- Small would be the more appropriate forum. ladelphia at http://www.isinet.com.

1880 2004 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim http://www.advmat.de Adv. Mater. 2004, 16, No. 21, November 4