Associations of organic and inorganic molecules involving non covalent and covalent interactions participate to a wide range of structures found in nature. Bridged silsesquioxanes (BS) can be designed with organic units selected to drive self-organization into a solid network. Therefore new hybrids functional materials with controlled morphologies can be synthesized. In particular urea groups, thanks to their ability to self-assemble though H bonds, have been incorporated in BS within the organic subunits (figure 1, UU). Depending on kinetics of the sol gel reaction, hybrid materials bridged by urea groups exhibiting a variety of textures and morphologies were synthetized. Considering the bridging group as a key element for the control of the assembly formed hybrids materials where thiourea groups have also been synthesized (Figure 1, UU or TT). As a matter of fact thiourea groups are also known to link them self via H bonds, but with geometry and strengths that can differ from urea links. Vibrational spectroscopy is used here to explore the self-organization mechanisms involved in the formation of urea bridged and thiourea bridged silsequioxanes. The influence of H-bonding strength and the self-organization properties of the urea and thiourea bridged organic substructures are explored through infra-red spectroscopy coupled with DFT calculations. Some particular vibrations such as amides and thio-amides vibrations are often considered as signatures of H bond strength. The thermal dependence dynamics of such signatures is studied as an indicator of the bond properties. Finally, in-situ high pressure vibrational measurements demonstrate the role of supramolecular interactions on the mechanical response of hybrid materials to high pressure.

Monitoring individual single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) during their growth is a highly sought-after goal in view of understanding the processes involved in the nucleation, elongation and termination which ultimately control the diameter and chiral selectivity. Here, we report on the first truly in situ observations of SWCNT growth in an environmental scanning electron microscope (ESEM). The CNT growth from lithographically patterned catalysts was investigated as a function of the catalyst type (Fe, Co or Ni), temperature, type of precursor (ethanol or acetylene), gas phase composition and pressure, and pretreatment conditions, and we report on the most appropriate conditions for SWCNT growth in ESEM conditions. We show that this approach allows the observation at the submicron scale of the different steps of the nanotube synthesis including the catalyst reduction, the growth and percolation of the nanotube network, and the deposition of individual nanotubes grown in the gas phase on the substrate. Despite these obvious advantages, we identified a few limitations which will need to be tackled for fully taking advantage of the approach, for instance for monitoring the growth of individual SWCNTs by ESEM, including the short lifetime of the catalyst nanoparticles, the preference for kite growth (by opposition to surface growth) and the influence of the electron beam on the nanotube growth.

Double-walled carbon nanotubes (DWCNT) are made of two concentric and weakly van der Waals coupled single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNT), also called layers. DWCNTs are the simplest systems for studying the mechanical and electronic interactions between concentric carbon layers. In this communication, we review recent results concerning the intrinsic features of phonons of DWCNTs obtained from Raman experiments performed on index-identified DWCNTs. The effect of the interlayer distance on the strength of the mechanical coupling between the layers, and thus on the frequencies of the Raman-active modes, namely the radial breathing-like modes (RBLM) [1] and G-modes [2], are evidenced and discussed.

! abstract The mechanisms of methane adsorption in (i) homogeneous carbon slit pores of widths between 1 nm and 2 nm and (ii) heterogeneous MOF pores of similar unit cell sizes have been compared. We discuss the mechanism of layering transition in subcritical conditions, for temperatures between 80 K and 180 K. The layer formation is strongly temperature-dependent. In slit pores it varies from a sharp adsorption at low temperatures to a more continuous uptake at higher temperatures. The pore size defines the number of adsorbed layers: the 1 nm pore allows adsorption of 2 layers while the 2 nm pore allows adsorption of 5 layers of methane molecules. We compare this behavior with the mechanism of adsorption in two MOFs, IRMOF-1 and IRMOF-16, with strongly heterogeneous walls (both structurally and energetically). This comparison allows us to discuss separately the influence of wall topology and intermolecular interactions on the mechanism of layering.