The properties of surfaces are crucial for many processes in a variety of areas in biology, industry, and daily life. Surprisingly, even though surface phenomena have been studied for more than 200 years by some of the greatest physicists, mathematicians, and engineers, there are still quite a few enigmas to be solved. This paper presents some fundamental enigmas related to the surface tensions of liquids and solids that were either partially solved or yet mostly unsolved.

The Meyer-Schuster rearrangement reaction has been known for almost a hundred years. It has been used to prepare unsaturated aldehydes, ketones, and even esters from propargyl alcohols. Thirty years ago, the same reaction was found to produce also α-halogenated aldehydes and ketones under suitable conditions. In the last thirty years, several methods have been developed utilizing the Meyer-Schuster rearrangement in the synthesis of halogenated building blocks for use in synthetic chemistry. In this perspective, we describe the progress in the field.

Advances in the synthesis of low bandgap (E_g < 1.5 eV) conjugated polymers has produced organic materials capable of absorbing near-infrared (NIR) light (800—2500 nm), with these materials first applied to photodiode NIR detectors in 2007 as an alternative to more traditional inorganic devices. Although the development of organic NIR photodetectors has continued to advance, their ability to effectively detect wavelengths in the low-energy portion of the NIR spectrum is still limited. Efforts to date concerning the production of photo-diode-based devices capable of detecting light beyond 1000 nm are reviewed.

Fullerenes have attracted much attention because of their unique electronic structure and spherical cage shape. Specially, fullerenes have been widely used as guest in supramolecular chemistry due to their spherical structures. Recently, the supramolecular complexes of fullerenes and several types of carbon nanorings have been constructed and investigated. The complex of fullerene in carbon nanoring is like a Saturn, and this unique kind of supramolecular complexes will have potential applications in chemical, material and physical fields. In this review, various complexes of fullerene in carbon nanoring and their special properties are described. We hope to expand the application of these supramolecular complexes in various fields.

Dried foam films (DFF) of graphene oxide (GO) has been prepared by dipping a titanium mesh in the solution of GO, and then it was reduced by electrochemical method. Next, the as-prepared water-containing reduced grapheme oxide (rGO) DFF film works as electrode for electrocpolymerization of aniline onto its surface for preparing a polyaniline/graphene monolith while the titanium mesh acts as the electron collector. The as-obtained composite film is binder-free and has highly surface area, conductivity, and can be used for supercapacitor electrode. Then network of plenty polyaniline nanoparticles formed on the surface of rGO film by electrochemical polymerization, which works as the material for pseudocapacitance. When the film is used as a supercapacitor electrode, the maximum specific capacitance is as high as 633.4 F g⁻¹ and the specific capacitance retains 75% of the initial after constant charge discharge 5000 cycles at current density of 10 A g⁻¹, indicating that the nanocomposite is a suitable active material for supercapacitors.