Surface patterning that occurs spontaneously during the formation of a thin film is a powerful tool for controlling film morphology at the nanoscale level because it avoids the need for further processing. However, one must first learn under which conditions these patterning phenomena occur or not, and how to achieve control over the surface morphologies that are generated. Mexylaminotriazine-based molecular glasses are small molecules that can readily form amorphous thin films. It was discovered that this class of materials can either form smooth films, or films exhibiting either dome or pore patterns. Depending on the conditions, these patterns can be selectively obtained during film deposition by spin-coating. It was determined that this behavior is controlled by the presence of water or, more generally, of a solvent in which the compounds are insoluble, and that the relative amount and volatility of this poor solvent determines which type of surface relief is obtained. Moreover, AFM and FT-IR spectroscopy have revealed that the thin films are amorphous independently of surface morphology, and no difference was observed at the molecular or supramolecular level. These findings make this class of materials and this patterning approach in general extremely appealing for the control of surface morphology with organic nanostructures.

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Various approaches for the optical detection of chiral compounds have been developed due to their natural optical activity. Since the advantages of second harmonic generation (SHG) on noble-metal nanoparticles (NPs) have been observed, it would be interesting to study the nonlinear phenomena from chiral compounds attached Ag NPs. In the present work, we fabricated chiral-modified Ag NPs based on the self-assembly process of cysteine and Ag, and carried out the investigation on SHG on modified and unmodified Ag NPs. For modified Ag NPs, either L-Cysteine (L-C) or DCysteine (D-C), as a pair of enantiomers, was applied on top of the Ag NPs. The resulting chiral-modified monolayers of L-C/Ag NPs and D-C/Ag NPs exhibit a reversed optical rotation difference (ORD) at linearly ±45° polarization of SH, where no such difference exists for Ag NPs alone. SHG efficiently probes and discriminates L-C from D-C monolayers on the modified Ag NPs, which constitutes a simple and sensitive optical diagnostic of chiral molecules.

Curcumin, a natural dye found in the Curcuma longa rhizome, commonly called turmeric, is used as a photosensitizer in acrylamide-based photopolymers for holographic data storage. We studied the absorbance of photopolymer films that show two absorption bands due to curcumin, acrylamide monomer (AA), and the crosslinking agent N,N′-methylenebisacrylamide (MBA). Analysis of the real-time diffraction efficiency of these films shows a maximum of 16% for the sample with the highest curcumin concentration. Moreover, increasing the curcumin load enhanced the refractive index contrast from 7.8 × 10−4 for the photopolymer with the lowest curcumin load to 1.1 × 10−3 for the photopolymer with the largest load. The sensitivity and diffraction efficiency of the recorded gratings also increased from 7.0 to 9.8 cm·J−1 and from 7.9 to 16% with the increase in curcumin load, respectively. Finally, the influence of NaOH on the photopolymerization of the AA-curcumin-based sample shows a diffraction efficiency increase with the NaOH content, revealing that the curcumin enol form is more efficient as a photosensitizer.