Platinum nanowire networks have been synthesized by chemical reduction of a platinum complex using sodium borohydride in the presence of a soft template formed by cetyltrimethylammonium bromide in a two-phase water-chloroform system. The interconnected polycrystalline nanowires possess the highest surface area (53 +/- 1 m2/g) and electroactive surface area (32.4 +/- 3.6 m2/g) reported for unsupported platinum nanomaterials; the high surface area results from the small average diameter of the nanowires (2.2 nm) and the 2-10 nm pores determined by nitrogen adsorption measurements. Synthetic control over the network was achieved simply by varying the stirring rate and reagent concentrations, in some cases leading to other types of nanostructures including wormlike platinum nanoparticles. Similarly, substitution of a palladium complex for platinum gives palladium nanowire networks. A mechanism of formation of the metal nanowire networks is proposed based on confined metal growth within a soft template consisting of a network of swollen inverse wormlike micelles.

Nanotubes prepared by the self-assembly of D-Phe-D-Phe molecules are investigated by electron microscopy and Monte Carlo simulations; the nanotubes appear to be porous and are capable of forming novel peptide-nanotube platinum-nanoparticle composites.

Liquid silica at high pressure and temperature is shown to undergo significant structural modifications and profound changes in its electronic properties. Temperature measurements on shock waves in silica at 70-1,000 GPa indicate that the specific heat of liquid rises SiO(2) well above the Dulong-Petit limit, exhibiting a broad peak with temperature that is attributable to the growing structural disorder caused by bond breaking in the melt. The simultaneous sharp rise in optical reflectivity of liquid SiO(2) indicates that such dissociation causes the electrical and therefore thermal conductivities of silica to attain metalliclike values of 1-5 x 10(5) S/m and 24-600 W/m x K, respectively.