Hybrid nanocrystal-polymer materials are of great importance for the solution-based fabrication of thin films with tailored optical and electronic properties for sensing, light emission, and photovoltaic applications. The excellent control over size, shape, and composition of inorganic nanocrystals (NCs) allows tuning of their physical properties and makes them interesting materials for devices, ranging from optoelectronics to medicine. On the other hand, polymers can also be synthesized with customized properties to fulfil a wide range of functionalities. Organic electronics has indeed seen a significant progress in the last years thanks to the synthesis of highly performing polymer semiconductors and conductors.

Doping has led to a revolutionary breakthrough in the design of semicondutor devices. Yet, it is still challenging to introduce dopants in nanoparticles (NPs) in order to access properties unavailable in the undoped materials. Different types of interactions between host and dopant are responsible for the properties of doped NPs. The new properties in doped NPs may originate from spin exchange interactions between the dopant and host, presence of long-lived highly isolated electronic states, or simply from high concentration of structural defects.

Brazil is world leader in the production and exportation of orange juice. According to the Ministry of Agriculture, the country is responsible for 30% of the world’s annual harvest but 60% of the world’s annual juice production, 90% of which is exported.

Cellphones, computers and other omnipresent portable electronic devices owe their existence to the continuous miniaturization of electronic circuits, which begun with the invention of the transistor, in 1947. Responsible for turning on and off or amplifying an electrical current, the transistors replaced the big and fragile vacuum tubes that made the first digital computers occupy whole rooms of even whole buildings.

The ingestion of lipids, oils and fats, provides essential ingredients to our metabolism. The worries about several cardiovascular diseases caused by the excessive consumption of saturated fats and cholesterol from animal origin, though, have prompted the development of alternative sources of lipids.

Graphene – a thin membrane formed by one or two atom-thick layers of carbon – is considered one of the future building blocks of nanotechnology. Gaining tremendous attention in the last years, graphene and graphene-based material combinations such as graphene/boron nitride find potential applications in optical and opto-electronic devices.

In traditional and indigenous communities, plants are used for the treatment of a wide variety of diseases and are discovered throughout the years by trial and error, or, more precisely, by live and death.

The active substances in those plants have drawn the interest of the medical and scientific communities, especially for the treatment of neglected tropical diseases, including snakebites for which the mortality rate is higher than that of dengue fever, cholera or Chagas disease.