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Dr. Nieves Lopez-Salas

Dr. Nieves Lopez-Salas is a group leader in the Colloid Chemistry Department of the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces at Potsdam, Germany, and the lead author of “Rediscovering Forgotten Members of the Graphene Family”, the very first Viewpoint article in Accounts of Materials Research. Her article received strong interest in the materials community, and many are intrigued by the idea of rediscovering old chemistry for creating new materials and want to know the story leading up to this Viewpoint. I (J.H.) recently had the pleasure and quite some fun to ask her (N.L.S) about it. J.H.How did a young scientist like you get interested in old chemistry? Can you tell us a little about yourself and your career to date? N.L.S. Yes, I am still a pretty young scientist myself! I did my PhD studies in Spain in Prof. Francisco del Monte’s Group of Bioinspired Materials at the Institute of Materials Sciences of Madrid (ICMM-CSIC). I had there the great opportunity to work along with a multidisciplinary team preparing hierarchical carbon monoliths from deep eutectic solvents. That project allowed me to get a deep insight on the preparation of carbonaceous materials and their applications, and to learn about the strength of proton bond, investigating how deep eutectic solvents behave upon dilution and are bioinspired. After receiving my PhD, I got in contact with Prof. Antonietti from the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces while applying for some funding to do my first postdoc. After what seemed, at first glance, to be an “unsuccessful” application, Prof. Antonietti recruited me as a postdoc with the potential to become a Group Leader in his department. I then worked as a Postdoc with him for some time, and since last year, I lead the Group of “Old Chemistry for New Advanced Materials” in the department. J.H.What is the biggest challenge within your field of materials research, and how can this be addressed? N.L.S. The big challenge we face is to adapt and meet the demands of new technologies and societal energy consumption. For instance, general carbonization routes at very high temperatures do not match the needs of an always-connected society demanding wearable electronics, which have to be built on top of plastic based materials. Energy storage and conversion also need to be addressed. The needs for advanced materials addressing these demands will continue to drive research for quite a while. J.H.What are you working on currently? N.L.S. The group currently focuses on developing new carbonaceous materials and carbon synthetic strategies, using old forgotten concepts reported in early literature as inspiration. In our Viewpoint, we gave two examples that we are currently working on quite intensively. These two forgotten pearls are the key for our current efforts in developing new carbon nitrides (i.e., C₁N₁ or C₂N, and their derivatives), as well as low-temperature processing techniques to create carbon materials from carbon oxides. J.H.Why has this older literature on carbon structure been largely overlooked or forgotten? N.L.S. This is a very good question. I think this may be attributed to a changing research culture over the last few decades. For instance, one of the bigger changes we all experienced is probably the explosive increase of data generated. More published papers in a field have both advantages and disadvantages. While the field itself can benefit from more rapid advances, it also makes it harder for some important pieces of jewels to get the attention they deserve. This is probably why some of them are eventually lost in an ocean of publications and, thus, overlooked by many. Moreover, the tendency to publish an “always better” material or device performance does not help either. For instance, it usually fosters a chain of citations only based on the newer manuscripts in the field. However, the ideas we discussed in the Viewpoint are from over a century ago and are much older than this tsunami of scientific entries in databases. These pieces of information often ended up forgotten anyways. Moreover, many papers published back in those days were not in English, which is definitely a barrier to overcome when ideas need to be transferred to the younger generation scientists. Many times, I found myself translating old German manuscripts for example! Nowadays, artificial intelligence translation is pretty advanced, and the task is a little more feasible but still tedious. There is another reason for the treasures being forgotten. Science has benefited from the incredible advances in materials characterization techniques and instrumentations for synthesis and processing. Some of these old treasure ideas were probably ahead of their time or very difficult to materialize into something with a larger impact on society back in the day. If you read some of the old papers we cited in the Viewpoint, you will see how some of the characterizations involved smelling the products. Can you imagine that occurring nowadays in a lab!? C₃O₂ was used in a large scale, and later it was put in oblivion most likely due to its high reactivity. Nowadays, we can develop synthetic strategies to produce and better use the chemistry of C₃O₂. Therefore, some of this valuable knowledge was “forgotten” because they were probably viewed as too early or too immature to be useful at their time. Unfortunately, when the time came, scientific community had long ago changed gear and moved on to other topics. J.H.How did you come across these hidden treasures? Did you always know about them? Or was it a discovery of a well-planned “treasure hunt” (e.g., exhaustive literature search)? N.L.S. To be honest, so far for me it was indeed a matter of planned “treasure hunts”! The challenge resides on seeing what you are doing as something that was probably done centuries ago. For our group, that is not such a crazy idea because carbonization is known for a really long time! Then, if you simplify the procedure you are using, it is easy to find something useful looking into papers that might be truly old. J.H.What are you planning to do with the inspirations found from this old literature? N.L.S. With the ideas, we have already started on preparing carbon materials at very low temperature. We have a lot of room to develop new advanced materials or even the well-known ones but at much milder reaction conditions. And of course, in the meantime we continue to be inspired by old literature! J.H.In my lab, I also recommend my students working with graphene oxide to prioritize reading some old papers, such as the original 1859 paper by Brodie and some selected papers published in the 1950s and 1960s, which have many hidden jewels as well. Do you think there are other areas of materials research that can benefit from a review of its earlier history? Any prediction or direction that you wish to point to? N.L.S. Definitely! That is why we wanted to write such a Viewpoint. Of course, we dug in our specific topic and looked for inspiration for our own scientific questions but it was such a fruitful process that we have no doubts that peers from other fields could benefit a lot from some “old literature” reading! Views expressed in this editorial are those of the author and not necessarily the views of the ACS. Views expressed in this editorial are those of the author and not necessarily the views of the ACS.
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中文翻译：

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与 Nieves Lopez-Salas 博士的对话：新材料的旧化学

限时提供个人研究和学习许可。

Nieves Lopez-Salas 博士

Nieves Lopez-Salas 博士是德国波茨坦马克斯普朗克胶体与界面研究所胶体化学系的组长，也是“重新发现石墨烯家族中被遗忘的成员”的第一作者，这是第一篇观点文章材料研究帐目。她的文章引起了材料界的浓厚兴趣，许多人对重新发现旧化学以创造新材料的想法很感兴趣，并想知道导致这一观点的故事。我（JH）最近很高兴并且很有趣地向她（NLS）询问了这件事。JH像您这样的年轻科学家是如何对古老的化学产生兴趣的？你能告诉我们一些关于你自己和你迄今为止的职业吗？ 国家统计局是的，我自己还是一个年轻漂亮的科学家！我在西班牙马德里材料科学研究所 (ICMM-CSIC) 教授弗朗西斯科·德尔蒙特 (Francisco del Monte) 的仿生材料组攻读博士学位。我在那里有很好的机会与一个多学科团队合作，从深共晶溶剂中制备分级碳单块。该项目让我深入了解碳质材料的制备及其应用，并了解质子键的强度，研究深共晶溶剂在稀释时的行为和生物启发。在获得博士学位后，我在申请资金做我的第一个博士后的同时，与马克斯普朗克胶体与界面研究所的 Antonietti 教授取得了联系。在乍一看似乎是“不成功”的申请之后，教授。Antonietti 聘请我担任博士后，有可能成为他所在部门的组长。之后在他那里做了一段时间的博士后，从去年开始，我领导了系里的“新先进材料老化学”课题组。JH您在材料研究领域面临的最大挑战是什么，如何解决？ NLS我们面临的最大挑战是适应和满足新技术和社会能源消耗的需求。例如，在非常高的温度下的一般碳化路线不符合始终连接的社会对可穿戴电子产品的需求，这些电子产品必须建立在塑料基材料之上。还需要解决能量存储和转换问题。对满足这些需求的先进材料的需求将在相当长一段时间内继续推动研究。JH你目前在做什么？ 国家统计局该小组目前专注于开发新的碳质材料和碳合成策略，利用早期文献中报道的旧概念作为灵感。在我们的观点中，我们给出了两个我们目前正在深入研究的例子。这两个被遗忘的珍珠是我们目前开发新型碳氮化物（即 C ₁ N ₁或 C ₂ N 及其衍生物）以及用碳氧化物制造碳材料的低温加工技术的关键。JH为什么这些关于碳结构的旧文献在很大程度上被忽视或遗忘？ 国家统计局这个问题问得好。我认为这可能归因于过去几十年不断变化的研究文化。例如，我们都经历过的更大变化之一可能是生成的数据的爆炸性增长。在一个领域发表的论文较多，有利也有弊。虽然该领域本身可以从更快速的发展中受益，但它也使一些重要的珠宝更难获得应有的关注。这可能就是为什么其中一些最终消失在出版物的海洋中，从而被许多人忽视的原因。此外，发布“总是更好”的材料或设备性能的趋势也无济于事。例如，它通常仅基于该领域的较新手稿来形成引用链。然而，我们在观点中讨论的想法来自一个多世纪以前，比数据库中科学条目的海啸要古老得多。无论如何，这些信息往往最终被遗忘。而且，当年发表的许多论文都不是英文的，这绝对是需要将思想转移给年轻一代科学家时要克服的障碍。很多时候，我发现自己在翻译旧的德国手稿！现在人工智能翻译已经相当先进了，任务也稍微可行了一些，但还是很乏味。宝物被遗忘还有另一个原因。科学受益于材料表征技术和合成和加工仪器的惊人进步。这些古老的宝藏理念中的一些可能超前于他们的时代，或者很难实现成为对当时社会有更大影响的东西。如果您阅读我们在 Viewpoint 中引用的一些旧论文，您将看到一些表征如何涉及闻产品。你能想象现在在实验室里发生的事情吗！？C₃ O ₂被大规模使用，后来很可能由于其高反应性而被遗忘。如今，我们可以开发合成策略来生产和更好地利用 C ₃ O ₂的化学性质。因此，其中一些有价值的知识被“遗忘”了，因为它们可能在当时被视为太早或太不成熟而无法使用。不幸的是，当时机成熟时，科学界早就改变了方向并转向其他主题。JH你是如何发现这些隐藏的宝藏的？你一直都知道他们吗？或者它是一个精心策划的“寻宝”的发现（例如，详尽的文献搜索）？ 国家统计局老实说，到目前为止对我来说确实是有计划的“寻宝”问题！挑战在于将您正在做的事情视为可能是几个世纪前完成的事情。对于我们的团队来说，这并不是一个疯狂的想法，因为碳化已经为人所知了很长时间！然后，如果你简化你正在使用的程序，很容易找到一些有用的东西，看看可能真的很旧的论文。JH你打算如何处理从这些古老文学中找到的灵感？ 国家统计局有了这些想法，我们已经开始在非常低的温度下制备碳材料。我们有很大的空间来开发新的先进材料，甚至是众所周知的材料，但反应条件要温和得多。当然，与此同时，我们继续受到古老文学的启发！JH在我的实验室，我也建议我的学生在研究氧化石墨烯时优先阅读一些旧论文，例如 Brodie 1859 年的原始论文和一些 1950 年代和 1960 年代发表的精选论文，其中也有许多隐藏的宝石。您是否认为还有其他材料研究领域可以从回顾其早期历史中受益？您希望指出任何预测或方向？ 国家统计局确实！这就是我们想写这样一个观点的原因。当然，我们挖掘了我们的特定主题并为我们自己的科学问题寻找灵感，但这是一个富有成效的过程，我们毫不怀疑其他领域的同行可以从一些“旧文学”阅读中受益匪浅！本社论中表达的观点是作者的观点，不一定是 ACS 的观点。本社论中表达的观点是作者的观点，不一定是 ACS 的观点。
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