Chemical Pictures

This series provides the chemical physics field with a forum for critical, authoritative evaluations of advances in every area of the discipline. Volume 131 includes chapters on: Polyelectrolyte Dynamics; Hydrodynamics and Slip at the Liquid-Solid Interface; Structure of Ionic Liquids and Ionic Liquid Compounds: Are Ionic Liquids Genuine Liquids in the Conventional Sense?; Chemical Reactions at Very High Pressure; Classical Description of Nonadiabatic Quantum Dynamics; and Non-Born Oppenheimer Variational Calculations of Atoms and Molecules with Explicitly Correlated Gaussian Basis Functions.

The progress in computer technology during the last 10-15 years has enabled the performance of ever more precise quantum mechanical calculations related to structure and interactions of chemical compounds. However, the qualitative models relating electronic structure to molecular geometry have not progressed at the same pace. There is a continuing need in chemistry for simple concepts and qualitatively clear pictures that are also quantitatively comparable to ab initio quantum chemical calculations. Topological methods and, more specifically, graph theory as a fixed-point topology, provide in principle a chance to fill this gap. With its more than 100 years of applications to chemistry, graph theory has proven to be of vital importance as the most natural language of chemistry. The explosive development of chemical graph theory during the last 20 years has increasingly overlapped with quantum chemistry. Besides contributing to the solution of various problems in theoretical chemistry, this development indicates that topology is an underlying principle that explains the success of quantum mechanics and goes beyond it, thus promising to bear more fruit in the future.

Chemical Imaging Analysis covers the advancements made over the last 50 years in chemical imaging analysis, including different analytical techniques and the ways they were developed and refined to link the composition and structure of manmade and natural materials at the nano/micro scale to the functional behavior at the macroscopic scale. In a development process that started in the early 1960s, a variety of specialized analytical techniques was developed – or adapted from existing techniques – and these techniques have matured into versatile and powerful tools for visualizing structural and compositional heterogeneity. This text explores that journey, providing a general overview of imaging techniques in diverse fields, including mass spectrometry, optical spectrometry including X-rays, electron microscopy, and beam techniques. Provides comprehensive coverage of analytical techniques used in chemical imaging analysis Explores a variety of specialized techniques Provides a general overview of imaging techniques in diverse fields