ONS Solubility Challenge Book cited in a Langmuir nanotechnology paper

An interesting application of the data from the Open Notebook Science Solubility Challenge has recently been reported in Langmuir: "Enhanced Ordering in Gold Nanoparticles Self-Assembly through Excess Free Ligands" by Cindy Y. Lau, Huigao Duan, Fuke Wang, Chao Bin He, Hong Yee Low and Joel K. W. Yang (Feb 24, 2011).

The context is as follows, and the reference is to Edition 3 of the ONS Solubility Challenge Book.

Although to our best knowledge there lacks literature value of OA solubility in the two solvents, the 10-fold better solubility of 1-otadecylamine (sic), the saturated version of oleylamine, in toluene than hexane is in line with our hypothesis.(33) This increased solubility caused the OA molecules that were originally attached to the AuNPs to gradually detach from the AuNPs, which is supported by our observations in poor AuNP stability and surface-pressure isotherms.

This is a nice application of solubility to understand and control the behavior of gold nanoparticles. It is in line with some of the applications I discussed at a recent Nanoinformatics conference, where I think there is a place for the interlinking of information between solubility and nanotechnology databases.

I have to admit that it is somewhat ironic to see this citation in Langmuir, given the controversy about a year ago (post and FF discussion) regarding the citation of non-traditional literature.