Comparison between the pervaporation and vapor permeation performances of polycarbonate membranes

The pervaporation and vapor permeation performance of symmetrical and asymmetrical polycarbonate membranes, prepared via a dry-phase inversion and wet-phase inversion methods, respectively, were studied by measuring the permeation rate and separation factor. It was found that the polymer concentration effect on the pervaporation performance for the symmetrical polycarbonate membrane was lower than that for the asymmetrical polycarbonate membrane. Compared with pervaporation, vapor permeation has a significantly increased separation factor with a decreased permeation rate for the symmetrical polycarbonate membrane. Water molecules preferentially dissolve into the symmetrical polycarbonate membrane and diffuse easily through the membrane.     

Transient electrophoresis of a charged porous particle

The starting electrophoretic motion of a porous, uniformly charged, spherical particle, which models a solvent-permeable and ion-penetrable polyelectrolyte coil or floc of nanoparticles, in an arbitrary electrolyte solution due to the sudden application of an electric field is studied for the first time. The unsteady Stokes/Brinkman equations with the electric force term governing the fluid velocity fields are solved by means of the Laplace transform. An analytical formula for the electrophoretic mobility of the porous sphere is obtained as a function of the dimensionless parameters , , , and , where a is the radius of the particle, κ is the Debye screening parameter, λ is the reciprocal of the square root of the fluid permeability in the particle, ρ_p and ρ are the mass densities of the particle and fluid, respectively, ν is the kinematic viscosity of the fluid, and t is the time. The electrophoretic mobility normalized by its steady-state value increases monotonically with increases in and , but decreases monotonically with an increase in , keeping the other parameters unchanged. In general, a porous particle with a high fluid permeability trails behind an identical porous particle with a lower permeability and a corresponding hard particle in the growth of the normalized electrophoretic mobility The normalized electrophoretic acceleration of the porous sphere decreases monotonically with an increase in the time and increases with an increase in from zero at .     

Aggregation-driven growth of size-tunable organic nanoparticles using electronically altered conjugated polymers

A novel class of monodisperse conjugated polymer nanoparticles have been readily prepared by the facile reprecipitation of poly{1,3-bis[2-(3-alkylthienyl)]azulene} or poly{1,3-bis[2-(3-alkoxythienyl)]azulene}. The multicomponent poly(bithiophene-alt-azulene) macromolecules were efficiently self-assembled into a wide range of size-tunable nanoparticles from a few tens to five hundred nanometers via the hydrophobic and pi-stacking effects in the mixed chloroform/methanol solutions. Electronically altered polymer structures with different alkyl or alkoxy substitutes exhibited variable self-assembling behaviors to precisely tune the size and the optical/electronic properties of nanoparticles. A strong size dependence of continuous bathochromic absorption and significant enhanced emission were observed with the increase of particle size. A linear relationship between the absorption or fluorescence intensities and the particle size was demonstrated as well, and this is very useful to probe the intermolecular interactions and the size evolutions of conjugated polymer nanoparticles. After the size-dependent optical and electronic properties are created, they can be further optimized to improve the performance of materials prior to the use in novel organic nanodevices in a cost-effective way.     

Reactions of RSe− (R = Me,Ph) Groups in [RSeFe(CO)4I and [RSeCr(CO)5−]

The anionic [MeSeFe(CO)₄] and [MeSeCr(CO)₅] complexes were synthesized by reaction of [PPN][HFe(CO)₄] and [PPN][HCr(CO)₅] with MeSeSeMe respectively via nucleophilic cleavage of the Se-Se bond. The ease of cleavage of the Se-Se bond follows the nucleophilic strength of metal-hydride complexes. Methylation of [RSeCr(CO)₅^?] by the soft alkylating agent MeI resulted in the formation of neutral (MeSeMe)Cr(CO)₅ in THF at 0°C. In contrast, the [ICr(CO)₅^?] was isolated at ambient temperature. Reaction of [MeSeFe(CO)₄^?] or [MeSeCr(CO)₅^?] with HBF₄ yielded (CO)₃Fc(μ-SeMe)₂Fe(CO)₃ dimer and anionic [(CO )₅Cr (μ-SeMe)Cr(CO)₅^?] respectively, and no neutral (HSeMe)Fe(CO)₄ and (HSeMe)Cr(CO)₅ were detected spectrally (IR) even at low temperature. Reaction of NOBF₄ or [Ph₃C][BF₄] and [MeSeCr(CO)₅^?] resulted in the neutral monodentate (MeSeSeMe)Cr(CO)₅ complex. Addition of 1 equiv CpFe(CO)₂I to 2 equiv [MeSeCr(CO)₅^?] gave CpFe(CO)₂(SeMe) and the anionic [(CO)₅Cr(μ-SeMe)Cr(CO)₅^?] in THF at ambient temperature.     

Oxidation-Induced Structural Alterations and Its Effect on Chaperone Function of Rat Lens α-Crystallin

An ascorbate-FeCl₃-EDTA-H₂O₂ system was used to oxidize rat lens α-crystallins. Under this oxidative insult, the chaperone activity of α-crystallin toward γ-crystallin was shown to decrease significantly, which is quite different from the result reported by Wang and Spector. (Invest. Ophthalmol. Vis. Sci. 1995 , 36, 311-321.) Fluorescence spectroscopy and circular dichroism were employed to characterize the structural changes of oxidized α-crystallin. It was found that fluorescence intensity of l-anilinonaphthalene-8-sul-phonate (ANS) bound to oxidized α-crystallin increased comparing to that bound to normal α-crystallin, suggesting oxidation causes the exposure of more hydrophobic regions. Further, α-crystallin's fluorescence intensity in response to tryptophan residues showed a pseudo first order decline. Amino acid analysis of normal versus oxidized α-crystallin confirmed actual decline in tryptophan levels, showing about 80% of tryptophan being modified after 10-hour oxidation. Circular dichroism showed both changes in the secondary and tertiary structures of oxidized α-crystallin, characterized by a large loss of aromatic-type amino acid interactions and a large loss of β-sheet structure. In conclusion, modified tryptophan, secondary and tertiary structural changes of α-crystallin correlate best with the reduction of chaperone function, the curves all showing a linear slope for 10 hours, then plateauing. These results indicate that the decrease of α-crystallin chaperone activity is attributed to the structural changes.     

Theoretical study of the surface energy and electronic structure of pyrite FeS2 (100) using a total-energy pseudopotential method, CASTEP

The geometric and electronic structures of FeS(2) (100) surface have been studied by a quantum-mechanical calculation using a total-energy pseudopotential code, CASTEP. The (100) surface is very stable and does not give any significant geometric relaxation. The electronic structure of FeS(2) (100) surface is characterized by the appearance of new native surface states in the bulk band gap, which correspond to antibonding mixed Fea-Ssp(3) states. These surface states play an important role as mediators of electron transfer on both anodic and cathodic sites in the incipient oxidation of pyrite. Moreover, the (100) surface has small band gaps and shows some metallic character. It is predicted that the rate of cathodic reductive reaction of O(2) in the incipient oxidation of pyrite is much faster than previously considered. The transport of electrons from the anodic sites to the cathodic sites on the (100) surface is faster and hole injection of anodic sites is not the rate-determining step. So we can deduce that the rate-determining step of incipient oxidation for pyrite consists of both electron transfer of pyrite/aqueous O(2) interface and the splitting of H(2)O.     

Determination of phenolic compounds using high-performance liquid chromatography with Ce-Tween 20 chemiluminescence detection

A novel method for the simultaneous determination of phenolic compounds such as salicylic acid, resorcinol, phloroglucinol, p-hydroxybenzoic acid, 2,4-dihydroxybenzoic acid, and m-nitrophenol by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) coupled with chemiluminescence (CL) detection was developed. The procedure was based on the chemiluminescent enhancement by phenolic compounds of the cerium(IV)-Tween 20 system in a sulfuric acid medium. The separation was carried out with an isocratic elution or with a gradient elution using a mixture of methanol and 1.5% acetic acid. For six phenolic compounds, the detection limits (3σ) were in the range 1.40-5.02 ng/ml and the relative standard deviations (n=11) for the determination of 0.1 μg/ml compounds were in the range 1.9-2.9%. The CL reaction was well compatible with the mobile phase of HPLC, no baseline drift often occurred in HPLC-CL detection was observed with a gradient elution. The method has been successfully applied to the determination of salicylic acid and resorcinol in Dermatitis Clear Tincture and p-hydroxybenzoic acid in apple juices.     

Complexation of silver and co-recovered metals with novel aza-crown ether macrocycles by electrospray ionization mass spectrometry

Electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (ESI-MS) is used to evaluate the metal binding selectivities of an array of novel caged macrocycles for silver, gold, copper, nickel, zinc, iron, lead, manganese and alkali metal ions. It is found that five of the new compounds display silver selectivity, and their relative affinities for various metals depend on the type, number, and arrangement of heteroatoms (N, O), the cavity size, and the presence of aromatic substituents. Alkali metal cation binding studies are used to evaluate the size-selectivities of the cavities of the macrocycles. Electronic structure calculation by B3LYP density function theory methods were used to model the metal complexes. The presence of nitrogen atoms in the macrocyclic ring is essential for silver selectivity over other transition metals and alkali metal ions, and the presence of aromatic groups also enhances silver avidity. Macrocycle 3, a triaza-18-crown-6 analog modified with two phenyl groups and a cage group, is capable of selective extraction of Ag+ from aqueous solutions in the presence of other transition metal ions and the most common alkali and alkaline earth metal ions.     

Asynchronous multicanonical basin hopping method and its application to cobalt nanoclusters

The multicanonical basin hopping (MUBH) method, which uses a multicanonical weight in the basin hopping (BH) Monte Carlo method, was found to be very efficient for global optimization of large-scale systems such as Lennard-Jones clusters containing more than 150 atoms. We have implemented an asynchronous parallel version of the MUBH method using the message passing interface (MPI) to take advantage of the full usage of multiprocessors in either a homogeneous or heterogeneous computational environment. Based on the intrinsic properties of the Monte Carlo method, this MPI implementation used the task parallelism to minimize interthread data communication. For a Co nanocluster consisting of N atoms, we have applied the asynchronous multicanonical basin hopping (AMUBH) method (for 181 < N < or = 200), together with BH (for 2 < or = N < 150) and MUBH (for 150 < or = N < or = 180), to search for the molecular configuration of the global energy minimum. AMUBH becomes the only practical computational scheme for locating the energy minimum within realistic computational time for a relatively large cluster.