Moisture sorption, transport, and hydrolytic degradation in polylactide

Management of moisture penetration and hydrolytic degradation of polylactide (PLA) is extremely important during the manufacturing, shipping, storage, and end-use of PLA products. Moisture transport, crystallization, and degradation, in PLA have been measured through a variety of experimental techniques including size-exclusion chromatography, differential scanning calorimetry, and X-ray diffraction. Quartz crystal microbalance and dynamic vapor sorption experiments have also been used to measure moisture sorption isotherms in PLA films with varying crystallinity. A surprising result is that, within the accuracy of the experiments, crystalline and amorphous PLA films exhibit identical sorption isotherms.     

A high-gain porous silicon metal–semiconductor–metal photodetector through rapid thermal oxidation and rapid thermal annealing

2 tungsten lamp at 1.83 mA excited by a 0.85-mW 675-nm laser diode. We also demonstrate that the dark current could be greatly reduced through rapid thermal oxidation and rapid thermal annealing. Received: 4 August 1997/Accepted: 28 May 1998     

Enhanced electrodeposition of indium hexacyanoferrate thin films through improved plating solution stability

An ordinary plating solution for indium hexacyanoferrate (InHCF) thin film deposition, mainly composed of equal concentrations of In³⁺ and [Fe(CN)₆]^3–, usually forms precipitates rapidly when either concentration is higher than few millimolar. This contributes to the plating solution's instability. Moreover, electrodeposited capacities are limited accordingly. In this work, the plating solution's stability and the electrodeposition of InHCF were greatly enhanced by adding a large amount of K⁺ and/or H⁺. It was found that a 10-mM plating solution added with 1 M HCl and 1 M KCl could be stored as fresh over a one-week period, whereas an unmodified plating solution became useless within a couple of minutes. Also, such cationic additions, especially adding H⁺, increased the electrodeposited capacity ca. 18 times at least, as compared with that obtained from the unmodified plating solution. Furthermore, related enhancing mechanisms were proposed and verified. To sum up, this study offers a means for better InHCF electrodeposition and should promote the applications of InHCF films. Electronic Publication     

Effects of matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization experimental conditions on quantitative compositional analysis of ethylene oxide/propylene oxide copolymers

Matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI) mass spectrometry has the potential to become a valuable tool for the compositional analysis of copolymers. For a copolymer composed of structurally very similar building blocks with minor chain length changes, one would expect the relative peak intensities observed in the MALDI mass spectra to reflect its composition, at least within a narrow mass range. However, we show that variations in experimental conditions in MALDI can have a significant effect on the mass spectral appearance of a copolymer. The effects of concentration, laser power, type of matrices and solvents on mass spectra of an ethylene oxide/propylene oxide copolymer are illustrated. These somewhat surprising results show that great care needs to be exercised when interpreting copolymer spectra for compositional analysis, even for copolymers with structurally similar monomers. This work also points out that further studies are needed to better understand and optimize spectral acquisition conditions for reliable copolymer compositional analysis by MALDI.     

Gradient elution capillary electrochromatography and hyphenation with nuclear magnetic resonance

Coupling of gradient capillary electrochromatography (gradient CEC) and capillary zone electrophoresis (CZE) with nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR) was performed using a recently developed capillary NMR interface. This technique was applied for the analysis of pharmaceuticals and food. An analgesic was investigated using isocratic and gradient continuous-flow CEC-NMR. Comparison of the results demonstrated the superiority of gradient CEC over isocratic CEC. Aspartame and caffeine, both ingredients of soft beverages, were separated and analyzed by continuous flow CZE-NMR. The order of elution could be reversed by altering the pH. This reversal led to an increased sample concentration in the NMR detection cell, thus allowing the acquisition of a totally correlated spectroscopy (TOCSY) two-dimensional (2-D) spectrum of the synthetic peptide aspartame.     

A lower bound for the optimal crossing-free Hamiltonian cycle problem

Consider a drawing in the plane ofK _n , the complete graph onn vertices. If all edges are restricted to be straight line segments, the drawing is called rectilinear. Consider a Hamiltonian cycle in a drawing ofK _n . If no pair of the edges of the cycle cross, it is called a crossing-free Hamiltonian cycle (cfhc). Let (n) represent the maximum number of cfhc's of any drawing ofK _n , and (n) the maximum number of cfhc's of any rectilinear drawing ofK _n . The problem of determining (n) and (n), and determining which drawings have this many cfhc's, is known as the optimal cfhc problem. We present a brief survey of recent work on this problem, and then, employing a recursive counting argument based on computer enumeration, we establish a substantially improved lower bound for (n) and (n). In particular, it is shown that (n) is at leastk × 3.2684 ⁿ . We conjecture that both (n) and (n) are at mostc × 4.5 ⁿ .This research, part of which was conducted at Queen's University, was supported by an N.S.E.R.C. postgraduate scholarship.