Influence of organic modifiers on morphology and crystallization of poly(ϵ‐caprolactone)/synthetic clay intercalated nanocomposites

ε‐caprolactone was polymerized in the presence of neat montmorillonite or organomontmorillonites to obtain a variety of poly(ε‐caprolactone) (PCL)‐based systems loaded with 10 wt % of the silicates. The materials were thoroughly investigated by different X‐ray scattering techniques to determine factors affecting structure of the systems. For one of the nanocomposites it was found that varying the temperature in the range corresponding to crystallization of PCL causes reversible changes in the interlayer distance of the organoclay. Extensive experimental and literature studies on this phenomenon provided clues indicating that this effect might be a result of two‐dimensional ordering of PCL chains inside the galleries of the silicate. Small angle X‐ray scattering and wide angle X‐ray scattering investigation of filaments oriented above melting point of PCL revealed that polymer lamellae were oriented perpendicularly to particles of unmodified silicate, while in PCL/organoclay systems they were found parallel to clay tactoids. Calorimetric and microscopic studies shown that clay particles are effective nucleating agents. In the nanocomposites, PCL crystallized 20‐fold faster than in the neat polymer. The crystallization rate in nanocomposites was also significantly higher than in microcomposite. Further research provided an insight how the presence of the filler affects crystalline fraction and spherulitic structure of the polymer matrix in the investigated systems. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part B: Polym Phys 45: 2350–2367, 2007     

Tracing Possible Structural Asymmetry of Silica Gel Used for Precoating Thin-Layer Chromatography Plates

JPC – Journal of Planar Chromatography – Modern TLC - We have previously described unexpected two-dimensionality in the thin-layer chromatographic separation of pairs of enantiomers of...     

About Rotational Transitions and Muon Transfer in Muonic Hydrogen–Helium Systems

Hyperfine Interactions - Rotational J=1→J=0 transitions in muonic molecule, (3Heμd) J ++, in [(3Heμd)++,2e]–D and [(3Heμd)++,e]+–D collisions are considered. The...     

Tunable properties of light propagation in photonic liquid crystal fibers

Tunable properties of light propagation in photonic crystal fibers filled with liquid crystals, called photonic liquid crystal fibers (PLCFs) are presented. The propagation properties of PLCFs strongly depend on contrast between refractive indices of the solid core (pure silica glass) and liquid crystals (LCs) filing the holes of the fiber. Due to relatively strong thermo-optical effect, we can change the refractive index of the LC by changing its temperature. Numerical analysis of light propagation in PLCF, based on two simulation methods, such as finite difference (FD) and multipole method (MM) is presented. The numerical results obtained are in good agreement with our earlier experimental results presented elsewhere [1].     

Directed and elliptic flow in 197Au+197Au at intermediate energies

Directed and elliptic flow for the ¹⁹⁷Au+¹⁹⁷Au system at incident energies between 40 and 150 MeV per nucleon has been measured using the INDRA 4π multi-detector. For semi-central collisions, the excitation function of elliptic flow shows a transition from in-plane to out-of-plane emission at around 100 MeV per nucleon. The directed flow changes sign at a bombarding energy between 50 and 60 MeV per nucleon and remains negative at lower energies. Molecular dynamics calculations (CHIMERA) indicate sensitivity of the global squeeze-out transition on the σ _NN and demonstrate the importance of angular momentum conservation in transport codes at low energies.     

Algorithms for finding connected separators between antipodal points

A set (or a collection of sets) contained in the Euclidean space Rm is symmetric if it is invariant under the antipodal map. Given a symmetric unicoherent polyhedron X (like an n-dimensional cube or a sphere) and an odd real function f defined on vertices of a certain symmetric triangulation of X, we algorithmically construct a connected symmetric separator of X by choosing a subcollection of the triangulation. Each element of the subcollection contains the vertices v and u such that f(v)f(u)?0.     

Support problem for the intermediate Jacobians of l-adic representations

We consider the support problem of Erdös in the context of l-adic representations of the absolute Galois group of a number field. Main applications of the results of the paper concern Galois cohomology of the Tate module of abelian varieties with real and complex multiplications, the algebraic K-theory groups of number fields and the integral homology of the general linear group of rings of integers. We answer the question of Corrales-Rodrigáñez and Schoof concerning the support problem for higher dimensional abelian varieties.     

The representation dimension of domestic weakly symmetric algebras

Auslander’s representation dimension measures how far a finite dimensional algebra is away from being of finite representation type. In [1], M. Auslander proved that a finite dimensional algebra A is of finite representation type if and only if the representation dimension of A is at most 2. Recently, R. Rouquier proved that there are finite dimensional algebras of an arbitrarily large finite representation dimension. One of the exciting open problems is to show that all finite dimensional algebras of tame representation type have representation dimension at most 3. We prove that this is true for all domestic weakly symmetric algebras over algebraically closed fields having simply connected Galois coverings.