Self-emulsification in chemical and pharmaceutical technologies

The interest in the low energy self-emulsification techniques has exploded in the recent years, driven by three main trends: by the transition to “greener” technologies in both its aspects—less energy consumption and replacement of the petrochemicals by natural ingredients; by the costly and maintenance demanding equipment for nanoemulsification; and by the quest for efficient and robust self-emulsifying formulations for oral drug delivery. Here, we first present a brief overview of the main known low-energy methods for nanoemulsion formation, focusing on their mechanistic understanding and discussing some recent advances in their development and applications. Next, we review three conceptually new approaches for self-emulsification in chemical technologies, discovered in the last several years. The colloidal features and the specific requirements of the self-emulsifying drug-delivery systems (SEDDS) are also discussed briefly. Finally, we summarize the current trends and the main challenges in this vivid research area.     

Alkaline oxygen evolution: exploring synergy between fcc and hcp cobalt nanoparticles entrapped in N-doped graphene

Herein, we report a Mott-Schottky catalyst by entrapping cobalt nanoparticles inside the N-doped graphene shell (Co@NC). The Co@NC delivered excellent oxygen evolution activity with an overpotential of merely 248 mV at a current density of 10 mA cm^–2 with promising long-term stability. The importance of Co encapsulated in NC has further been demonstrated by synthesizing Co nanoparticles without NC shell. The synergy between the hexagonal close-packed (hcp) and face-centered cubic (fcc) Co plays a major role to improve the OER activity, whereas the NC shell optimizes the electronic structure, improves the electron conductivity, and offers a large number of active sites in Co@NC. The density functional theory calculations have revealed that the hcp Co has a dominant role in the surface reaction of electrocatalytic oxygen evolution, whereas the fcc phase induces the built-in electric field at the interfaces with N-doped graphene to accelerate the H⁺ ion transport.     

On generalized perfect difference sets constructed from Sidon sets

Let $\mathbb{N}$ be the set of positive integers. For a nonempty set A of integers and every integer u, denote by $d_A(u)$ the number of $(a,a^{\prime })$ with $a,a^{\prime }\in A$ such that $u=a-a^{\prime }$. For a sequence S of positive integers, let $S(x)$ be the counting function of S. The set $A\subseteq \mathbb{N}$ is called a perfect difference set if $d_A(u)=1$ for every positive integer u. In 2008, Cilleruelo and Nathanson (2008) [4] constructed dense perfect difference sets from dense Sidon sets. In this paper, as a main result, we prove that: let $f:\mathbb{N}\to \mathbb{N}$ be an increasing function satisfying $f(n)\ge 2$ for any positive integer n, then for every Sidon set B and every function $\omega (x)\to \infty$, there exists a set $A\subseteq \mathbb{N}$ such that $d_A(u)=f(u)$ for every positive integer u and $B(x/3)-\omega (x)\le A(x)\le B(x/3)+\omega (x)$ for all $x\ge C_{f,B,\omega }$.     

9-(4-溴丁基)-9H-咔唑的相转移催化合成、表征及室温磷光性能研究——推荐一个大学化学综合实验

推荐了一个大学化学综合实验"9-(4-溴丁基)-9H-咔唑的相转移催化合成、表征及室温磷光性能研究"。实验利用相转移催化合成9-(4-溴丁基)-9H-咔唑分子,采用核磁共振、高分辨质谱和红外光谱对其分子结构进行表征,并利用紫外-可见吸收光谱、稳态/瞬态荧光光谱和密度泛函(DFT)理论计算对其室温磷光性能进行研究。本综合实验涵盖了有机化学、分析化学、物理化学、仪器分析以及理论化学的知识点,建议纳入化学专业高年级综合实验课程。     

Regulating Phase Junction and Oxygen Vacancies of TiO2 Nanoarrays for Boosted Photoelectrochemical Water Oxidation

In this study, we have provided a facile solution to synthesize well-aligned titanium dioxide nanorods by using hydrothermal reaction. By calcining the materials under different atmospheres and temperatures, a batch of titanium dioxides with excellent oxygen evolution reaction(OER) catalytic efficiency were obtained. This new structured TiO₂ photoanode material yields a high photocurrent density of 5.69 mA/cm² at 1.23 V vs. reversible hydrogen electrode(RHE) under simulated solar light(100 mW/cm²). Surface photovoltage techniques and other measurements were carried out to confirm that the enhanced photoelectrochemical performances were attributed to the synergistic effect of the phase junction and a certain content of surface states, which accelerate the separation and transmission of the photogenerated charges. This material with phase junction and surface states promises a potential application in the field of photoelectric catalysis under solar light.     

An analysis of overlapping Schwarz method for a weakly coupled system of singularly perturbed convection-diffusion equations

In this article, we have developed an overlapping Schwarz method for a weakly coupled system of convection-diffusion equations. The method splits the original domain into two overlapping subdomains. A hybrid difference scheme is proposed in which on the boundary layer region, we use the central finite difference scheme on a uniform mesh, whereas on the nonlayer region, we use the mid-point difference scheme on a uniform mesh. It is shown that the numerical approximations converge in the maximum norm to the exact solution. We have proved that, when appropriate subdomains are used, the method produces almost second-order convergence. Furthermore, it is shown that two iterations are sufficient to achieve the expected accuracy. Numerical examples are presented to support the theoretical results. The main advantage of this method used with the proposed scheme is that it reduces iteration counts very much and easily identifies in which iteration the Schwarz iterate terminates.     

Existence of multiple and sign-changing solutions for a second-order nonlinear functional difference equation with periodic coefficients

In the present paper, we apply the method of invariant sets of descending flow to establish a series of criteria to ensure that a second-order nonlinear functional difference equation with periodic boundary conditions possesses at least one trivial solution and three nontrivial solutions. These nontrivial solutions consist of sign-changing solutions, positive solutions and negative solutions. Moreover, as an application of our theoretical results, an example is elaborated. Our results generalize and improve some existing ones.     

光寻址电位传感器的正交相位检波检测方法

光寻址电位传感器的幅度检测方法易受噪声干扰,灵敏度差,信噪比和精度低,且受调制光源的影响较大,影响检测结果的准确性.为此提出了一种基于正交相位检波的光寻址电位传感器检测方法.该方法是将光寻址电位传感器的输出光电流信号分别与两路正交信号相乘,通过低通滤波提取直流分量并相除,即可得到光寻址电位传感器的输出信号相位信息.与已有的光寻址电位传感器相位检测方法相比,该方法具有算法复杂度低、实时性高的优点.实验研究了调制光源光强对光寻址电位传感器幅度检测和相位检测的影响,对比分析了光寻址电位传感器的传统幅度检测方法与正交相位检波检测方法对pH检测的灵敏度、线性度及信噪比.结果表明,相比于幅度检测方法,调制光源光强对光寻址电位传感器的相位检测影响更小,在频率为10 kHz,pH的范围为1.68~10.01的情况下,相位检测方法比幅度检测方法测得的灵敏度增加了7 mV/pH,精度提高了14.9 mpH,非线性误差减小了0.003%,均方差减少了0.1051×10^-5,信噪比增加了8.2827 dB.该方法特别适用于弱光下的光寻址电位传感器检测.     

L1-type smoothness indicators based weighted essentially nonoscillatory scheme for Hamilton-Jacobi equations

This article presents an improved fifth-order finite difference weighted essentially nonoscillatory (WENO) scheme to solve Hamilton-Jacobi equations. A new type of nonlinear weights is introduced with the construction of local smoothness indicators on each local stencil that are measured with the help of generalized undivided differences in L¹-norm. A novel global smoothness measurement is also constructed with the help of local measurements from its linear combination. Numerical experiments are conducted in one- and two-dimensions to demonstrate the performance enhancement, resolution power, numerical accuracy for the proposed scheme, and compared it with the classical WENO scheme.