Mechanism of BPh3-Catalyzed N-Methylation of Amines with CO2 and Phenylsilane: Cooperative Activation of Hydrosilane

BPh₃ catalyzes the N-methylation of secondary amines and the C-methylenation (methylene-bridge formation between aromatic rings) of N,N-dimethylanilines or 1-methylindoles in the presence of CO₂ and PhSiH₃; these reactions proceed at 30–40 °C under solvent-free conditions. In contrast, B(C₆F₅)₃ shows little or no activity. ¹¹B NMR spectra suggested the generation of [HBPh₃]⁻. The detailed mechanism of the BPh₃-catalyzed N-methylation of N-methylaniline ( 1 ) with CO₂ and PhSiH₃ was studied by using DFT calculations. BPh₃ promotes the conversion of two substrates (N-methylaniline and CO₂) into a zwitterionic carbamate to give three-component species [Ph(Me)(H)N⁺CO₂⁻⋅⋅⋅BPh₃]. The carbamate and BPh₃ act as the nucleophile and Lewis acid, respectively, for the activation of PhSiH₃ to generate [HBPh₃]⁻, which is used to produce key CO₂-derived species, such as silyl formate and bis(silyl)acetal, essential for the N-methylation of 1 . DFT calculations also suggested other mechanisms involving water for the generation of [HBPh₃]⁻ species.     

pH-Sensitive Oscillatory Motion of a Urease Motor on the Urea Aqueous Phase

A self-propelled object coupled with an enzyme reaction between urease and urea was investigated at the air/aqueous interface. A plastic object that was fixed to a urease-immobilized filter paper was used as a self-propelled object, termed a urease motor, placed on an aqueous urea solution. The driving force of the urease motor is the difference in the surface tension around the object. Oscillatory motion or no motion was triggered depending on the initial pH of the urea solution. Both the frequency and maximum speed of the oscillatory motion varied depending on the initial pH of the water phase. The mechanisms underlying the oscillatory motion and no motion were discussed in relation to the bell-shaped enzyme activity of urease in the enzyme reaction and the surface tension around the urease motor.     

Optimization of the surface texture for silicon carbide sliding in water

Surface texturing has been recognized as an effective means to improve the tribological performances of sliding surfaces. Usually, generation additional hydrodynamic pressure to increase the load carrying capacity is regarded as the most significant effect of surface texture. In the case of silicon carbide sliding against identical material in water, the experimental results indicate that surface texture is also helpful to improve the running-in progress to smooth the contact surfaces, showing another reason to result in low friction. Based on the consideration of enhancing the generation of hydrodynamic pressure and improving running-in progress, a surface texture pattern, which was combined with large (circle, 350 μm in diameter) and small (rectangular, 40 μm in length) dimples, was designed to maximize the texture effect on the load carrying capacity of SiC surfaces sliding in water. The friction coefficient of such textured surface was evaluated and compared with that of untextured and those only with large or small dimples only. The friction reduction mechanisms of the patterns with different dimples in size are discussed.     

When does the subadditivity theorem for multiplier ideals hold?

Demailly, Ein and Lazarsfeld proved the subadditivity theorem for multiplier ideals on nonsingular varieties, which states the multiplier ideal of the product of ideals is contained in the product of the individual multiplier ideals. We prove that, in the two-dimensional case, the subadditivity theorem holds on log terminal singularities. However, in the higher dimensional case, we have several counterexamples. We consider the subadditivity theorem for monomial ideals on toric rings and construct a counterexample on a three-dimensional toric ring.

     

Compact directed acyclic word graphs for a sliding window

Suffix trees are a well-known and widely-studied data structure highly useful for string matching. The suffix tree of a string w can be constructed in O(n) time and space, where n denotes the length of w. Larsson achieved an efficient algorithm to maintain suffix trees for a sliding window. It contributes to prediction by partial matching (PPM) style statistical data compression scheme. Compact directed acyclic word graphs (CDAWGs) are a more space-economical data structure for indexing strings. In this paper we propose a linear-time algorithm to maintain CDAWGs for a sliding window.     

Quasi-monocyclic near-infrared pulses with a stabilized carrier-envelope phase characterized by noncollinear cross-correlation frequency-resolved optical gating.

Precise characterization of noncollinear optical parametric amplifier idler pulses that have bandwidths of more than an octave with a center wavelength at 990 nm was demonstrated. The method employed was cross-correlation frequency-resolved optical gating with broadband sum-frequency mixing to take advantage of the idler's angular dispersion. Compression to near the transform limit was achieved to produce quasi-monocyclic near-infrared pulses by use of a deformable membrane mirror.     

Alternating copolyfluorenevinyles with polynuclear aromatic moieties: Synthesis,photophysics, and electroluminescence

Three new copolymers, namely poly(fluorenevinylene‐alt‐naphthalenevinylene) ( N ), poly(fluorenevinylene‐alt‐anthracenevinylene) ( A ) and poly(fluorenevinylene‐alt‐pyrenevinylene) ( P ), were synthesized by Heck coupling of 9,9‐dihexyl‐2, 7‐divinylfluorene with a polynuclear aromatic dibromide. The 9,10‐disubstituted anthracene was obtained exclusively for A while N and P were obtained as a mixture of two isomers with predominant the 1,4‐disubstituted naphthalene and 1,8‐disubstituted pyrene, respectively. The polymers were soluble in common organic solvents and decomposed above 370 °C. Their glass transition temperature increased from 58 to 110 °C by increasing the number of the phenyl rings of the polynuclear aromatic moiety. Rather high‐efficiency blue and blue‐greenish photoluminescence (PL) of these copolymers in solution was largely decreased in their films, indicating the presence of concentration quenching in the solid state. The OLED using these polymers demonstrated green EL in the case of copolymers N and A , and red EL in the P derivative with η_EL = 0.26–0.31%. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part A: Polym Chem 45: 4661–4670, 2007     

Phase transitions of lanthanide monophosphides with NaCl-type structure at high pressures

Lanthanide monophosphides LnP (Ln = La, Ce, Pr, Nd, Sm, Gd, Tb, Tm and Yb) with a NaCl-type structure have systematically been prepared at high temperatures. Using synchrotron radiation, X-ray diffractions of LnP have been studied up to 61 GPa at room temperature. The NaCl---CsCl transition for CeP is found at around 25 GPa. First-order phase transitions of LnP (Ln = La, Pr and Nd) with the crystallographic change occur at around 24, 26 and 30 GPa, respectively. The structure of the high pressure phases of these phosphides is a body center tetragonal structure (Ln: 0, 0, 0; P: 1/2, 1/2, 1/2; space group P4/mmm), which can be seen as the distorted CsCl-type structure. The Pr---P distance in the high pressure form of PrP is 2.789 Å. This almost agrees with the sum of covalent radii of Pr and P. The Pr---P bond has the covalent character at very high pressures. Similar results are also obtained for LaP and NdP. The pressure-induced phase transitions of SmP, GdP, TbP, TmP and YbP occur at around 35, 40, 38, 53 and 51 GPa, respectively. The structure of the high pressure phase is unknown. The phase transitions of LnP with many f-electrons are not due to the mechanism of the ordinary NaCl---CsCl transition. The transition pressures of LnP increase with decreasing the lattice constants in the NaCl-type structure, which decrease with increasing atomic number of the lanthanide atoms.