Abnormal Nucleophilic Substitution on Methoxytropone Derivatives: Steric Strategy to Synthesize 5-Substituted Azulenes

Azulene is a non-alternant non-benzenoid aromatic system, and in turn, it possesses unusual photophysical properties. Azulene-based conjugated systems have received increasing interest in recent years as optoelectronic materials. Despite the routes available for the preparation of substituted azulene derivatives, there remain few methods that allow regioselective substitution on the seven-membered ring of azulenes due to the subtle reactivity difference among the various positions. This report explores the reactivity of substituted tropolones as the azulene precursors and also provides a new method to create 5-substituted azulenes. The reaction of cyanoacetate enolate with unsubstituted 2-methoxytropone affords azulene through the attack of the nucleophile on the C-2 center (normal pathway). We have observed that 3-substituted 2-methoxytropones undergo steric-guided nucleophilic addition at the C-7 center (abnormal pathway) to afford 5-substituted azulene derivatives. Based on this observation and DFT calculation, a new synthetic strategy is devised for the regioselective synthesis of 5-substituted multifunctional azulenes, which cannot be accessed by any other method.     

Facile Synthesis of 1,2-Disubstituted Benzimidazoles Usingp-Toluenesulfonic Acid through Grinding Method

Russian Journal of Organic Chemistry - An efficient synthetic method for the highly selective synthesis of pharmacologically active 1,2-disubstituted benzimidazole derivatives...     

ZnS/Fe2O3/Ag Ternary Nanocomposite Photocatalyst for the Degradation of Dyes Under Visible Light

Russian Journal of Physical Chemistry A - Recently the researchers have shown great interest on photocatalysis, especially in dyes degradation by nanocomposites under visible light. In this work,...     

F(1H-Pyrazol-4-yl)methylene-Hydrazide derivatives: Synthesis and antimicrobial activity

This paper investigates the seismic and collapse performance of shape memory alloy (SMA) braced steel frame structures considering the effects of various brace design parameters and ultimate state of SMAs. An SMA braced steel frame building is designed to have comparable strength and stiffness with a steel-moment resisting frame selected as case study building. Then, the stiffness and ultimate deformation capacity of the SMA braces in the initially designed reference SMA braced frame are systematically varied. First, the static pushover analysis and incremental dynamic analysis (IDA) are employed to illustrate the significance of SMA brace failure consideration in seismic performance assessment of steel frames with SMA elements. Then, the influence of SMA brace initial stiffness and ultimate deformation capacity on the seismic and collapse performance of SMA braced frames are studied through pushover analyses, nonlinear response history analyses, and IDA. The results show that the SMA brace initial stiffness does not affect the interstory drift and floor absolute acceleration response at design and maximum considered earthquake (MCE) level seismic hazard or collapse capacity of the frame. However, it has considerable influence on post-event functionality of the frame. It is also found that the SMA brace ultimate deformation capacity should be at least 80% of maximum inter-story drift demand at MCE level for satisfactory seismic performance, while larger values provide higher collapse capacity for the SMA braced frame.     

Kinetic modeling of liquid-phase esterification of acetic acid with n-butanol using heterogeneous poly(o-methylene p-toluene sulfonic acid) as catalyst

Liquid-phase esterification of acetic acid with n-butanol to n-butyl acetate is studied in the presence of a polymeric catalyst, that is, poly(o-methylene p-toluene sulfonic acid). The performance of the proposed catalyst is compared with the other commercially available homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysts in terms of its activity. Experiments are conducted in an isothermal stirred batch reactor to study the effects of speed of agitation, temperature, and catalyst loading on the rate of reaction. A concentration-based pseudo-homogeneous (PH) kinetic model and activity-based kinetic models such as PH, Eley-Rideal (ER), and Langmuir-Hinselwood-Hougen-Watson (LHHW) models are developed. All the models considered in this study resulted in similar percentage deviation close to 4%. Further, kinetic models are validated through additional experiments, and it is observed that the simple concentration-based PH model is able to predict experimental data with least deviation compared to activity-based PH, ER, and LHHW models. The developed kinetic models are also tested using the Fisher-Snedecor test (F-test) and are found to be acceptable. By incorporating both modeling data and validation data, the overall absolute average deviations of different models are found to be concentration-based PH model 4.354%, activity-based PH model 5.006%, ER I model 5.189%, ER II model 5.403%, ER III model 5.437%, and LHHW model 6.104%, illustrating the superiority of the simple concentration-based PH model.     

Water extract of red mud: an efficient and renewable medium for environmentally benign synthesis of 2-amino-4H-chromenes

Molecular Diversity - In this study, an efficient and convenient domino Michael addition/intramolecular cyclization protocol is presented for the synthesis of biologically relevant...     

Organophosphites: An Addition to the Arsenal of Organocatalysts

Organophosphites are nucleophilic in nature and can act as a good leaving group owing to the stability of the phosphite anion. This dual reactivity makes them good candidates for nucleophilic organocatalysis. However, phosphites were introduced only in 2004 as the umpolung catalyst for acylsilane substrates utilizing sequential Brook rearrangements. Very recently, phosphites have been reported to catalyze aza-rearrangements and radical reactions. In this review, we discuss the reactivity parameters to understand its lack of use, as well as the potential for catalysis.     

Investigation of the Ionic Conduction Mechanism in Carboxymethyl Cellulose/Chitosan Biopolymer Blend Electrolyte Impregnated with Ammonium Nitrate

In the present work, an attempt has been made to prepare a new natural biopolymer blend electrolyte of carboxymethyl cellulose/chitosan impregnated with NH₄NO₃ by the solution casting technique. The conductivity for the system was measured by impedance spectroscopy. The incorporation of 40 wt.% NH₄NO₃ optimized the ambient temperature conductivity of the electrolyte up to 1.03 × 10^?5 S cm^?1. All electrolytes were found to follow the Arrhenius relationship. Dielectric studies confirmed that the electrolytes obey non-Debye behavior. The temperature dependence of the power law exponent s for the highest conducting film can be represented by the correlated barrier hopping model.