Sulfide ion electrooxidation catalysed by cobalt phthalocyanine microcrystals

Electrooxidation of sulfide ion catalysed by microcrystals of cobalt phthalocyanine was investigated by cyclic voltammetry in 0.5M KNO₃ at pH 9.22. Traces of catalyst were immobilized at the surface of a paraffin-impregnated graphite electrode by the mechanical transfer of its powder. The electro-oxidation of HS^– proceeds in two irreversible steps, with the first peak between 0 V and –0.12 V and the second at 0.17 V. The first step is second order in HS^– and its product is the adsorbed disulfide, which may further dissociate to give adsorbed sulfur atoms. The reduction of sulfur occurs at –0.1 V.     

Peroxides of higher aliphatic ethers

The oxidation of higher aliphatic ethers with oxygen at 50° yields two peroxides as the main oxidation products for each ether, namely a dihydroperoxy-dialkyl ether and a dihydroperoxy-dialkyl peroxide. The mass spectra of these compounds are recorded and the main fragmentation pattern is discussed.     

Reduction of a simple ion at permeable film-coated stationary electrodes

Recently proposed chemically prepared electrodes are coated with a thin, permeable, insulating, inert film which does not react with the depolarizer, does not allow depolarization on its surface and does not change the standard constant of the depolarization rate. It only changes the diffusion coefficient of a certain ion near the surface of the electrode. In this article, the theory of a reversible reduction of a simple ion at a film-coated stationary planar electrode is developed. If the film thickness is comparable with a diffusion layer thickness, considerable changes on the i-t curves can occur, but the position of the half-wave potential will remain constant.     

Chaos in phase conjugation: physical vs numerical instabilities

Four-wave mixing equations in photorefractive media are approximated by different dynamical models and treated by different numerical methods. It is shown that the onset of instabilities and irregular behaviour in the same crystal, with a single wave mixing region, may be dependent both on the model used and the numerical method applied. Long-time irregular dynamics following from any finite-order difference schemes should be viewed with caution.     

Kinetics of electrode reaction coupled to ion transfer across the liquid/liquid interface

In the theoretical model it is assumed that a graphite disk electrode is covered by a thin film of solution of decamethylferrocene (dmfc) and some electrolyte CX in nitrobenzene and immersed in an aqueous solution of the electrolyte MX. Oxidation of dmfc is accompanied by the transfer of anion X ⁻ from water into nitrobenzene since it is also assumed that cations dmfc ⁺ and C ⁺ are insoluble in water and cation M ⁺ is insoluble in nitrobenzene. Kinetic parameters of the electrode reaction can be determined if the total potential difference across the nitrobenzene/water interface is maintained constant by adding the electrolytes CX and MX in concentrations which are much higher than the initial concentration of dmfc in nitrobenzene.     

Spatiotemporal soliton clusters in strongly nonlocal media with variable potential coefficients

We study analytically and numerically spatiotemporal solitons in three-dimensional strongly nonlocal nonlinear media. A broad class of exact self-similar solutions to the strongly nonlocal Schrödinger equation with variable potential coefficients has been obtained. We find robust soliton cluster solutions of the accessible type, constructed with the help of Kummer and Hermite functions. They are characterized by the set of three quantum numbers. Dynamical features of these spatiotemporal accessible solitons are discussed. The validity of the analytical solutions and their stability is verified by means of direct numerical simulations.     

Photonic Floquet topological insulators in atomic ensembles

The feasibility of realizing a photonic Floquet topological insulator (PFTI) in an atomic ensemble is demonstrated. The interference of three coupling fields will split energy levels periodically, to form a periodic refractive index structure with honeycomb profile that can be adjusted by different frequency detunings and intensities of the coupling fields. This in turn will affect the appearance of Dirac cones in momentum space. When the honeycomb lattice sites are helically ordered along the propagation direction, gaps open at Dirac points, and one obtains a PFTI in an atomic vapor. An obliquely incident beam will be able to move along the zigzag edge of the lattice without scattering energy into the PFTI, due to the confinement of edge states. The appearance of Dirac cones and the formation of a photonic Floquet topological insulator can be shut down by the third‐order nonlinear susceptibility and opened up by the fifth‐order one.