Preface: Mechanics of soft materials and flexible structures

Acta Mechanica Sinica -     

Study on propagation efficiency and fidelity of subthreshold signal in feed-forward hybrid neural network under electromagnetic radiation

Nonlinear Dynamics - The hybrid neural model provides a computationally effective and biophysics-based neuron behavior model, which maintains its simplicity by incorporating the dynamics...     

Solar light-driven photocatalytic production of hypochlorous acid over Pt/WO3 in seawater for marine antifouling

The hypochlorous acid (HCIO) was synthesized from seawater by the Pt/WO₃ photocatalyst under visible-light irradiation. The effect of WO₃ morphology and Pt loading on the performance of the composite photocatalyst for the production of HCIO has been studied in detail. The study found that among the series of materials, hollow WO₃ microspheres with a diameter of about 3 μm loaded with 1.0 wt% Pt have the best HCIO production performance. Over it, 14.52 μM of HClO (1.24 mg/L of free chlorine) was accumulated in 0.5 M NaCl solution after 2 h of visible-light photoirradiation. What is more, the concentration of HClO can reach 4.34 μM (0.354 mg/L free chlorine) in natural seawater for 1 h using this Pt/WO₃ photocatalyst. Under visible-light irradiation, the Pt/WO₃ photocatalyst has a good broad-spectrum antibacterial activity and the activity of inhibiting marine fouling algae. The Pt/WO₃ photocatalyst has high stability and reusability. All these characteristics are conducive to the application in the field of marine antifouling. Moreover, the photocatalytic reaction mechanism was evaluated by studying the photoelectrochemical properties of Pt/WO₃/FTO. This research provides a new strategy for replacing the traditional electrolytic marine antifouling system with the visible-light-catalyzed HClO production system.

     

Highly Stable Univalent Copper of a Cu@Al/SBA-15 Nanocomposite Catalyzes the Synthesis of Fluorescent Aminobenzotriazoles Derivatives

With the development of green chemistry, it is still a challenge to maintain the unstable valence state of the metal in heterogeneous catalysts and realize new catalytic synthesis methods. In this paper, it is reported that an univalent copper nanocomposite (Cu@Al/SBA-15) can efficiently catalyze the formation of novel amino-containing benzotriazoles with great fluorescence properties in a new synthetic strategy. Subsequently, its application is further verified by an acylation reaction to produce a series of novel benzotriazoles derivatives with high yield. It is worth noting that the Cu@Al/SBA-15 nanocomposites not only enable the reaction completed with high yield in a short time, but can also be recycled many times without a significant reduction in activity, and the leaching of copper and aluminum species in reaction system is negligible. Finally, the detailed and feasible reaction mechanism is also provided.     

Monitoring the Thiol/Thiophenol Molecule-Modulated Plasmon-Mediated Silver Oxidation with Dark-Field Optical Microscopy

Surface plasmon can trigger or accelerate many photochemical reactions, especially useful in energy and environmental industries. Recently, molecular adsorption has proven effective in modulating plasmon-mediated photochemistry, however the realized chemical reactions are limited and the underlying mechanism is still unclear. Herein, by using in situ dark-field optical microscopy, the plasmon-mediated oxidative etching of silver nanoparticles (Ag NPs), a typical hot-hole-driven reaction, is monitored continuously and quantitatively. The presence of thiol or thiophenol molecules is found essential in the silver oxidation. In addition, the rate of silver oxidation is modulated by the choice of different thiol or thiophenol molecules. Compared with the molecules having electron donating groups, the ones having electron accepting groups accelerate the silver oxidation dramatically. The thiol/thiophenol modulation is attributed to the modulation of the charge separation between the Ag NPs and the adsorbed thiol or thiophenol molecules. This work demonstrates the great potential of molecular adsorption in modulating the plasmon-mediated photochemistry, which will pave a new way for developing highly efficient plasmonic photocatalysts.     

A New Carotane Sesquiterpenoid Derivative with Antifungal Activity from Gymnopus sp. 0612-9

Chemistry of Natural Compounds - A new carotane sesquiterpenoid, methyl gymnabloate (1), was isolated from the fermentation broth of the wild macrofungus Gymnopus sp. 0612-9. Its structure was...     

Effect of temperature on the interactions between cellulose and lignin via molecular dynamics simulations

Cellulose - Heating is essential in various biomass pre-treatments and thermal conversion processes. It is of practical significance to study the characteristics of cellulose-lignin and...     

High-performance nonfused ring electron acceptor with a steric hindrance induced planar molecular backbone

Three nonfused ring electron acceptors (NFREAs) TTC6,TT-C8T and TT-TC8 were purposefully designed and synthesized.The molecular geometry can be adjusted by the steric hindrance of lateral substituents.According to the DFT calculations,from TTC6 to TT-C8T and TT-TC8,planarity of the molecular backbone is gradually improved,accompanying with the enhancing of intramolecular charge transfer effect.As for TT-TC8,the two phenyl substituents are almost perpendicular to the molecular backbone,which endues the acceptor with good solubility and suppresses it to form over-aggregation.Multidirectional regular molecular orientation and closer molecular stacking are formed in TT-TC8 film.As a result,TT-TC8 based devices afford the highest PCE of 13.13%,which is much higher than that of TTC6 (4.41%) and TT-C8T (10.42%) and among the highest PCE values based on NFREAs.     

Effect of Irradiation Absorbed Dose and Organic Solvent on the Grafting Rate of PVDF-g-PHEMA through Gamma-ray Irradiation in a Homogenous Solution

High Energy Chemistry - Modification of Polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) by radiation grafting is a research hotspot in recent years. In this study, the monomer 2-Hydroxyethyl methacrylate (HEMA) was...     

Auto-deposition of 210Bi and 210Po on nickel discs and their application in the analysis of natural waters

Journal of Radioanalytical and Nuclear Chemistry - This study presents a time-efficient method of analysing 210Pb, 210Bi, and 210Po in natural waters. The optimum pH (1.00), temperature...