Roles of rhenium diimine complexes as metal‐ion probes and photosensitizers in functional polyurethanes

Polyurethanes incorporated with rhenium diimine complexes were synthesized. The polymers exhibited interesting morphologies and solution properties. Results from gel permeation chromatography suggested the formation of polymer aggregates in solutions. The polymers could act as probes for metal ions. The addition of metal ions to polymer solutions led to significant changes in the electronic absorption properties of the polymer solutions. This was attributed to the interactions between the polyether moieties and metal ions. The metal complexes could also act as efficient photosensitizers. After doping with charge‐transport viologens, the photoconductivity of the polymers was greatly enhanced. The experimental quantum efficiency was simulated with Onsager's theory. The thermalization distances and the primary yields were typically 12–14 Å and 10^?3, respectively. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part A: Polym Chem 41: 1708–1715, 2003     

Microscopic Theory of Blue Phases Ⅰ and Ⅱ of Liquid Crystal

The microscopic theory of the blue phases of chiral liquid crystal is proposed. Beginning with the potential between two molecules, by using the cell model of liquid, applying statistical physical method, the distribution function and the free energy of the system are obtained. By using variational approach and zero-order approximation, the differential equation that the order parameter tensor of the blue phase can satisfy is obtained. Then we change the differential equation to the eigenequation problem in quantum mechanics. Considering the symmetry of the blue phases,the order parameter tensors of blue phases Ⅰ and Ⅱ can be made up of the eigenvectors. Our results are the same as the results of Ginzberg-Landau‘s phenomenological theory. The parameters in the order parameter tensors that we calculate in the located system are close to the predecessors‘ results.     

Synthesis and photophysical properties of photochromic phenyl-substituted polyphenylenes with main-chain azobenzene fragments

New photochromic phenyl-substituted polyphenylenes containing azobenzene fragments in the backbone have been synthesized by the interaction of diacetylenes with bis(cyclopentadienones) via the Diels-Alder reaction. The polymers thus prepared exhibit the photochromic behavior and combine solubility in common organic solvents with high viscosity and thermal characteristics.     

Vacuum balance and related studies of green and red rusts

Green and red rusts are formed when iron is partially or completely oxidised. Analogues of the rusts may be precipitated from iron(II) and iron (III) salt solutions treated with alkali under reducing or oxidising conditions. Variations in surface area and porosity have been investigated by gravimetric nitrogen gas sorption, using vacuum microbalance techniques.Freshly-precipitated red rusts, hydrous iron (III) oxide, have surface areas of about 200–400 m²g^?1. When they are added to iron (II) hydroxide suspensions kept at pH 7, the green Fe (II)-Fe (III) rusts formed have lower surface areas of about 40–100 m²g^?1, depending on the initial iron(II) sulphate concentrations.     

Ultrathin polymer film formation by collision-induced cross-linking of adsorbed organic molecules with hyperthermal protons

A new synthetic approach for the formation of ultrathin polymer films with customizable properties was developed. In this approach, the kinematic nature of proton collisions with simple organic molecules condensed on a substrate is exploited to break C-H bonds preferentially. The subsequent recombination of carbon radicals gives a cross-linked polymer thin film, and the selectivity of C-H cleavage preserves the chemical functionalities of the precursor molecules. The nature and validity of the method are exemplified with theoretical results from ab initio molecular dynamics calculations and experimental evidence from a variety of characterization techniques. Its applicability is demonstrated by the synthesis of ultrathin polymer films with precursor molecules such as dotriacontane, docosanoic acid, poly(acrylic acid) oligomer, and polyisoprene. The approach is fundamentally different from conventional chemical synthesis as it involves an unusual mix of physical and chemical processes including charge exchange, projectile penetration, kinematics, collision-induced dissociation, inelastic energy transfer, chain transfer, and chain cross-linking.     

Reversible replication between ordered mesoporous silica and mesoporous carbon

Highly ordered mesoporous silica can be regenerated from a mesoporous carbon CMK-3 that is a negative replica of mesoporous silica SBA-15, indicating reversible replication between carbon and inorganic materials.     

Viscoelastic Properties of Aqueous Anionic Surfactant (Potassium Oleate) Solutions

The dependence of the viscosity of potassium oleate salt-containing solutions on the surfactant concentration is studied. The potassium oleate concentration corresponding to the formation of semidilute solution of cylindrical micelles is determined. It is shown that, in the semidilute regime, one can distinguish two regions characterized by different exponential dependences of the viscosity on the surfactant concentration. The first region corresponds to unbreakable micelle chains that have no time to be destroyed during the characteristic time of reptation, whereas the second region corresponds to “living chains” whose lifetime is shorter than the characteristic time of reptation. In the second region, rheological properties of semidilute potassium oleate solutions are adequately described by the Maxwell model with a single relaxation time.     

Stoichiometric polyelectrolyte complexes as comb copolymers

The collapse behavior of a single comblike copolymer chain has been studied by Monte Carlo simulations. It has been supposed that the solvent is good for the side chains but the solvent quality for the backbone chain changes. It has been shown that depending on the structural parameters of the comb copolymer (the lengths of the backbone and side chains, grafting density of the side chains) various thermodynamically stable morphologies of the collapsed backbone chain can be realized. In addition to ordinary spherical globule we have observed elongated structures as well as necklace-like conformations. The proposed model can be used to describe conformational behavior of stoichiometric complexes between block copolymers with a polyelectrolyte short block and oppositely charged linear homopolymers.     

Semi-Supervised Cross-Subject Emotion Recognition Based on Stacked Denoising Autoencoder Architecture Using a Fusion of Multi-Modal Physiological Signals

In recent decades, emotion recognition has received considerable attention. As more enthusiasm has shifted to the physiological pattern, a wide range of elaborate physiological emotion data features come up and are combined with various classifying models to detect one’s emotional states. To circumvent the labor of artificially designing features, we propose to acquire affective and robust representations automatically through the Stacked Denoising Autoencoder (SDA) architecture with unsupervised pre-training, followed by supervised fine-tuning. In this paper, we compare the performances of different features and models through three binary classification tasks based on the Valence-Arousal-Dominance (VAD) affection model. Decision fusion and feature fusion of electroencephalogram (EEG) and peripheral signals are performed on hand-engineered features; data-level fusion is performed on deep-learning methods. It turns out that the fusion data perform better than the two modalities. To take advantage of deep-learning algorithms, we augment the original data and feed it directly into our training model. We use two deep architectures and another generative stacked semi-supervised architecture as references for comparison to test the method’s practical effects. The results reveal that our scheme slightly outperforms the other three deep feature extractors and surpasses the state-of-the-art of hand-engineered features.