Underestimated Color Centers: Defects as Useful Reducing Agents in Lanthanide‐Activated Luminescent Materials

Inorganic hosts, such as SrB₄O₇ or certain nitrides, intrinsically stabilize Eu²⁺ even when the dopant is an Eu³⁺‐based precursor and reducing conditions are not employed in the synthesis. Although this concept is well known in the synthesis of phosphorescent materials, the mechanistic details are scarcely understood. Herein, we demonstrate that trapped charge carriers, such as color centers, can also act as redox partners to stabilize certain oxidation states of activators. Eu‐activated CsMgCl₃ and CsMgBr₃ are used as examples. Upon doping with EuCl₃ and in the absence of reducing conditions during the synthesis, dominant cyan or green luminescence from Eu²⁺ ions was observed. Photoluminescence spectroscopy at 10 K revealed that the reduction is correlated to color centers localized at defects. Although defects are typically undesired in phosphors, we have shown that their role may be underestimated and they could be used on purpose in the preparation of selected inorganic phosphors.     

Site‐Selective Oxidation of Monolayered Liquid‐Exfoliated WS2 by Shielding the Basal Plane through Adsorption of a Facial Amphiphile

In recent years, various functionalization strategies for transition‐metal dichalcogenides have been explored to tailor the properties of materials and to provide anchor points for the fabrication of hybrid structures. Herein, new insights into the role of the surfactant in functionalization reactions are described. Using the spontaneous reaction of WS₂ with chloroauric acid as a model reaction, the regioselective formation of gold nanoparticles on WS₂ is shown to be heavily dependent on the surfactant employed. A simple model is developed to explain the role of the chosen surfactant in this heterogeneous functionalization reaction. The surfactant coverage is identified as the crucial element that governs the dominant reaction pathway and therefore can severely alter the reaction outcome. This study shows the general importance of the surfactant choice and how detrimental or beneficial a certain surfactant can be to the desired functionalization.     

Enrichments of post‐translational modifications in proteomic studies

More than 300 different protein post‐translational modifications are currently known, but only a few have been extensively investigated because modified proteoforms are commonly present in sub‐stoichiometry amount. For this reason, improvement of specific enrichment techniques is particularly useful for the proteomic characterization of post‐translationally modified proteins. Enrichment proteomic strategies could help the researcher in the challenging issue to decipher the complex molecular cross‐talk existing between the different factors influencing the cellular pathways. In this review the state of art of the platforms applied for the enrichment of specific and most common post‐translational modifications, such as glycosylation and glycation, phosphorylation, sulfation, redox modifications (i.e. sulfydration and nitrosylation), methylation, acetylation, and ubiquitinylation, are described. Enrichments strategies applied to characterize less studied post‐translational modifications are also briefly discussed.     

Packing T-joins

A consequence of Seymour's characterization of binary clutters with the Max Flow Min Cut property is that the minimum cardinality of a T-cut is equal to the largest number of edge-disjoint T-joins in every graph that cannot be T-contracted to an odd K_2,3. We give a simple “graphic” proof of this fact. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Some novel photosensitive diacetylene diurethanes and their mixtures in common polymers

Some new octa-3,5-diynylene diurethanes were prepared using 3-butyn-1-ol, and all were found to be highly light-sensitive and to undergo topochemical polymerization on exposure to irradiation. The di-n-octyldiurethane was mixed with vinyl polymers such as poly(vinyl acetate) and poly(N,N-dimethylamino-ethyl methacrylate) and the mixtures were made into thin films by spin coating. The films were then irradiated by an electron beam to polymerize the diacetylene. The purple films thus obtained showed third-order nonlinear susceptibility, χ⁽³⁾, of the order of 10⁻¹⁰–10⁻¹¹ e.s.u.     

Chemometric Tools to Point Out Benchmarks and Chromophores in Pigments through Spectroscopic Data Analyses

Spectral preprocessing data and chemometric tools are analytical methods widely applied in several scientific contexts i.e., in archaeometric applications. A systematic classification of natural powdered pigments of organic and inorganic nature through Principal Component Analysis with a multi-instruments spectroscopic study is presented here. The methodology allows the access to elementary and molecular unique benchmarks to guide and speed up the identification of an unknown pigment and its recipe. This study is conducted on a set of 48 powdered pigments and tested on a real-case sample from the wall painting in S. Maria Delle Palate di Tusa (Messina, Italy). Four spectroscopic techniques (X-ray Fluorescence, Raman, Attenuated Total Reflectance and Total Reflectance Infrared Spectroscopies) and six different spectrometers are tested to evaluate the impact of different setups. The novelty of the work is to use a systematic approach on this initial dataset using the entire spectroscopic energy range without any windows selection to solve problems linked with the manipulation of large analytes/materials to find an indistinct property of one or more spectral bands opening new frontiers in the dataset spectroscopic analyses.     

Influence of Electron–Phonon Interaction on the Lattice Thermal Conductivity in Single-Crystal Si

Lattice thermal conductivity can be reduced by introducing point defect, grain boundary, and nanoscale precipitates to scatter phonons of different wave-lengths, etc. Recently, the effect of electron–phonon (EP) interaction on phonon transport has attracted more and more attention, especially in heavily doped semiconductors. Here the effect of EP interaction in n-type P-doped single-crystal Si has been investigated. The lattice thermal conductivity decreases dramatically with increasing P doping. This reduction on lattice thermal conductivity cannot be explained solely considering point defect scattering. Further, the lattice thermal conductivity can be fitted well by introducing EP interaction into the modified Debye–Callaway model, which demonstrates that the EP interaction can play an important role in reducing lattice thermal conductivity of n-type P-doped single-crystal Si.