Carbohydrate-based nanostructured catalysts: applications in organic transformations

The requirement of green and sustainable materials to prepare heterogeneous catalysts has intensified for practical reasons over the past few decades. Carbohydrates are possibly the most plentiful and renewable organic materials in nature with inimitable physiochemical properties, plausible low-cost and large-scale production, and sustainability features could be exploited in the generation of nanostructured heterogeneous catalysts. This review article outlines the organic transformations catalyzed by diverse carbohydrate-based nanostructured catalysts in greener and environmentally friendly processes. Selected examples are highlighted for a variety of organic reactions exploiting the proposed catalysts’ reactivity and reusability, and interactions with the intrinsic nature of the applied carbohydrate supports; advantages and speculated challenges of the introduced catalysts are deliberated as well.     

High-fidelity Recognition of Organotrifluoroborate Anions (R−BF3−) as Designer Guest Molecules

The recognition of boron compounds is well developed as boronic acids but untapped as organotrifluoroborate anions (R−BF₃⁻). We are exploring the development of these and other designer anions as anion-recognition motifs by considering them as substituted versions of the parent inorganic ion. To this end, we demonstrate strong and reliable binding of organic trifluoroborates, R−BF₃⁻, by cyanostar macrocycles that are size-complementary to the inorganic BF₄⁻ progenitors. We find that recognition is modulated by the substituent's sterics and that the affinities are retained using the common K⁺ salts of R−BF₃⁻ anions.     

Unconstrained Direct Optimization of Spacecraft Trajectories Using Many Embedded Lambert Problems

Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications - Direct optimization of many-revolution spacecraft trajectories is performed using an unconstrained formulation with many short-arc, embedded...     

Phase Transitions in Ferroelectric KNO3/Al2O3 Nanocomposites

Russian Physics Journal - The temperature dependences of the linear dielectric permittivity ε′ and the third harmonic coefficient γ3ω for nanocomposites obtained by embedding a...     

Advances in the computational analysis of SARS-COV2 genome

Nonlinear Dynamics - Given a data-set of Ribonucleic acid (RNA) sequences we can infer the phylogenetics of the samples and tackle the information for scientific purposes. Based on current data and...     

Propagating and Standing Rayleigh Waves near Rivet Chains Connecting Kirchhoff Plates

We show that near periodic rivet chains that connect two Kirchhoff plates and are modeled by point Sobolev transmission conditions, Rayleigh waves arise, propagate along the chains, and decay exponentially in the orthogonal direction. Under additional geometric conditions we discover the standing (periodic) waves that carry no energy.

     

Fock–Schwinger Method in the Case of Different Masses

JETP Letters - The result of removing heavy particles with different mass from the theory spectrum can be described at low energy by the effective action, which is an asymptotic series in inverse...     

On the Use of Indium Arsenide as the Waveguide Material in the Measurements by Attenuated Total Reflectance

Optics and Spectroscopy - The current–voltage characteristics and photocurrent of “monolithic” diode optical pairs optically coupled by a substrate made of InAs common for them...     

Spatial Separation of Scalar Light Beams with Orbital Angular Momentum Using a Phase Metasurface

JETP Letters - The concept and design optimization of a polarization-independent dielectric metasurface for the spatial separation of scalar light beams with different values of the orbital angular...     

Structural Specific Features of Solid Solutions NdxGd1 – xCr3(BO3)4

Optics and Spectroscopy - Optical investigations of crystals of solid solutions NdxGd1 – xCr3(BO3)4, 0.01 ≤ x ≤ 1, have been performed. Absorption spectra in the...