1,10-Phenanthroline and 1,10-phenanthroline-terminated ruthenium(II) complex as efficient capping agents to stabilize gold nanoparticles: application for reversible aqueous-organic phase transfer processes

1,10-Phenanthroline (phen) and 1,10-phenanthroline-terminated ruthenium(II) complex [Ru-Lphen](2+) have been used to stabilize and functionalize gold nanoparticles (Au-NPs). The strong interaction between the nitrogen atoms of phen and the surface of Au-NPs allowed for the phase transfer of Au-NPs from toluene to aqueous phase containing [Ru-Lphen](2+). Reverse phase transfer of these Au-NPs from water to acetonitrile by substituting the Cl(-) counter anion by PF(-)(6) has also been demonstrated. Such facile post-functionalization, phase transfer and solvent transfer processes using metallic complexes bearing a terminal phenanthroline pendant group constitute a prerequisite for further studies of the electronic and optical properties of these NCs in various media.     

Synthesis and structures of new binuclear zinc alkyl,aryl and aryloxo complexes

The synthesis of a series of binuclear zinc complexes with Cl, N and O bridges is reported. The reaction of EtZnCl with B(C₆F₅)₃ in the presence of hexamethylbenzene affords the arene complex [Zn(μ-Cl)(C₆F₅)(η-C₆Me₆)]₂ in which the C₆Me₆ ligand may be regarded as η³-bonded. The comproportionation of Zn[N(SiMe₃)₂]₂ with ZnBu^t₂ or Zn(C₆F₅)₂ · toluene gave [Bu^tZn{μ-N(SiMe₃)₂}]₂ and [C₆F₅Zn{μ-N(SiMe₃)₂}]₂, respectively, with three-coordinate zinc. The reaction of ZnEt₂ with C₆F₅OH in the presence of pyridine gave [EtZn(μ-OC₆F₅)(py)]₂, while ZnMe₂ and C₆F₅OH followed by recrystallisation from THF gave [Zn(OC₆F₅)(μ-OC₆F₅)(THF)₂]₂ with five-coordinate zinc in a trigonal-bipyramidal geometry. The structures of these compounds have been determined.     

Iridium(III) soft salts from dinuclear cationic and mononuclear anionic complexes for OLED devices

Two iridium(III) soft salts based on ion-paired dinuclear cationic and mononuclear anionic complexes were designed and investigated as phosphorescent emitters for solution processed OLEDs. New dinuclear cationic complexes were prepared with two different bridging ligands, a carbazole and a phenylene spacer. Best devices were designed with the soft salt bearing a carbazole moiety.     

Folding of Set-Theoretical Solutions of the Yang–Baxter Equation

We establish a correspondence between the invariant subsets of a non-degenerate symmetric set-theoretical solution of the quantum Yang–Baxter equation and the parabolic subgroups of its structure group, equipped with its canonical Garside structure. Moreover, we introduce the notion of a foldable solution, which extends the one of a decomposable solution.     

Synthesis of Tapioca Cellulose-based Poly(amidoxime) Ligand for Removal of Heavy Metal Ions

Poly(acrylonitrile)/cellulose block copolymer (PAN-b-cell) was prepared by using a free radical initiating process and then the nitrile functional groups of the PAN blocks of the copolymers were transformed into amidoxime ligands. The resulting poly(amidoxime) ligands could complex with heavy metal ions; for example, the reflectance spectra of the [Cu -ligand]ⁿ⁺ was found to be at the highest absorbance, about 94%, at pH 6. The pH was the key parameter for metal ions sensing by the ligand. The adsorption capacity for copper was very good, 272 mg g^?1, with a fast adsorption rate (t_1/2 = 10 min). The adsorption capacities for other heavy metal ions such as Fe³⁺, Cr³⁺, Co³⁺ and Ni²⁺ were also good, being 242, 219, 201 and 195 mg g^?1, respectively, at pH 6. The heavy metal ions removal efficiency from water was 98% at low concentration. The data proved that the heavy metal ions adsorption onto the polymer ligands were well fitted with the Langmuir isotherm model (R²>0.99), which suggests that the cellulose-based adsorbent surface namely the poly(amidoxime) ligand, was homogenous and a monolayer. The reusability was examined by a sorption/desorption process for six cycles and the extraction efficiency was determined. This new adsorbent could be reused for 6 cycles without any significant loss in its original removal function.     

Determination of Inner and Outer Bounds of Reachable Sets Through Subpavings

The computation of the reachable set of states of a given dynamic system is an important step to verify its safety during operation. There are different methods of computing reachable sets, namely interval integration, capture basin, methods involving the minimum time to reach function, and level set methods. This work deals with interval integration to compute subpavings to over or under approximate reachable sets of low dimensional systems. The main advantage of this method is that, compared to guaranteed integration, it allows to control the amount of over-estimation at the cost of increased computational effort. An algorithm to over and under estimate sets through subpavings, which potentially reduces the computational load when the test function or the contractor is computationally heavy, is implemented and tested. This algorithm is used to compute inner and outer approximations of reachable sets. The test function and the contractors used in this work to obtain the subpavings involve guaranteed integration, provided either by the Euler method or by another guaranteed integration method. The methods developed were applied to compute inner and outer approximations of reachable sets for the double integrator example. From the results it was observed that using contractors instead of test functions yields much tighter results. It was also confirmed that for a given minimum box size there is an optimum time step such that with a greater or smaller time step worse results are obtained.     

Open- and closed-loop aberration correction by use of a quadrature interferometric wave-front sensor

Experimental results are presented for an adaptive optics system based on a quadrature Twyman-Green interferometric wave-front sensor. The system uses a circularly polarized reference beam to form two interferograms with a pi/2 phase shift. The experiments conducted used Kolmogorov phase screens to simulate atmospheric phase distortions. Strehl ratio improvements by a factor of 8, to an absolute value of 0.45, are demonstrated.