Electrochemical Oxidation of Nortriptyline and Its Voltammetric Sensing at a Carbon Ionic Liquid Electrode

The electrochemical oxidation of nortriptyline at a carbon ionic liquid electrode (CILE) was investigated. Nortriptyline is electrochemically inactive on conventional electrodes but CILE exhibited excellent electrocatalytic activity toward oxidation of nortriptyline with the well-defined anodic peak at 860 mV. This characteristic was attributed to the outstanding conductivity and electrocatalytic effect of the ionic liquid, 1-octylpyridinum hexaflourophosphate, used as a binder in the construction of the electrode. The influence of experimental parameters such as pH and sweep rate was also studied. The quantitative determination of nortriptyline was performed using differential pulse voltammetry technique. Under selected conditions the anodic peak current was linear to nortriptyline concentration in the ranges of 4.8 × 10^–6 to 2.4 × 10^–5 M and 2.4 × 10^–5 to 6.4 × 10^–5 M, with correlation coefficients of 0.9992 and 09949, respectively. The detection limit was 3 × 10^–7 M.     

Efficient highly diastereoselective synthesis of 1,8a-dihydro-7H-imidazo[2,1-b][1,3]oxazines

1-Alkyl imidazoles react smoothly with dialkyl acetylenedicarboxylates in the presence of pyridine carboxaldehydes to diastereoselectively produce 1,8a-dihydro-7H-imidazo[2,1-b][1,3]oxazine derivatives in excellent yields.     

A novel, one-pot and three-component synthesis of α-quinoxalinyl triphenylphosphoranes

The reactive 1:1 zwitterionic intermediate formed by the addition of triphenylphosphine to diaroylacetylenes was trapped with 1,2-benzenediamines to produce triphenylphosphorane intermediates. Intramolecular cyclization and subsequent oxidation of the intermediate afforded functionalized α-quinoxalinyl triphenylphosphoranes in good to excellent yields.     

Simple Synthesis of Stable Phosphorus Ylides Derived from Imidazolidine-2-Thione. Efficient One-Pot Synthesis of α-Amino Esters with β-Phosphorus Substituents

Crystalline phosphorus ylides are obtained in nearly quantitative yields from the addition reaction between triphenylphosphine, dialkyl acetylenedicarboxylates, and imidazolidine-2-thione. A dynamic NMR effect is observed in the ¹ H NMR spectrum of the stabilized ylide obtained from dimethyl acetylenedicarboxylate (Δ G ^≠ = 66.6 kJmol^?1 ) and is attributed to restricted rotation around the carbon–carbon partial double bond resulting from the conjugation of the ylide moiety with the adjacent carbonyl group.     

The Complexity of Self-Regular Proximity Based Infeasible IPMs

Primal-Dual Interior-Point Methods (IPMs) have shown their power in solving large classes of optimization problems. In this paper a self-regular proximity based Infeasible Interior Point Method (IIPM) is proposed for linear optimization problems. First we mention some interesting properties of a specific self-regular proximity function, studied recently by Peng and Terlaky, and use it to define infeasible neighborhoods. These simple but interesting properties of the proximity function indicate that, when the current iterate is in a large neighborhood of the central path, large-update IIPMs emerge as the only natural choice. Then, we apply these results to design a specific self-regularity based dynamic large-update IIPM in large neighborhood. The new dynamic IIPM always takes large-updates and does not utilize any inner iteration to get centered. An worst-case iteration bound of the algorithm is established. Finally, we report the main results of our computational experiments.     

Combinatorial Algorithms for Some Variants of Inverse Obnoxious Median Location Problem on Tree Networks

This paper concerns with some variants of the inverse obnoxious median location problem on tree networks, where the aim is either to augment or to reduce the edge lengths at the minimum total cost such that a prespecified subset of vertices becomes an obnoxious multi-facility median location with respect to the perturbed edge lengths. For both augmentation and reduction models, under the rectilinear norm and the sum-type Hamming distance, we develop novel combinatorial algorithms with polynomial time complexities. Particularly, if the underlying tree is an extended star graph, then the problems can be solved in linear time.     

A sol-gel-based amino functionalized fiber for immersed solid-phase microextraction of organophosphorus pesticides from environmental samples

A method based on immersed solid-phase microextraction (SPME) and gas chromatography mass spectrometry detection (GC-MS) for the determination of organophosphorous pesticides (OPPs) in aqueous samples was developed. A sol-gel based coating fiber was prepared using 3-(trimethoxysilylpropyl) amine as precursor. The synthesized fiber was prepared in a way to impart polar moiety into the coating network and would be more suitable for extracting polar and semi-polar organic pollutants. Important parameters influencing the extraction process were optimized and an extraction time of 40 min at 30 °C gave maximum peak area, when NaCl (20% w/v) was added to the aqueous sample. The linearity for disulfoton, phorate and sulfotep was in the concentration range of 0.01 to 5 ng mL^− 1 and for parathion and O,O,O-triethylthiphosphate was in the range of 0.01 to 50 ng mL^− 1. Limits of detection ranged from 1 ng L^− 1, for parathion, to 0.05 ng L^− 1, for disulfoton using time-scheduled selected ion monitoring (SIM) mode, and the RSD% values were all below 10.5% at the 1 ng mL^− 1 level. The developed method was successfully applied to real water samples while the relative recovery percentages obtained for the spiked water samples were from 80 to 115%.     

Dye-sensitized solar cells based on Fe N-heterocyclic carbene photosensitizers with improved rod-like push-pull functionality

A new generation of octahedral iron(ii)–N-heterocyclic carbene (NHC) complexes, employing different tridentate C^N^C ligands, has been designed and synthesized as earth-abundant photosensitizers for dye sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) and related solar energy conversion applications. This work introduces a linearly aligned push–pull design principle that reaches from the ligand having nitrogen-based electron donors, over the Fe(ii) centre, to the ligand having an electron withdrawing carboxylic acid anchor group. A combination of spectroscopy, electrochemistry, and quantum chemical calculations demonstrate the improved molecular excited state properties in terms of a broader absorption spectrum compared to the reference complex, as well as directional charge-transfer displacement of the lowest excited state towards the semiconductor substrate in accordance with the push–pull design. Prototype DSSCs based on one of the new Fe NHC photosensitizers demonstrate a power conversion efficiency exceeding 1% already for a basic DSSC set-up using only the I⁻/I₃⁻ redox mediator and standard operating conditions, outcompeting the corresponding DSSC based on the homoleptic reference complex. Transient photovoltage measurements confirmed that adding the co-sensitizer chenodeoxycholic acid helped in improving the efficiency by increasing the electron lifetime in TiO₂. Time-resolved spectroscopy revealed spectral signatures for successful ultrafast (<100 fs) interfacial electron injection from the heteroleptic dyes to TiO₂. However, an ultrafast recombination process results in undesirable fast charge recombination from TiO₂ back to the oxidized dye, leaving only 5–10% of the initially excited dyes available to contribute to a current in the DSSC. On slower timescales, time-resolved spectroscopy also found that the recombination dynamics (longer than 40 μs) were significantly slower than the regeneration of the oxidized dye by the redox mediator (6–8 μs). Therefore it is the ultrafast recombination down to fs-timescales, between the oxidized dye and the injected electron, that remains as one of the main bottlenecks to be targeted for achieving further improved solar energy conversion efficiencies in future work.

Iron-based photosensitizers for dye-sensitized solar cells with a rod-like push–pull design. Solar cell performance was limited by ultrafast (sub-ps) recombination, but yielded better performance than the homoleptic parent photosensitizer.     

Novel thin film nanocomposite membranes incorporated with polyoxovanadate nanocluster for high water flux and antibacterial properties

Using interfacial polymerization (IP) of m-phenylenediamine aqueous solution containing polyoxovanadate nanoclusters (POV) and trimesoyl chloride (TMC) in organic solution, we fabricated a novel polyamide (PA)- polyoxovanadate nanocluster (POV) nanocomposite membranes (PA-POV TFN). The chemical structures and morphologies of the synthesized membranes were characterized by Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, atomic force microscope (AFM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and water contact angle measurements. Experimental results showed that the performances of PA-POV TFN membranes are remarkably dependent on POV incorporation in the membranes, which could be controlled by using different amounts of POV particles. Moreover, the PA-POV TFN membranes illustrated outstanding antibacterial properties against Gram-negative E. coli. On the other hand, the incorporation of various amounts of POV in the membranes improved the membrane separation performances (water flux and salt rejection) as well as the antibacterial activity in FO process as compared to the original thin-film composite (TFC) polyamide membrane.