Application of Sulfonic Acid Functionalized SBA‐15 as a New Nanoporous Acid Catalyst in the Green One‐Pot Synthesis of Spirooxindole‐4H‐pyrans

Sulfonic acid functionalized SBA‐15 (SBA‐Pr‐SO₃H) as a new nanoporous solid acid catalyst was applied in the green one‐pot synthesis of spirooxindole‐4H‐pyrans via condensation of isatins, malononitrile or methyl cyanoacetate or ethyl cyanoacetate, and 4‐hydroxycoumarin in water solvent. SBA‐Pr‐SO₃H was proved to be an efficient heterogeneous nanoporous solid acid catalyst with a pore size of 6 nm that could be easily handled and removed from the reaction mixture by simple filtration and can be recovered and reused for several times without any loss of activity. The significant merits of present methodology are its simplicity, short reaction time, good yields, and environmentally benign mild reaction condition as water was used as a green solvent.     

纳米孔碳负载Fe3O4催化剂上苯直接羟基化制苯酚

Fe3O4/CMK-3 was prepared by impregnation and used as a catalyst for the direct hydroxylation of benzene to phenol with hydro-gen peroxide. The iron species in the prepared catalyst was Fe3O4 because of the partial reduction of iron(III) to iron(II) on the surface of CMK-3. The high catalytic activity of the catalyst arises from the formation of Fe3O4 on the surface of CMK-3 and the high selectivity for phenol is attributed to the consumption of excess hydroxyl radicals by CMK-3. The effect of temperature,re...     

Determination of isospin asymmetry effects on α-decay

In this study,we compared the effect of the isospin asymmetry of proton and neutron density distributions in the neutron skin-type(NST) case and in the Hartree-Fock formalism(HF) on the half-life of alpha emitters with the atomic number in the range of 82≤Z≤92.The NST case and HF formalism based on the Skyrme-SLy4 effective interaction reveal different isospin asymmetries for selected alpha emitters.Furthermore,the obtained results reveal an increase in the α-decay widths of about 30% for the NST case in comparison with the equivalent values obtained by HF formalism.The standard deviations for calculated half-lives within the NST case and HF formalism are about 0.438 and 0.391,respectively.     

Enhanced lithium electrochemical performance and optical properties of CeO<Subscript>2</Subscript>–SnO<Subscript>2</Subscript> nanocomposite thin films by transition metal (TM: Ni,Mn, and Co) doping

Undoped and transition metal (TM: Ni, Mn, Co)-doped CeO₂–SnO₂ nanocomposite thin films were prepared by sol-gel dip coating (SGDC) technique. The grazing incidence X-ray diffraction (GIXRD) patterns indicated that CeO₂–SnO₂ film has a cubic structure of CeO₂ and the crystallinity deteriorated with incorporation of dopant. The scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM) images showed that the surface morphology of the films was affected by TM incorporation. The surface roughness and fractal dimensions of CeO₂–SnO₂ films increased with doping. The average transmittance of CeO₂–SnO₂ thin film is found nearly 80% in the visible region and increased with doping. The absorption edge revealed a blue shift toward shorter wavelengths after incorporation of TM ions. The compositional dependence of optical parameters such as refractive index, extinction coefficient, and optical conductivity were also investigated. Cyclic voltammetry measurements showed that ion storage capacity was decreased significantly with increasing scan rate. The undoped and doped CeO₂–SnO₂ films showed good reversible cycle of intercalation/deintercalation of Li⁺ ions. The ion storage capacity and electrochemical stability were enhanced with transition metal doping. The Mn-doped CeO₂–SnO₂ composite thin film had better ion storage capacity rather than other samples due to its special porous morphology. The Li diffusion toward electrode surface was described in terms of self-similar fractal dimension. A quenching in blue-green photoluminescence (PL) intensity of CeO₂–SnO₂ films was occurred by transition metal doping.

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Charge separation by tetrahexahedron-SrTiO<Subscript>3</Subscript>/TiO<Subscript>2</Subscript> heterojunction as an efficient photocatalyst

Charge separation plays a key role in the conversion of solar energy into chemical energy for use in the redox reaction and as well as in the photocatalytic activity. In this study, SrTiO₃ particles with different morphologies including irregular, tetrahexahedron, and cube were synthesized by an in situ solvothermal method. The photocatalytic activity of the synthesized nanoparticles was investigated in the photocatalytic decomposition of methylene blue under UV light irradiation. Tetrahexahedron SrTiO₃ particles exhibited high decomposition activity (70 %), which is about two times higher than those of the irregular and cubic SrTiO₃ particles. The high decomposition activity of tetrahexahedron SrTiO₃ particles could be attributed to the improvement of charge separation achieved on different crystal facets. To reach a good charge separation, tetrahexahedron SrTiO₃/TiO₂ coupled nanoparticles were fabricated by impregnation method. Results showed that coupling tetrahexahedron SrTiO₃ with TiO₂ could produce efficient charge separation between tetrahexahedron SrTiO₃ and TiO₂ due to their matched band edges. In order to achieve better charge separation, the tetrahexahedron SrTiO₃/90 %TiO₂ sample was calcined at different temperatures in the 450–750 °C range. Tetrahexahedron SrTiO₃/90 %TiO₂ coupled nanoparticles calcined at 650 °C show high photocatalytic activity compared with other samples. The prepared samples were characterized by using various techniques such as X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, photoluminescence emission spectra, and UV–Vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy.     

Cross-aldol Condensation of Cycloalkanones and Aromatic Aldehydes in the Presence of Nanoporous Silica-based Sulfonic Acid (SiO2-Pr-SO3H) under Solvent Free Conditions

The aromatic aldehydes underwent cross aldol condensation with cycloalkanones in the presence of a catalytic amount of nanoporous silica-based sulfonic acid (SiO2-Pr-SO3H) under solvent-free conditions to afford the corresponding α,α’-bis(substituted benzylidene)cycloalkanones in excellent yields with short reaction time without any side reactions. This method is very general, simple and environmentally friendly in contrast with other existing methods. SiO2-Pr-SO3H was proved to be an efficient heterogeneous solid acid catalyst, which could be easily handled and removed from the reaction mixture by simple filtration, and also recovered and reused without loss of reactivity.     

Scheduling tasks with exponential duration on unrelated parallel machines

This paper introduces a stochastic scheduling problem. In this problem a directed acyclic graphs (DAG) represents the precedence relations among $m$ tasks that $n$ workers are scheduled to execute. The question is to find a schedule $\Sigma$ such that if tasks are assigned to workers according to $\Sigma$, the expected time needed to execute all the tasks is minimized. The time needed to execute task $t$ by worker $w$ is a random variable expressed by a negative exponential distribution with parameter ${\lambda }_{wt}$ and each task can be executed by more than one worker at a time. In this paper, we will prove that the problem in its general form is NP-hard, but when the DAG width is constant, we will show that the optimum schedules can be found in polynomial time.