Reactivity of activated versus nonactivated 2-(bromomethyl)aziridines with respect to sodium methoxide: a combined computational and experimental study

The difference in reactivity between the activated 2-bromomethyl-1-tosylaziridine and the nonactivated 1-benzyl-2-(bromomethyl)aziridine with respect to sodium methoxide was analyzed by means of DFT calculations within the supermolecule approach, taking into account explicit solvent molecules. In addition, the reactivity of epibromohydrin with regard to sodium methoxide was assessed as well. The barriers for direct displacement of bromide by methoxide in methanol are comparable for all three heterocyclic species under study. However, ring opening was found to be only feasible for the epoxide and the activated aziridine, and not for the nonactivated aziridine. According to these computational analyses, the synthesis of chiral 2-substituted 1-tosylaziridines can take place with inversion (through ring opening/ring closure) or retention (through direct bromide displacement) of configuration upon treatment of the corresponding 2-(bromomethyl)aziridines with 1 equiv of a nucleophile, whereas chiral 2-substituted 1-benzylaziridines are selectively obtained with retention of configuration (via direct bromide displacement). Furthermore, the computational results showed that explicit accounting for solvent molecules is required to describe the free energy profile correctly. To verify the computational findings experimentally, chiral 1-benzyl-2-(bromomethyl)aziridines and 2-bromomethyl-1-tosylaziridines were treated with sodium methoxide in methanol. The presented work concerning the reactivity of 2-bromomethyl-1-tosylaziridine stands in contrast to the behavior of the corresponding 1-tosyl-2-(tosyloxymethyl)aziridine with respect to nucleophiles, which undergoes a clean ring-opening/ring-closure process with inversion of configuration at the asymmetric aziridine carbon atom.     

Stochastic Nonlinear Equations of Schrödinger Type

In this article, the solution for a stochastic nonlinear equation of Schrödinger type, which is perturbed by an infinite dimensional Wiener process, is investigated. The existence of the solution is proved by using the Galerkin method. Moment estimates for the solution are also derived. Examples from physics are given in the final part of the article.     

Mirror‐Image Photoswitching of Individual Single‐Walled Carbon Nanotube Transistors Coated with Titanium Dioxide

Dotting the i's : Stimuli‐responsive optoelectronic devices are formed from the title transistors functionalized with photoactive quantum dots. The p‐type semiconducting tubes show a fast current decrease under UV irradiation and reversibility when the UV irradiation is switched off. In contrast, ambipolar tubes show mirror‐image photoswitching effects when negative and positive gate bias voltages are applied.

     

Optimal Policies for Investment with Time-Varying Return Distributions

We develop a model in which investors must learn the distribution of asset returns over time. The process of learning is made more difficult by the fact that the distributions are not constant through time. We consider risk-neutral investors who have quadratic utility and are selecting between two risky assets. We determine the time at which it is optimal to update the distribution estimate and hence, alter portfolio weights. Our results deliver an optimal policy for asset allocation, that is, the sequence of time intervals at which it is optimal to switch between assets, based on stochastic optimal control theory. In addition, we determine the time intervals in which asset switching leads to a loss with high probability. We provide estimates of the effectiveness of the optimal policy.     

Emission spectrum and formation kinetics of neon fluoride

The emission spectrum and the formation kinetics of NeF* is studied using two different excitation techniques. Bye-beam excitation of a Ne/F₂ mixture the yield was found to be low having a maximum at 0.2 hPa of F₂ and at a low neon pressure of less than 0.2 MPa. An ion exchange reaction between Ne⁺ and RbF leading to NeF* was initiated by irradiation of a mixture of neon and RbF vapor using an argon-ion beam. TheD →X transition of NeF* was observed at 107.0 nm, theB →X transition at 108.8 nm. The kinetics of the reactions are discussed.     

Stickstoff- und Sauerstoffbestimmung in Uranmononitrid

Zusammenfassung Es wurden UN-Proben nach einer naßchemischen Methode (Lösen in HCl mit H₂SiF₆) nach Kjeldahl und einem modifizierten Vakuumheißextraktionsverfahren auf ihren Stickstoffgehalt analysiert. Die nach beiden Methoden gefundenen Stickstoff-Werte zeigen eine gute Übereinstimmung, die Standardabweichungen beider Verfahren sind gering. Das BMI-Verfahren (oxydierendes Lösen mit Kupferselenat) ergibt in manchen Fällen zu geringe Stickstoffwerte.Bei der Heißextraktion werden gleichzeitig die Sauerstoffgehalte mit befriedigender Genauigkeit erhalten.

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Summary UN-samples were analyzed with a wet-chemical method (dissolving in HCl with H₂SiF₆) according to Kjeldaiil and with a modified vacuum-fusion method for their nitrogen content.The nitrogen values found by both methods show good agreement, the standard variations of both methods are small. In some cases the BMI-method (oxidizing dissolution with copper selenate) shows too low nitrogen values. In the case of vacuum-fusion method the oxygen values are found at the same time with satisfying precision.

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Wir danken Herrn Dr. H. Wedemeyer für die Herstellung zahlreicher Urannitridproben.     

Electrical conductivity in a non-covalent two-dimensional porous organic material with high crystallinity

Electroactive macrocycle building blocks are a promising route to new types of functional two-dimensional porous organic frameworks. Our strategy uses conjugated macrocycles that organize into two dimensional porous sheets via non-covalent van der Waals interactions, to make ultrathin films that are just one molecule thick. In bulk, these two-dimensional (2D) sheets stack into a three-dimensional van der Waals crystal, where relatively weak alkyl–alkyl interactions constitute the interface between these sheets. With the liquid-phase exfoliation, we are able to obtain films as thin as two molecular layers. Further using a combination of liquid-phase and mechanical exfoliation, we are able to create non-covalent sheets over a large area (>100 μm²). The ultrathin porous films maintain the single crystal packing from the macrocyclic structure and are electrically conductive. We demonstrate that this new type of 2D non-covalent porous organic framework can be used as the active layer in a field effect transistor device with graphene source and drain contacts along with hexagonal boron nitride as the gate dielectric interface.

Ultrathin porous films held together by non-covalent van der Waals interactions was obtained by a top-down approach, which is then utilized as channel material in a two-dimensional planar field-effect transistor device through easy stamp transfer.

We describe a new type of two-dimensional (2D), molecularly-thin porous organic framework that is formed from macrocyclic building blocks that assemble, through non-covalent interactions, into a porous two-dimensional plane. Covalent organic frameworks (COFs) are promising in applications due to their ability to host other functional molecules in the voids.^1–7 Many porous frameworks have been demonstrated to be useful in energy storage,⁸ catalysis,^9–11 separation,^12,13 optoelectronics^4,14 and sensing.^15,16 In order to construct nanodevices with porous channels, ultrathin films of porous frameworks has been prepared with bottom-up^4,17–20 and top-down^1,21 approaches. The top-down approaches to these materials are enabled by strong covalent bonds in the two-dimensional plane and weak van der Waals interactions between them, similar to what is seen in two-dimensional materials such as graphene and TMDs.^22–27 For porous ultrathin films, the electrical conductance has not been extensively investigated.^2,7,20,28,29Here, we explore making molecularly thin layers in which conjugated macrocycles are used as building blocks and non-covalent van der Waals interactions are the adhesive that assembles these molecules into rigid, porous layers. By adjusting the relative strengths of the interactions that direct the assembly within the plane and those holding the two-dimensional layers with respect to each other, we can exfoliate these non-covalent porous frameworks using the same means employed for traditional two-dimensional van der Waals materials.³⁰ Using liquid-phase and mechanical exfoliation, we create porous films that are as thin as two-layers of molecules. These new results are exciting and useful because previously we were not able to obtain such high-ordered thin porous film directly from its bulk crystal and were limited to investigating the electronic properties of this hollow organic capsules in spin-coated films. These ultrathin porous films are ordered over large areas and maintain the single crystal packing from the macrocyclic building blocks. To demonstrate the utility of this new type of ultrathin material, we fabricated 2D field effect transistor (FET) devices in which graphene is the source/drain contacts, hexagonal boron nitride is the gate dielectric interface, and the exfoliated molecular sheet is the active layer. These ultrathin self-assembled materials are efficacious at transporting electrons and will find utility in gas sensing and applications similar to traditional two-dimensional materials. Fig. 1 displays the molecular building block (1). Characterization is contained in the ESI^† and a previous report.³¹1 has several important molecular features in its solid-state assembly. It is a rigid and shape persistent macrocycle that has an interior and an exterior (Fig. 1a), and in bulk, has a pore of ∼11.4 Å in diameter and a surface area of 20 m² g⁻¹ from BET measurements.³¹ When it assembles in the crystalline state, it forms two-dimensional porous sheets with two types of cavities (Fig. 1b), one molecule thick, that are held together by relatively strong π–π contacts and Br–PDI interaction between the bromine atoms on the thiophenes and adjacent PDI molecules (Fig. 1c), which plays a crucial role in the self-assembly of the films. The close proximity of the molecules in the 2D plane together with the conjugation within the macrocycle facilitate charge transport of electrons in the 2D plane. These electrically conductive porous sheets then stack into a three-dimensional crystal in which adjacent sheets are separated from one another by the alkane sidechains of the perylene diimide (Fig. 1d). It is in this alkane gallery that we see an opportunity for exfoliation to yield ultrathin 2D sheets.Open in a separate windowFig. 1Structure and packing of molecule 1. (a) Chemical structure, side view and top view of molecular structure of 1. C, N, O, S, Br are colored in grey, blue, red, yellow and green, respectively. The vertical distance of one macrocycle is about 1.5 nm. (b) Face-on view and edge-on view of one layer of 1. The internal cavity of 1 and the cavity formed by the packing of 1 are labeled as i and i′, respectively. (c) Interactions binding two adjacent macrocycles from neighboring brominated thiophene rings. (d) View of packing of 1 along the c axis through the interaction of alkane sidechains. Exfoliation takes place at the alkyl–alkyl interface. One layer of 1 is about 2 nm in thickness.We isolated crystals of this material that were grown from solution and then tested whether they can be exfoliated. Fig. 2a displays a representative micrograph of one of the crystals. The crystal has a pseudo-hexagonal packing of the molecular building blocks in the two-dimensional plane, and this symmetry is mirrored in the hexagonally-shaped crystals. The simplest method for exfoliation is mechanical exfoliation, which is most commonly performed using scotch-tape.^32,33 We place the single crystals onto clean scotch-tape and repeat the mechanical exfoliation process for a few repetitions, and then we transfer the exfoliated crystals onto a clean silicon wafer. Fig. 2b displays an atomic force microscopy (AFM) micrograph of the typical non-covalent porous 2D sheet of 1 we obtained from this method. The porous sheets are flat and smooth and a few micrometers in diameter with a thickness of ∼8 nm; this thickness corresponds to a stack of five molecular layers of 1. This result demonstrates that non-covalent interactions are strong enough to hold molecules together to form ultrathin porous materials. Just as with traditional two-dimensional materials, the non-covalent porous organic 2D sheets of 1 are flexible as evidenced by the wrinkles and folds in the micrograph in Fig. 2b and S2.^†Open in a separate windowFig. 2Mechanical exfoliation of 1. (a) Optical microscopy and scanning electron microscope (SEM) (inset) images of a single crystal of macrocycle 1. (b) AFM and optical microscope (inset) images of the ultrathin non-covalent porous sheet of 1 on a silicon wafer obtained from mechanical exfoliation.We were unable to obtain porous films as thin as a single layer and also large-area samples using mechanical exfoliation, and thus we next explored if liquid-phase exfoliation^34,35 could produce them. Because the halogen bonds that hold the sheets together should be most robust in solvents with a low-dielectric constant that lack heteroatoms, and because the groups holding the sheets together are the alkane sidechains, we chose saturated hydrocarbons (hexane or heptane) as the solvents for exfoliation. Fig. 3a shows the process we follow for the liquid-phase exfoliation. We suspend single crystals of 1 in heptane and sonicate the mixture for five minutes. We drop cast the supernatant solution on silicon wafer and examine them with AFM. Remarkably, we are able to obtain non-covalent porous organic frameworks as thin as only two molecular layers (Fig. 3b).³⁶ Nevertheless, the lateral size of the porous 2D sheets of 1 we could obtain using this method are quite small, making it difficult to fabricate devices from them.Open in a separate windowFig. 3Liquid-phase exfoliation and combination of liquid-phase and mechanical exfoliation. (a) Schematic showing the liquid-phase exfoliation process. (b) AFM image of the ultrathin sheet of 1 on a silicon wafer obtained from liquid-phase exfoliation method. The sheets in this micrograph are two molecular layers (left) and three molecular layers (right) in thickness. (c) AFM image of the ultrathin sheet of 1 on a silicon wafer obtained from combination of liquid-phase and mechanical exfoliation, inset: optical microscope image of the ultrathin sheet 1. (d) AFM image showing the height change across the ultrathin sheet of 1 on silicon wafer obtained with combination methods, inset: optical microscope image of the ultrathin sheet of 1.To get large-area films characteristic of the mechanical exfoliation and thin films characteristic of the liquid-phase exfoliation, we combined the two methods. We first immerse the crystal of 1 in heptane for a few minutes to let the solvent seep into the gallery between the sheets and weaken the interlayer interactions. Then, we use mechanical exfoliation to isolate the ultrathin films. With this method, we obtained sheets of 1 with a lateral size of over ten micrometers, as shown in Fig. 3c. By carefully examining the exfoliated non-covalent porous 2D sheets of 1, we were also able to observe the height change across the sheet (Fig. 3d) with integer values of the layer thickness after the exfoliation steps. As marked red in Fig. 3d, we could identify a single layer of 1 with a height difference between these two surfaces of about 1.5 nm, corresponding to monolayer of molecule 1.We conducted transmission electron microscopy (TEM) studies to characterize the crystallinity of the as-prepared non-covalent porous 2D sheets of 1. As shown in Fig. 4a (inset), the 2D sheets exhibit a layered structure after liquid-phase exfoliation. The selected area electron diffraction (SAED) in the area (marked by the red circle) reveals a hexagonal diffraction pattern, with the bright reflections corresponding to the (2 1(−) 0) plane, with a spacing of 11.3 Å. This diffraction pattern confirms that the non-covalent, porous 2D sheets of 1 retain the single crystal packing and are stable to the liquid-phase processing.Open in a separate windowFig. 4TEM characterization and device fabrication. (a) SEAD pattern and TEM image (inset) of the non-covalent porous ultrathin sheet 1 obtained by liquid-phase exfoliation. (b) Schematic showing the structure of the hBN/Graphene/1 device based on the non-covalent porous ultrathin sheet 1 with graphene as electrodes and hBN as the dielectric layer. (c) Optical microscope image showing the as-fabricated hBN/Graphene/1 device. (d) Transfer curve of the hBN/Graphene/1 device.We next sought to determine the ability of these non-covalent porous ultrathin layers to transport charge. Because these films are van der Waals materials, we sought to make devices with van der Waals interfaces. [The ESI^† contains the current/voltage curves for 1 in a more traditional organic FET with Au contacts and trichloro(octadecyl)silane coated SiO₂ as the gate dielectric.] The source-drain contacts were fabricated from graphene and the dielectric interface was hexagonal boron nitride (hBN). A schematic of the device is shown in Fig. 4b. To create this device, we first exfoliate graphene and hBN onto a silicon substrate. We then follow a published procedure³⁷ to first pick up hBN and then graphene to make the hBN/graphene stack. We transfer this hBN/graphene stack onto another clean silicon substrate. Then the graphene was cut using electron beam lithography and an oxygen plasma to open a 300 nm gap between graphene electrodes (see Fig. S4^† for the AFM details of graphene electrodes). In order to transfer the non-covalent porous ultrathin sheets of 1 onto the graphene electrodes, we exploit the combined liquid/mechanical exfoliation method above to obtained 2D sheet of 1 with polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) polymer as the substrate, which was then used for the stamp transferring. In this manner, we were able to transfer the ultrathin sheets (∼20 nm) onto the graphene electrodes. Fig. 4c displays the optical microscope image of the device, and Fig. 4d displays the FET transfer curves revealing that the material is an efficacious, n-type transistor. Several features of the device are noteworthy. The electron mobility in the linear regime was estimated to be 1.6 × 10⁻⁴ cm² V⁻¹ s⁻¹ from the transfer curve. As expected, it is somewhat lower than the electron mobility estimated from the saturation regime of the traditional OFET shown in Fig. S3.^†38 Despite the small size and the nanoscale thickness, the material exhibits over 3 orders of magnitude difference in current between the off and on state of the device. The threshold voltage is about 39 V, implying that the device turns on at relatively high voltage. We surmise that the contact, through the alkane sidechains is an impediment to more efficient charge transport.     

Stoffwechselprodukte von Mikroorganismen. 231. Mitteilung. Bafilomycin-A1-21-O-(α-L-rhamnopyranosid): Strukturaufklärung durch chemische Verknüpfung mit Bafilomycin A1 und Leucanicidin

Isolation of Bafilomycin-A₁-21-O-(α-L-rhamnopyranoside). Structural Determination by Chemical Correlation with Bafilomycin A₁ and Leucanicidin From cultures of an actinomycete strain, the known antifungal and insecticidal antibiotic leucanicidin ( 1 ) and a hitherto unknown antifungal antibiotic, bafilomycin-A₁-21-O-(α-L-rhamnopyranoside) ( 2 ), were isolated. The latter is spectroscopically closely related to 1 and bafilomycin A₁ ( 3 ) and gave degradation products identical with compounds obtained by analogous degradation of 1 and 3 .     

Attaching organic semiconductors to gate oxides: in situ assembly of monolayer field effect transistors

This study unveils a new tetracene derivative that forms dense, upright monolayers on the surface of aluminum oxide. These monolayers spontaneously self-organize into the active layer in nanoscale field-effect transistor devices when aluminum oxide is used as the dielectric layer. This method gives high yields of working devices that have source-drain distances that are less than 60 nm, thereby providing a method to electrically probe the monolayer assemblies formed from approximately 10 zeptomoles of material (approximately 104 molecules). Moreover, this study delineates a new avenue for research in thin-film organic transistors where the active molecules are linked to the dielectric surface to form a monolayer transistor.