Synthesis of side‐chain liquid‐crystalline homopolymers and triblock copolymers with p‐methoxyazobenzene moieties and poly(ethylene glycol) as coil segments by atom transfer radical polymerization and their thermotropic phase behavior

A series of side‐chain liquid‐crystalline (LC) homopolymers of poly[6‐(4‐methoxy‐4′‐oxy‐azobenzene) hexyl methacrylate] with different degrees of polymerization were synthesized by atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP), which were prepared with a wide range of number‐average molecular weights from 5.1 × 10³ to 20.6 × 10³ with narrow polydispersities of around 1.17. Thermal investigation showed that the homopolymers exhibit two mesophases, a smectic phase, and a nematic phase, and the phase‐transition temperatures of the homopolymers increase clearly with increasing molecular weights. A series of novel LC coil triblock copolymers with narrow polydispersities was synthesized by ATRP, and their thermotropic phase behavior was investigated with differential scanning calorimetry and polarized optical microscopy. The LC coil triblocks were designed to have an LC conformation of poly[6‐(4‐methoxy‐4′‐oxy‐azobenzene) hexyl methacrylate] with a wide range of molecular weights from 3.5 × 10³ to 1.7 × 10⁴ and the coil conformation of poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) (number‐average molecular weight: 6000 or 12,000) segment. Their characterization was investigated with ¹H NMR, Fourier transform infrared spectra, and gel permeation chromatography. Triblock copolymers exhibited a crystalline phase, a smectic phase, and a nematic phase. The phase‐transition temperatures from the smectic to nematic phase and from the nematic to isotropic phase increased, and the crystallization of PEG depressed with increasing molecular weight of the LC block. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part A: Polym Chem 41: 2854–2864, 2003     

Preparation of nanometer MgO by sol-gel auto-combustion

Nanometer MgO was prepared via a sol-gel auto-combustion technique using magnesium nitrate as raw material and citric acid as chelating agent. IR spectra of the dried gel were used to investigate the structure of the precursors. By studying the different TG curves of magnesium citrate gel prepared by different methods, we found that a combustion process occurred and the nitrate ions acted as an oxidant in the combustion process. TEM photographs of synthesized powders from the sol-gel auto-combustion showed that the crystallites were uniform in size. In addition, the XRD pattern of this sample showed that the particle size was 8.9 nm. The BET curves, in turn, showed that the specific surface of the sample was 26.34 m²/g. The mechanism of the frothing process in restraining agglomeration is discussed. __________ Translated from Journal of East China Normal University (Natural Science), 2007, (2): 52–57 [译自: 华东师范大学学报(自然科学版)]     

Indentation responses of piezoelectric films

Frictionless indentation responses of transversely isotropic piezoelectric film/rigid substrate systems under circular cylindrical indenter (i.e., punch), conical indenter (i.e., cone), and spherical indenter (i.e., sphere) are investigated. Both insulating and conducting indenters are considered. The technique of Hankel transformation is employed to derive the corresponding dual integral equations for the mixed boundary value indentation problems. For the two limiting cases of infinitely thick and infinitely thin piezoelectric films, closed-form solutions are obtained. For piezoelectric films of finite thickness, a numerical method is constructed to solve the dual integral equations and semi-empirical models having only two unknown parameters are proposed for the responses of indentation force, electric charge and electric potential, and contact radius. With the two parameters inferred from the numerical results, the semi-empirical formulae are found to provide good estimates of the indentation responses for the two limiting cases of infinitely thick and thin piezoelectric films, as well as those in between. The inferred parameters in the proposed semi-empirical formulae for normalized indentation force and electric charge are checked against four different piezoelectric materials and are found to be insensitive to the selection of piezoelectric materials. It is believed that the proposed semi-empirical indentation formulae are useful in developing experimental indentation techniques to extract the material properties of piezoelectric films.     

Axisymmetric frictionless contact of functionally graded materials

The main interest of this study is a new method to solve the axisymmetric frictionless contact problem of functionally graded materials (FGMs). Based on the fact that an arbitrary curve can be approached by a series of continuous but piecewise linear curves, the FGM is divided into a series of sub-layers with shear modulus varying linearly in each sub-layer and continuous at the sub-interfaces. With this model, the axisymmetric frictionless contact problem of a functionally graded coated half-space is investigated. By using the transfer matrix method and Hankel integral transform technique, the problem is reduced to a Cauchy singular integral equation. The contact pressure, contact region and indentation are calculated for various indenters by solving the equations numerically. An erratum to this article can be found at     

Terahertz wave tomographic imaging with a Fresnel lens

We demonstrate three-dimensional tomographic imaging using a Fresnel lens with broadband terahertzpulses.Objects at various locations along the beam propagation path are uniquely imaged on the sameimaging plane using a Fresnel lens with different frequencies of the imaging beam.This procedure allowsthe reconstruction of an object's tomographic contrast image by assembling the frequency-dependentimages.     

AGS能量下π~－π~－的Bose—Einstein关联

全同粒子间的玻色－爱因斯坦关联可以用来研究相对论性核碰撞中次级粒子源分布及有关的物理问题．本文用强子级联模型（ＨＣＭ）模拟２８Ｓｉ（１４．６ＡＧＣＶ／ｃ）＋Ａｕ反应，得到π－粒子的ｆｒｅｅｚｅ－ｏｕｔ状态，进而计算了π－π－关联函数，取得与实验一致的结果．还计算了ｆｒｅｅｚｅ—ｏｕｔπ－源的均方根线度，并讨论了它与拟合方法抽取的源参数间的关系．     

Synthesis of some chiral liquid crystals and study of the effect of intramolecular hydrogen bonding on the phase behaviour

The synthesis of three new series of chiral Schiff's bases containing benzilideneaniline and 2-hydroxybenzilideneaniline moieties as mesogenic cores is presented. Differential scanning calorimetry, optical polarizing microscopy and X-ray diffraction measurements were used to study the phase transition temperatures and behaviour. The results reveal that most of these materials show chiral smectic mesomorphism.     

Application of coupling methods to the Neumann eigenvalue problem

Summary By using coupling methods, some lower bounds are obtained for the first Neumann eigenvalue on Riemannian manifolds. This method is new and the results improve some known estimates. An example shows that our estimates can be sharp.Research supported in part by the Foundation of Beijing Normal University