Multiphoton Phosphorescence of Simple Ketones by Visible-light Excitation and Its Consideration for Active Sensing in Space

Journal of Fluorescence - Acetone and butanone were seen to emit blue light around 450 nm when excited in the green by a high intensity pulsed laser. The pathway of this anti-Stokes...     

Metal-free N-h insertions of donor/acceptor carbenes

Synthetically useful transformations arise from the thermal decomposition of aryldiazoacetates in the presence of primary and secondary amines without the use of a metal catalyst. Thermally generated, free donor/acceptor carbenes directly undergo N-H insertion with amines through selective aza-ylide formation to afford a variety of α-amino esters in 53-96% yields.     

Magnetic structure variation in manganese-oxide clusters

Negative-ion photoelectron spectroscopy and ab initio simulations are used to study the variation in magnetic structure in Mn(x)O(y) (x = 3, 4[semicolon] y = 1, 2) clusters. The ferrimagnetic and antiferromagnetic ground-state structures of Mn(x)O(y) are 0.16-1.20 eV lower in energy than their ferromagnetic isomers. The presence of oxygen thus stabilizes low-spin isomers relative to the preferred high-spin ordering of bare Mn(3) and Mn(4). Each cluster has a preferred overall magnetic moment, and no evidence is seen of competing states with different spin multiplicities. However, non-degenerate isomags, which possess the same spin multiplicity but different arrangements of local moments, do contribute additional features and peak broadening in the photoelectron spectra. Proper accounting for all possible isomags is shown to be critical for accurate computational prediction of the spectra.     

Characterization of titanium dioxide nanoparticles using molecular dynamics simulations

Molecular dynamics simulations of titanium dioxide nanoparticles in the three commonly occurring phases (anatase, brookite, and rutile) are reported. The structural properties inferred by simulated X-ray diffraction patterns of the nanoparticles were investigated. The titanium-oxygen bond length as a function of size, phase, and temperature was determined and was found to be dependent on the coordination environment of the titanium and independent of phase and size. The equilibrium Ti-O bond length is 1.86 A for a four-coordinated titanium ion, 1.92 A for a five-coordinated titanium ion, and 1.94 A for an octahedral titanium ion. Smaller nanoparticles are characterized by a higher fraction of titanium ions that are four and five coordinated, due to the larger surface area-to-volume ratios. The surface energies for anatase, rutile, and brookite particles were reported. The surface energy of the nanoparticle increases and approaches a constant value as the particle gets bigger. The surface energies of small rutile particles are higher than that for anatase particles of a similar size, consistent with anatase being the more stable phase of nanocrystalline titanium dioxide.     

Wave-Mean Flow Interactions in Thermally Stratified Poiseuille Flow

We consider nonlinear wave motions in thermally stratified Poiseuille flow. Attention is focused on short wavelength wave modes for which the neutral Reynolds number scales as the square of the wave number. The nonlinear evolution of a single monochromatic wave is governed by a first harmonic/mean-flow interaction theory in which the wave-induced mean flow is comparable in size to the wave component of the flow. An integrodifferential equation is derived which governs the normal variation of the wave amplitude. This equation admits finite-amplitude solutions which bifurcate supercritically from the linear neutral point(s).     

6-Endo Heck Cyclization of 3-(2-Iodophenoxy)methylbenzofurans: A Useful Approach to Pterocarpenes

Mitsunobu coupling of 3-hydroxymethylbenzofurans with o-iodophenols affords 3-(2-iodophenoxy)methylbenzofurans which under go a useful 6-endo Heck cyclization under Jeffery conditions to afford pterocarpene-type heterocycles. The unsubstituted parent pterocarpene thus prepared was readily converted to coumestan via subsequent PCC oxidation.

Supplemental materials are available for this article. Go to the publisher's online edition of Synthetic Communications® to view the free supplemental file.     

Deviations from ideal sublimation vapor pressure behavior in mixtures of polycyclic aromatic compounds with interacting heteroatoms

Despite the relatively small atomic fraction of a given heteroatom in a binary mixture of polycyclic aromatic compounds (PAC), the presence of heteroatoms can significantly impact mixture vapor pressure behavior over a wide range of temperatures. The vapor pressures of several binary PAC mixtures containing various heteroatoms show a range of behavior, from practically ideal behavior following Raoult’s law to significant deviations from ideality depending on the heteroatoms present. Mixtures were synthesized using the quench-cool technique with equimolar amounts of two PAC, both containing heteroatoms such as aldehyde, carboxyl, nitrogen, and sulfur substituent groups. For some mixtures, deviation from ideality is inversely related to temperature, though in other cases we see deviation from ideality increasing with temperature, whereas some appear independent of temperature. Most commonly we see lower vapor pressures than predicted by Raoult’s Law, which indicates that the interacting heteroatoms prefer the solid mixture phase as opposed to the vapor phase. Although negative deviations predominate from Raoult’s Law, the varying mixtures investigated show both higher and lower enthalpies and entropies of sublimation than predicted. In each mixture, a higher enthalpy of sublimation leads to higher entropy of sublimation than predicted, and vice versa.     

Dehydrogenative silane coupling on silicon surfaces via early transition metal catalysis

Derivatization of silicon surfaces is an area of intense interest due to the centrality of silicon in the microelectronics industry and because of potential promise for a myriad of other applications. In this paper, we investigate the feasibility of Si-Si bond formation directly on the surface to contrast with the more widely studied Si-C and Si-O bond forming reactions. Functionalization of hydride-terminated silicon surfaces with silanes is carried out via early transition metal mediated dehydrogenative silane coupling reactions. Zirconocene and titanocene catalyst systems were evaluated for heterocoupling of a molecular silane, RSiH3, with a surface Si-H group on Si(s). The zirconocene catalysts proved to be much more reactive than the titanium system, and so the former was examined exclusively. The silanes, aromatic or aliphatic, are bonded to the silicon surface through direct Si-Si bonds, although the level of incorporation of the trihydroarylsilanes was substantially higher than that of the aliphatic silanes. The reaction proceeds on nanocrystalline hydride-terminated porous silicon surfaces, as well as flat Si(100)-H(x) and Si(111)-H interfaces. The reactions were studied by a variety of techniques, including FTIR, SIMS, and XPS.