Synthesis of glycerol carbonate from glycerol and urea with gold-based catalysts

The reaction of glycerol with urea to form glycerol carbonate is mostly reported in the patent literature and to date there have been very few fundamental studies of the reaction mechanism. Furthermore, most previous studies have involved homogeneous catalysts whereas the identification of heterogeneous catalysts for this reaction would be highly beneficial. This is a very attractive reaction that utilises two inexpensive and readily available raw materials in a chemical cycle that overall, results in the chemical fixation of CO(2). This reaction also provides a route to up-grade waste glycerol produced in large quantities during the production of biodiesel. Previous reports are largely based on the utilisation of high concentrations of metal sulfates or oxides, which suffer from low intrinsic activity and selectivity. We have identified heterogeneous catalysts based on gallium, zinc, and gold supported on a range of oxides and the zeolite ZSM-5, which facilitate this reaction. The addition of each component to ZSM-5 leads to an increase in the reaction yield towards glycerol carbonate, but supported gold catalysts display the highest activity. For gold-based catalysts, MgO is the support of choice. Catalysts have been characterised by XRD, TEM, STEM and XPS, and the reaction has been studied with time-on-line analysis of products via a combination of FT-IR spectroscopy, HPLC, (13)C NMR and GC-MS analysis to evaluate the reaction pathway. Our proposed mechanism suggests that glycerol carbonate forms via the cyclization of a 2,3-dihydroxypropyl carbamate and that a subsequent reaction of glycerol carbonate with urea yields the carbamate of glycerol carbonate. Stability and reactivity studies indicate that consecutive reactions of glycerol carbonate can limit the selectivity achieved and reaction conditions can be selected to avoid this. The effect of the catalyst in the proposed mechanism is discussed.     

Two octacyanometallate-based Ni(II)W(V) bimetallic assemblies with metamagnetism

Reactions of the precursors [Ni(macrocyclic ligand)](2+) with [W(CN)(8)](3-) afford two octacyanotungstate-based assemblies, (H(2)L(1))(0.5)[Ni(L(1))][W(CN)(8)]·2DMF·H(2)O (L(1) = 5,7,7,12,14,14-hexamethyl-1,4,8,11-tetraazacyclotetradecane) (1) and [Ni(L(2))](3)[W(CN)(8)](2)·4H(2)O (L(2) = 3,10-dipropyl-1,3,5,8,10,12-hexaazacyclotetradecane) (2). Single crystal X-ray diffraction shows that 1 consists of anionic one-dimensional (1D) linear chains, while 2 is built of 2D graphite-like layers with (6, 3) topology. Magnetic studies reveal that both complexes exhibit metamagnetic behavior from the spin-canted antiferromagnet to the ferromagnet induced by field.     

Copper-catalyzed oxidative amination of benzoxazoles via C-H and C-N bond activation: a new strategy for using tertiary amines as nitrogen group sources

An efficient and conceptually new method for oxidative amination of azoles with tertiary amines via copper-catalyzed C-H and C-N bond activation has been developed. This protocol can be performed in the absence of external base and only requires atmospheric oxygen as oxidant. The catalyst system is very simple and efficient, which opens a new way for using tertiary amines as nitrogen group sources for C-N bond formation reactions.     

A "click and activate" approach in one-pot synthesis of a triazolyl-pyridazinone library

A "click and activate" strategy was designed and executed in a four-component, stepwise condensation that led to a trisubstituted triazolyl-pyridazinone library. This one-pot process included regioselective azide substitution at 2-substituted-4,5-dichloropyridazinones, followed by a Cu(I) catalyzed triazole formation which triggered subsequent nucleophilic substitution at the neighboring position to achieve three points of diversity.     

A novel synthesis of fluorinated pyrazoles via gold(I)-catalyzed tandem aminofluorination of alkynes in the presence of Selectfluor

A mild and efficient protocol for the synthesis of fluorinated pyrazoles has been developed via gold(I)-catalyzed tandem aminofluorination of alkynes in the presence of Selectfluor. This method offers a broad substrate scope.     

Allylic substitution on cyclopentene and -hexene rings with alkynylcopper reagents

Substitution of cyclic allylic picolinates with a reagent derived from TMS-C≡CMgBr and a copper salt was investigated. Although the previous type of reagent (TMSC≡CMgBr and CuBr·Me(2)S) developed for linear allylic picolinates was less product selective and regioselective, the Cu(acac)(2)-derived reagent was highly selective (94-95%) to afford the S(N)2' product in good yields. As an application, several C-C bond formations at the acetylenic carbon and the synthesis of the PG intermediate were studied with success.     

Nonionic surfactant enhanced semipermanent coatings for capillary electrophoresis of inorganic anions without use of organic additives

Separation of inorganic anions by capillary electrophoresis (CE) is usually conducted in co-electroosmotic mode due to the large electrophoretic mobilities of inorganic anions. Semipermanent surfactant coatings have been shown to be effective for CE of inorganic anions due to their strong capability of electroosmotic flow (EOF) manipulation. However, semipermanent coatings often suffer from their unsatisfactory stability. In addition, organic solvent additives are usually required to adjust the selectivity, which also aggravate the degradation of coating. In this work, a novel semipermanent coating consisting of cationic Gemini surfactant 18-10-18 and nonionic surfactant Tween 20 was developed to separate inorganic anions in CE. This coating is easy to prepare and more stable than pure Gemini coating. The introduction of nonionic surfactant in the coating not only suppresses the reversed EOF but can also adjust the selectivity of separation. Good separations of six model anions were achieved, the separation efficiency was as high as 65040-169700 plates/m and the RSDs of the migration times were less than 0.5 and 2.5% for run-to-run and day-to-day assays, respectively. Calibration curves were linear in the range of 0.05-5.0 mM; the detection limits ranged from 20 to 50 μM. More importantly, no organic solvents are required in the background buffer to achieve the satisfactory separations. This guarantees the coating stability and makes the method greener than most of other methods for CE of inorganic anions.     

Raman reporter-coated gold nanorods and their applications in multimodal optical imaging of cancer cells

We report the preparation of a kind of surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) tags and explore their applications in multifunctional optical imaging of cancer cells. The proposed nanoparticles (SERS tags) are prepared by connecting dye molecules directly onto the surfaces of gold nanorods through Au–S or Au–N interactions. The dye molecules are used as Raman reporters, while gold nanorods are used as enhanced materials due to their localized surface plasmon resonance effect. Multilayered polymers are further coated onto the surfaces of the nanoparticles to reach better stability and biocompatibility. Gold nanorods with different aspect ratios and different dye molecules conjugated are compared in order to achieve the diversity of SERS tags and find out the optimized condition of SERS tags with the highest signal intensity. Our experiments show that the resulting nanoparticles, which are uptaken by cancer cells, can provide not only dark field cells images but also multiplexing SERS images.     

An efficient adaptive analysis procedure for node-based smoothed point interpolation method (NS-PIM)

This paper presents an efficient adaptive analysis procedure being able to operate in the framework of the node-based smoothed point interpolation method (NS-PIM). The NS-PIM uses three-node triangular cells and is very easy to be implemented, which make it an ideal candidate for adaptive analysis. In the present adaptive procedure, a new error indicator is devised for NS-PIM settings; two ways are proposed to calculate the local critical value; a simple h-type local refinement scheme is adopted and Delaunay technology is used for regenerating optimal new mesh. A number of typical numerical examples involving stress concentration and solution singularities have been tested. The results demonstrate that the present procedure achieves much higher convergence rate results compared to the uniform refinement, and can obtain upper bound solution in strain energy.     

POINCAR SERIES AND AN APPLICATION TO WEYL ALGEBRAS

Let A n be the n-th Weyl algebra over a field of characteristic 0 and M a finitely generated module over A n . By further exploring the relationship between the Poincar′e series and the dimension and the multiplicity of M , we are able to prove that the tensor product of two finitely generated modules over A n has the multiplicity equal to the product of the multiplicities of both modules. It turns out that we can compute the dimensions and the multiplicities of some homogeneous subquotient modules of A n .