Reactions of 2,3‐dihydro‐1H‐1,5‐benzodiazepines and chloroacetyl chlorides: Synthesis of 2a,3,4,5‐tetrahydro‐azeto [1,2‐a][1,5] benzodiazepin‐1(2H)‐ones

2a,4‐Disubstituted 5‐benzoyl‐2‐chloro/2,2‐dichloro‐2a,3,4,5‐tetrahydro‐azeto [1,2‐a] [1,5]benzodiazepin‐1 (2H)‐ones ( 3a–h ) were synthesized by cycloaddition reactions of 2,4‐disubstituted 1‐benzoyl‐2,3‐dihydr o‐1H‐1,5‐benzodiazepines ( 2a–h ) and ketenes, generated from chloroacetyl chloride or dichloroacetyl chloride in the presence of triethylamine, in anhydrous benzene. In some cases, ring contraction of benzodiazepines has also been observed. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Heteroatom Chem 12:636–640, 2001     

Particle Loaded Monolithic Sol‐Gel Columns for Capillary Electrochromatography: A New Dimension for High Performance Liquid Chromatography

Particle‐loaded (3 μm, octadecylsilica) monolithic sol‐gel columns have been prepared and selected characteristics measured. Several electrical properties may be calculated from simple current measurements in the column as a whole. Resistivity in the packed segment is approximately three times that in open segments, resulting in a 60% increase in field strength in the packed regions compared to the capillary with no packing. The surprisingly high specific permeability of these sol‐gel columns is characteristic of 8‐μm particles, which allows their operation in the microLC mode at pressures as low as 69 kPa where their efficiency is about 50,000 plates per meter and in the CEC mode where efficiency is about 106,000 plates per meter at 5 kV. There is a relatively rapid loss of efficiency with increasing linear velocity beyond 0.2 mm/s in microLC mode, which may be due to additional diffusion processes in the inter‐particulate voids. A rapid loss of efficiency above 0.5 mm/s is also observed in the CEC mode, for the same reasons. Chromatographic retention behavior in either separation mode is characteristic of conventional octadecylsilica particles, indicating that analytes have significant access to the surface within the pores of the immobilized bonded phase.     

Phase‐transition characteristics of amphiphilic poly(2‐ethyl‐2‐oxazoline)/poly(ε‐caprolactone) block copolymers in aqueous solutions

Amphiphilic diblock and triblock copolymers of various block compositions based on hydrophilic poly(2‐ethyl‐2‐oxazoline) (PEtOz) and hydrophobic poly(ε‐caprolactone) were synthesized. The micelle formation of these block copolymers in aqueous media was confirmed by a fluorescence technique and dynamic light scattering. The critical micelle concentrations ranged from 35.5 to 4.6 mg/L for diblock copolymers and 4.7 to 9.0 mg/L for triblock copolymers, depending on the block composition. The phase‐transition behaviors of the block copolymers in concentrated aqueous solutions were investigated. When the temperature was increased, aqueous solutions of diblock and triblock copolymers exhibited gel–sol transition and precipitation, both of which were thermally reversible. The gel–sol transition‐ and precipitation temperatures were manipulated by adjustment of the block composition. As the hydrophobic portion of block copolymers became higher, a larger gel region was generated. In the presence of sodium chloride, the phase transitions were shifted to a lower temperature level. Sodium thiocyanate displaced the gel region and precipitation temperatures to a higher temperature level. The low molecular weight saccharides, such as glucose and maltose, contributed to the shift of phase‐transition temperatures to a lower temperature level, where glucose was more effective than maltose in lowering the gel–sol transition temperatures. The malonic acid that formed hydrogen bonds with the PEtOz shell of micelles was effective in lowering phase‐transition temperatures to 1.0M, above which concentration the block copolymer solutions formed complex precipitates. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Polym Sci B: Polym Phys 38: 2400–2408, 2000     

Phase behaviors of nematic liquid crystal/linear polymer systems: Effect of specific interactions

A new model has been proposed that takes into account the specific interaction between nematic liquid crystal and polymer. A generalized lattice fluid model was employed to describe the specific interaction between liquid crystal and polymer. The proposed model postulates that a specific interaction between dissimilar components in a mixture has both an energetic and an entropic component. A degeneracy parameter and an interaction parameter are also discussed, followed by a comparison of the experimental data to the model. The results show that that a specific interaction plays an important role in the phase behaviors of the given systems. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Polym Sci A: Polym Chem 38: 4128–4136, 2000     

Thermal stress analysis for polyimide thin film: The effect of solvent evaporation

We propose a stress model to account for the thermal stress caused by a mismatch of isobaric expansivity, solvent evaporation, and imidization. The evaporation strain term is given as functions of a viscosity, and solvent weight fraction. The proposed model is in very good agreement with experimental data and gives useful information about the analysis of the thermal stress caused in polymeric films.     

Surface studies of polyethers with well‐defined segmental length

Two series of polyethers were synthesized by the polymerization of 1, n‐dibromoalkane (n = 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14 and 18) with bisphenol‐A (BA) and 4, 4'‐(hexafluoroisopropylidene) diphenol‐A. The length of the flexible aliphatic segment changes from 4 Å to 21 Å (corresponding to 4 to 18 CH₂ groups). X‐ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), time‐of‐flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (ToF‐SIMS) and atomic force microscopy (AFM) were used to characterize the surfaces of the polyethers. The influence of the length of the flexible aliphatic segments on the surface composition of the BA and 6FBA polyethers was investigated. The intensity ratios of the characteristic SIMS peaks of the flexible segments to those of the rigid segments were related to the length of the flexible segments and the XPS results confirmed that the SIMS intensity ratios can be used to determine the surface compositions. AFM was utilized to investigate the crystallization process of the BA polymer with n = 8. The appearance of nuclei, the generation of primary lamellae and the formation of spherulites were observed dynamically. Nuclei appeared first as 10 nm dots, some disappeared and a few could grow into lamellae. The lamellae that developed from the nuclei bred more lamellae, which in turn induced secondary nucleation and branching of lamellae and finally led to a spherical appearance.     

Synthesis of Unsymmetric Bipyridine–PtII–Alkynyl Complexes through Post‐Click Reaction with Emission Enhancement Characteristics and Their Applications as Phosphorescent Organic Light‐Emitting Diodes

Two unsymmetric bipyridine–platinum(II)–alkynyl complexes have been synthesised by a post‐click reaction. These metal complexes are found to exhibit emission enhancement properties. The photoluminescence quantum yield can be significantly increased from 0.03 in solution to 0.72 in solid‐state thin films. Efficient solution‐processable organic light‐emitting diodes have been fabricated by utilizing these complexes as phosphorescent dopants. A high external quantum efficiency of up to 5.8 % has been achieved.     

Multilevel Deep Feature Generation Framework for Automated Detection of Retinal Abnormalities Using OCT Images

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) images coupled with many learning techniques have been developed to diagnose retinal disorders. This work aims to develop a novel framework for extracting deep features from 18 pre-trained convolutional neural networks (CNN) and to attain high performance using OCT images. In this work, we have developed a new framework for automated detection of retinal disorders using transfer learning. This model consists of three phases: deep fused and multilevel feature extraction, using 18 pre-trained networks and tent maximal pooling, feature selection with ReliefF, and classification using the optimized classifier. The novelty of this proposed framework is the feature generation using widely used CNNs and to select the most suitable features for classification. The extracted features using our proposed intelligent feature extractor are fed to iterative ReliefF (IRF) to automatically select the best feature vector. The quadratic support vector machine (QSVM) is utilized as a classifier in this work. We have developed our model using two public OCT image datasets, and they are named database 1 (DB1) and database 2 (DB2). The proposed framework can attain 97.40% and 100% classification accuracies using the two OCT datasets, DB1 and DB2, respectively. These results illustrate the success of our model.