Fabrication and characterization of silicon antireflection structures for infrared rays using a femtosecond laser

We focus on IR sensors with lower reflection for the wavelength around 10 μm, strongly awaited for detecting human bodies. A concave structure was designed as a more suitable reflection-free structure for IR light, and an optical system with a femtosecond laser was employed for verification of the effectiveness of the structure. The microstructures prepared through this process were fabricated and optically measured using SEM, FT-IR, and Raman spectroscopy. The measurement revealed that good reflection-free structures were realized for IR sensors with lower reflection for the wavelength of around 10 μm.     

A Convenient Route to α-Alkoxy Ester from Olefin Vla Organoborane-Catalyzed Hydroalumintaion

Organoborane-catatyzed hydroalumination of olefin with dichloroaluminum hydride and subsequent functionalization of the resulting organoaluminum with methyl α-chloro-α-methoxyacetate give rise to the corresponding α-methoxy ester in good yield.     

Preparation of substituted rare-earth metal diphthalocyanine complexes and study of their electrochemical behavior

Rare-earth metal diphthalocyanine complexes with R substituents, R₈Pc₂MH (where Pc=phthalocyanine; R=propoxy, t-butyl; M=Er, Lu), were prepared. Their films on basal plane pyrolytic graphite and on indium-tin oxide Nesa glass electrodes in several aqueous electrolytes were investigated by voltammetric analysis and in situ electronic absorption spectroscopy at controlled potentials. These modified electrodes showed multi-color electrochromic behavior as a result of multi-step redox reaction. The film color turned from original green through orange to red in an oxidation process, and through dark blue to purplish in a reduction process.     

Finding all Solutions of Systems of Nonlinear Equations Using the Dual Simplex Method

An efficient algorithm is proposed for finding all solutions of nonlinear equations using linear programming (LP). This algorithm is based on a simple test (termed the LP test) for nonexistence of a solution to a system of nonlinear equations in a given region. In the conventional LP test, the system of nonlinear equations is transformed into an LP problem, to which the simplex method is applied. However, although the LP test is very powerful, it requires many pivotings for each region. In this paper, we use the dual simplex method in the LP test, which makes the average number of pivotings per region much smaller (less than one, for example) and makes the algorithm very efficient. By numerical examples, it is shown that the proposed algorithm can find all solutions of systems of 200 nonlinear equations in practical computation time.     

Nanotechnological evaluation of protein adsorption on dialysis membrane surface hydrophilized with polyvinylpyrrolidone

Hydrophilizing synthetic polymer dialysis membranes with polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) play an important role for inhibition of protein adsorption on membrane surface. In the present study, the effect of PVP on protein adsorption was evaluated from a nano-scale perspective. Swelling behavior of PVP present on wet polysulfone (PS)/PVP film surfaces was observed by atomic force microscopy (AFM). Fibrinogen and human serum albumin (HSA) were immobilized on the tip of AFM probes, with which a force-curve between protein and wet PS/PVP film surface was measured by AFM while scanning in order to visualize two-dimensional protein adsorbability on film surfaces. Furthermore, HSA adsorbability on non-PVP containing PEPA dialysis membrane (FLX-15GW) and PVP containing PEPA dialysis membrane (FDX-150GW) was evaluated by the AFM force-curve method. As a result, PS/PVP film surface was completely covered with hydrated and swollen PVP at 5 wt% or more PVP content. Protein adsorbability on PS/PVP film surfaces decreased greatly with increasing content of PVP. The adsorption of HSA was inhibited by the presence of PVP on film surfaces more significantly than that of more hydrophobic fibrinogen. HSA adsorbability on wet FLX-15GW dialysis membrane surface was 428 ± 174 pN whereas that on wet FDX-150GW dialysis membrane surface was 42 ± 29 pN.     

Retardation of crystallization-induced destabilization of PMF-in-water emulsion with emulsifier additives

An oil-in-water (O/W) emulsion, in which the oil phase is semi-solid fat, is easily destabilized when stored below the crystallization temperature of the oil phase. Such destabilization, characterized by loss of fluidity at chilled temperature and oil-water separation after re-heating, is caused by inter-droplet bridging of fat crystals protruding out of the emulsion droplets. In the present study, we found that the simultaneous use of additives of highly hydrophobic sucrose oligoester (SOE; P-170) and highly hydrophilic SOE (P-1670) containing palmitic acid moiety remarkably retarded the crystallization-induced destabilization of the O/W emulsion that contains palm-mid-fraction (PMF) as the oil phase. Without the additives, destabilization occurred when the emulsion was cooled from 60 to 0 degrees C and kept at 0 degrees C for 1 day. Microscopic observation revealed that destabilization was caused by coalescence of the oil droplets, which was triggered by the growth of needle-shaped PMF crystals protruding out of the emulsion membranes. However, the addition of P-170 to PMF increased the crystallization temperature of PMF and at the same time retarded the destabilization. Furthermore, the simultaneous addition of P-170 and P-1670 retarded the crystallization-induced destabilization even more. Optical observation, DSC, and synchrotron radiation X-ray diffraction measurements indicated that the P-170 additive enhanced interfacial heterogeneous crystallization to form tiny PMF crystals in the droplets, and that the P-1670 additive retarded morphological change of the PMF crystals into long needle shapes in association with polymorphic transformation from alpha to beta'.     

Numerical experiments of the planar equal-mass three-body problem: the effects of rotation

The planar three-body problem with angular momentum is numerically and systematically studied as a generalization of the free-fall problem (i.e., the three-body problem with zero initial velocities). The initial conditions in the configuration space exhaust all possible forms of a triangle, whereas the initial conditions in the momentum space are chosen so that position vectors and momentum vectors are orthogonal. Numerical results are organized according to the value of virial ratio k defined as the ratio of the total kinetic energy to the total potential energy. Final motions are mapped in the initial value space. Several interesting features are found. Among others, binary collision curves seem to spiral into the Lagrange point, and for large k, binary collision curves connect the Lagrange point and the Euler point. The existence of a lunar periodic orbit and a periodic orbit of petal-type is suggested. The number of escape orbits as a function of the escape time is analyzed for different k. The behavior of this number for different time and k shows most remarkably the effects of rotation of triple systems. The number of escape orbits increases exponentially for k相似文献