The adsorption structure of nonionic surfactant on the sessile mercury electrode in a thin liquid film

In relation to a colloid stability, the adsorption structure of the Stern layer on a sessile mercury electrode in a thin liquid film of nonionic surfactant was investigated by measuring the double layer capacitance. The Stern capacitance on the electrode in the film could be detected when the measuring frequency used was low, for the resistance of the film was not extremely high but of the order of several thousand ohm. It was found that the adsorption structure of nonionic surfactant in the thin liquid film shows a stratification different from that of bulk.     

Electroreduction of tetra-coordinate phosphonium derivatives; one-pot transformation of triphenylphosphine oxide into triphenylphosphine

Electroreduction of triphenylphosphine dichloride in acetonitrile was performed successfully in an undivided cell fitted with an aluminium sacrificial anode and a platinum cathode, wherein Al³⁺, which was electrogenerated at the anode would react as a Lewis acid with triphenylphosphine dichloride to afford tetra-coordinate chlorotriphenylphosphonium species and subsequent two-electron reduction at the cathode would give triphenylphosphine. One-pot transformation of triphenylphosphine oxide to triphenylphosphine was achieved successfully by the treatment of triphenylphosphine oxide with oxalyl chloride and subsequent electroreduction. In a similar manner, some tetra-coordinate triphenylphosphonium species derived from triphenylphosphine oxide were reduced electrochemically to triphenylphosphine in moderate yields.     

Strategy for structural elucidation of drugs and drug metabolites using (MS)n fragmentation in an electrospray ion trap

Triple-stage quadrupole (TSQ) electrospray ionization (ESI) tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) and ion trap ESI-MS/MS can be used to cleave protonated molecules to produce carbocations and neutral molecules in the positive ion mode. Dissociation products which correspond to protonated forms of neutral fragment molecules can also be trapped and detected. These protonated molecules in turn can cleave via carbocation cleavage, ipso cleavage, onium cleavage or McLafferty or related rearrangements. One can elucidate the structures of metabolites from the differences in m/z ratios of the fragments arising from the original drug compound and its metabolite. This strategy for structural elucidation is further facilitated by estimates of the reactivity of drugs with oxygen diradicals involved in cytochrome P-450 cycles.     

An Isolable Radical Anion of an Organosilicon Cluster Containing Only σ Bonds

The radical anion of octa‐tert‐butyloctasilacubane was generated and isolated. The EPR spectrum showed the satellites due to the tertiary ¹³C nuclei of the eight tert‐butyl groups. The X‐ray crystallographic analysis showed that the Si? Si bonds are shortened and the Si? C bonds are elongated compared with those of octa‐tert‐butyloctasilacubane. These results are well explained by the distribution of an unpaired electron in the singly occupied molecular orbital (SOMO).     

Synthesis and radical polymerization of styrene‐based monomer having a five‐membered cyclic carbonate structure

A styrene‐based monomer having a five‐membered cyclic carbonate structure, 4‐vinylbenzyl 2,5‐dioxoran‐3‐ylmethyl ether (VBCE), was prepared by lithium bromide‐catalyzed addition of carbon dioxide to 4‐vinylbenxyl glycidyl ether (VBGE). Radical polymerization of the obtained VBCE was carried out using 2,2′‐azobisisobutyronitrile as an initiator. PolyVBCE with number‐averaged molecular weight higher than 13,800 was obtained by a solution polymerization in N,N‐dimethylformamide, N,N‐dimethylacetamide, dimethyl sulfoxide, and methyl ethyl ketone. The glass transition temperature and 5 wt % decomposition temperature of the polyVBCE were determined to be 52 and 305 °C by differential scanning calorimetry and thermal gravimetry analysis, respectively. It was confirmed that a polymer consisting of the same VBCE repeating unit can be also obtained via chemical modification of polyVBGE, that is, a lithium‐bromide‐catalyzed addition of carbon dioxide to a polyVBGE prepared from a radical polymerization of VBGE. Further copolymerization of VBCE with styrene gave the corresponding copolymer in a high yield. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part A: Polym Chem, 2012     

Rational application of self-disproportionation of enantiomers via sublimation—a novel methodological dimension for enantiomeric purifications

The preliminary results presented in this work show that an enantiomer purification approach based on SDE via sublimation can be extended to non-volatile liquid compounds such as α-(phenyl)ethylamine and its β-fluoro-derivatives by way of their rational modification with a sublimation enabling tag. 3,3,3-Trifluoro-2-(trifluoromethyl)-2-methyl-propanoic acid was found to perfectly serve the role of such a modifying tag. Thus, the corresponding amides derived from the amines and the fluorinated propanoic acid were highly crystalline and reasonably volatile compounds allowing for their sublimation at room temperature under normal pressure. All of these derivatives showed substantial self-disproportionation of enantiomers (SDEs) via sublimation under kinetic conditions (on a Petri dish in the open air). These preliminary results serve as a proof of a new principle that may extend the generality of enantiomer purification via sublimation to various organic compounds with physico-chemical properties of which render them otherwise unsuitable for a sublimation procedure. In particular, the very attractive cost structure of sublimation procedure renders this approach of potentially high practical and economic efficiency.     

Multi-moment advection scheme for Vlasov simulations

We present a new numerical scheme for solving the advection equation and its application to Vlasov simulations. The scheme treats not only point values of a profile but also its zeroth to second order piecewise moments as dependent variables, for better conservation of the information entropy. We have developed one-and two-dimensional schemes and show that they provide quite accurate solutions within reasonable usage of computational resources compared to other existing schemes. The two-dimensional scheme can accurately solve the solid body rotation problem of a gaussian profile for more than hundred rotation periods with little numerical diffusion. This is crucially important for Vlasov simulations of magnetized plasmas. Applications of the one- and two-dimensional schemes to electrostatic and electromagnetic Vlasov simulations are presented with some benchmark tests.