Beyond Stereoselectivity,Switchable Catalysis: Some of the Last Frontier Challenges in Ring‐Opening Polymerization of Cyclic Esters

Metal‐based catalysts and initiators have played a pivotal role in the ring‐opening polymerization (ROP) of cyclic esters, thanks to their high activity and remarkable ability to control precisely the architectures of the resulting polyesters in terms of molar mass, dispersity, microstructure, or tacticity. Today, after two decades of extensive research, the field is slowly reaching maturity. However, several challenges remain, while original concepts have emerged around new types or new applications of catalysis. This Review is not intended to comprehensively cover all of these aspects. Rather, it provides a personal overview of the very recent progress achieved in some selected, important aspects of ROP catalysis—stereocontrol and switchable catalysis. Hence, the first part addresses the development of new metal‐based catalysts for the isoselective ROP of racemic lactide towards stereoblock copolymers, and the use of syndioselective ROP metal catalysts to control the monomer sequence in copolymers. A second part covers the development of ROP catalysts—primarily metal‐based catalysts, but also organocatalysts—that can be externally regulated by the use of chemical or photo stimuli to switch them between two states with different catalytic abilities. Current challenges and opportunities are highlighted.     

A new molecular rectifier device and some research in its processing

Organic materials of D-π-A type MR-X (MR-1: p-dimethylaminophenylethenetrica-rbonitrile and MR-2: p-diphenylaminophenylethene tricarbonitrile) were designed and synthesized. The device with a sandwich structure shows good rectificative phenomena. The highest rectification ratio 10000 was achieved in device Cu/MR-1/Ag, and about 100 in other device M/MR-X/M (M: Cu, Ag). It has been found that rectificative phenomena exist only in the atmosphere-liquid interface region by means of liquid adsorption, and electric field could help form the oriented molecular film. __________ Translated from Journal of Fudan University (Natural Science), 2005, 44(4) (in Chinese)     

ON A PAIR OF NON-ISOMETRIC ISOSPECTRAL DOMAINS WITH FRACTAL BOUNDARIES AND THE WEYL-BERRY CONJECTURE

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Numerical methods for finding multiple eigenvalues of matrices depending on parameters

Summary. Let be a square matrix dependent on parameters and , of which we choose as the eigenvalue parameter. Many computational problems are equivalent to finding a point such that has a multiple eigenvalue at . An incomplete decomposition of a matrix dependent on several parameters is proposed. Based on the developed theory two new algorithms are presented for computing multiple eigenvalues of with geometric multiplicity . A third algorithm is designed for the computation of multiple eigenvalues with geometric multiplicity but which also appears to have local quadratic convergence to semi-simple eigenvalues. Convergence analyses of these methods are given. Several numerical examples are presented which illustrate the behaviour and applications of our methods. Received December 19, 1994 / Revised version received January 18, 1996     

轴向流对Z箍缩等离子体稳定性的影响

利用理想磁流体力学(MHD)模型对有轴向流参与的Z箍缩等离子体不稳定性进行了分析.对可压缩平板等离子体模型的色散关系进行了推导,讨论了三种不同等离子体状态下的不稳定性增长率.结果显示,等离子体的可压缩性对磁瑞利-泰勒/开尔文-亥姆霍兹(MRT/KH)杂化不稳定性有抑制作用,改善了轴向剪切流对长波长扰动的影响.分析了不同轴向流速度分布对系统稳定性的影响.结果表明,对于峰值相同的不同轴向流,其对不稳定性的抑制效果只依赖于扰动集中区域内速度剪切的大小,与其他位置的速度剪切无关.