Reactive diffusion in the Ti–Si system and the significance of the parabolic growth constant

Solid diffusion couple experiments are conducted to analyse the growth mechanism of the phases and the diffusion mechanism of the components in the Ti–Si system. The calculation of the parabolic growth constants and the integrated diffusion coefficients substantiates that the analysis is intrinsically prone to erroneous conclusions if it is based on just the parabolic growth constants determined for a multiphase interdiffusion zone. The location of the marker plane is detected based on the uniform grain morphology in the TiSi₂ phase, which indicates that this phase grows mainly because of Si diffusion. The growth mechanism of the phases and morphological evolution in the interdiffusion zone are explained with the help of imaginary diffusion couples. The activation enthalpies for the integrated diffusion coefficient of TiSi₂ and the Si tracer diffusion are calculated as 190 ± 9 and 197 ± 8?kJ/mol, respectively. The crystal structure, details on the nearest neighbours of the components, and their relative mobilities indicate that the vacancies are mainly present on the Si sublattice.     

Study of Interfacial Charge Transfer from an Electron Rich Organic Molecule to CdTe Quantum Dot by using Stern-Volmer and Stochastic Kinetic Models

Photoinduced electron transfer (PET) from N-methylaniline (NMA) to a photoexcited CdTe quantum dot (QD*) is studied in toluene. The PET mechanism at low to moderate quencher (NMA) concentrations (<0.08 M) remains mostly collisional with some contributions from QD-NMA complex formation. However, at high quencher concentrations (>0.10 M), QDs form larger numbers of static complexes with NMA molecules leading to a steep positive deviation in the steady-state Stern–Volmer curves. An isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC) study confirms the formation of QD-NMA complexes (K∼150 M⁻¹) at high quencher concentrations. Fitting our experimental data using a stochastic kinetic model indicates that the number of NMA molecules attached per QD at highest NMA concentration (∼0.16 M) used in this study decreases from ∼0.76 to ∼0.47 with reducing the QD size from ∼5.2 nm to ∼3.2 nm. However, the PET rate increases with decreasing QD size, which is commensurate with the observation that the chemical driving force (ΔG) increases with decreasing the QD particle size. We have analyzed the PET kinetics mainly by using Stern-Volmer fittings. However, in some cases Tachiya's stochastic kinetic model is used for stoichiometric analysis, which seems to be useful only at high quencher concentrations. The measured PET rate coefficients in all the cases are found to be at least an order of magnitude lower when compared to the diffusion-controlled rate of the reaction medium.     

Palladium‐Catalyzed Annulation of Diarylamines with Olefins through C?H Activation: Direct Access to N‐Arylindoles

A palladium‐catalyzed dehydrogenative coupling between diarylamines and olefins has been discovered for the synthesis of substituted indoles. This intermolecular annulation approach incorporates readily available olefins for the first time and obviates the need of any additional directing group. An ortho palladation, olefin coordination, and β‐migratory insertion sequence has been proposed for the generation of olefinated intermediate, which is found to produce the expected indole moiety.     

Lanthanum(III) and praseodymium(III) derivatives with dithiocarbamates derived from alpha-amino acids

Lanthanum(III) and praseodymium(III) complexes with dithiocarbamates have been synthesized by the reactions of lanthanum(III) and praseodymium(III) chloride with barium dithiocarbamate and complexes of type [LnCl(L)H2O]n have been obtained (where Ln=La(III) or Pr(III); L=barium salt of dithiocarbamate derived from glycine, L-leucine, L-valine, DL-alanine). The complexes have been characterized by elemental analysis, molar conductance, electronic absorption and fluorescence, infrared, far infrared, 1H NMR spectral studies. The presence of coordinated water molecule is inferred from thermogravimetric analysis which indicates the loss of one water molecule at 150-170 degrees C. The oscillator strength, Judd-Ofelt intensity parameter, stimulated emission cross-section, etc. have been obtained for different transitions of Pr3+.     

Surfactant-assisted route to synthesize well-aligned ZnO nanorod arrays on sol-gel-derived ZnO thin films

Anisotropic growth of ZnO nanorod arrays on ZnO thin films was achieved at a temperature of 90 degrees C by a surfactant-assisted soft chemical approach with control over size and orientation. ZnO thin films with c-axis preferred orientation had been achieved by the sol-gel technique. Lengths, diameters, and the degree of alignment of the ZnO nanorods were controlled by changing the experimental parameters. It was observed that the surfactant was essential to restrict the lateral growth of the nanorods, whereas the pH level of the reaction medium controlled the length of the nanorods. On the other hand, the orientation of the nanorods depended on the crystalline orientation of the film as well as the pH of the reaction medium. Room-temperature photoluminescence studies revealed that the ZnO nanorods with the best alignment exhibited the best emission property. The ZnO nanorods exhibited a strong UV emission peak at approximately 3.22 eV, ascribed to the band-edge emission. The field emission studies of the well-aligned nanorod arrays exhibited a low turn-on field of 1.7 V/microm to get an emission current density of 0.1 microA/cm(2).