Removal of fine powders from film surface. I. Effect of electrostatic force on the removal efficiency

A novel fine particle removal system composed of a corona-discharge neutralizer, a pulse-jet air unit and an image processing system has been developed. First of all, adhesion force between particle and film was directly measured and effect of electrostatic force on the adhesion force was calculated experimentally and theoretically. The electrostatic force was found to be significant, leading to the suggestion that the countermeasure for the electrostatic force was required to effectively remove fine particles. This system was then applied to the removal of fine particles from surface of a gelatin film used for conventional capsule material. The number of particles removed by the system was calculated by an image processing system and number base removal efficiency was computed with and without the elimination of electrostatic charge by the neutralizer. It was found that the difference between the removal efficiency of particles with elimination of electrostatic charge and that of without the elimination showed linear relationship with the electrostatic adhesion force. The data confirmed the necessity of electrostatic charge elimination for the effective removal of fine particles.     

An Isotope‐Coded Fluorogenic Cross‐Linker for High‐Performance Target Identification Based on Photoaffinity Labeling

A photoaffinity labeling (PAL)‐based method for the rapid identification of target proteins is presented in which a high‐performance chemical tag, an isotope‐coded fluorescent tag (IsoFT), can be attached to the interacting site by irradiation. Labeled peptides can be easily distinguished among numerous proteolytic digests by sequential detection with highly sensitive fluorescence spectroscopy and mass spectrometry. Subsequent MS/MS analysis provides amino acid sequence information with a higher depth of coverage. The combination of PAL and heterogeneous target‐selecting techniques significantly reduces the amount of time and protein required for identification. An additional photocleavable moiety successfully accelerated proteomic analysis using cell lysate. This method is a widely applicable approach for the rapid and accurate identification of interacting proteins.     

Reaction of a Dialumene‐Benzene Adduct with Diphenylacetylene: Formation of 3,4‐Dialuminacyclobutene and 5,6‐Dialuminabicyclo[2.1.1]hex‐2‐ene Derivatives

Reaction of a dialumene‐benzene adduct bearing bulky aryl substituents with diphenylacetylene was found to give a novel 5,6‐dialuminabicyclo[2.1.1]hex‐2‐ene derivative in addition to the 3,4‐dialuminacyclobutene derivative, the formal [2+2]cycloadduct of an intermediary dialumene with diphenylacetylene. The molecular structure of the newly obtained 5,6‐dialuminabicyclo[2.1.1]hex‐2‐ene has been elucidated by X‐ray crystallographic analysis.     

Solvent‐Dependent Cation Exchange in Metal–Organic Frameworks

We investigated which factors govern the critical steps of cation exchange in metal–organic frameworks by studying the effect of various solvents on the insertion of Ni²⁺ into MOF‐5 and Co²⁺ into MFU‐4l. After plotting the extent of cation insertion versus different solvent parameters, trends emerge that offer insight into the exchange processes for both systems. This approach establishes a method for understanding critical aspects of cation exchange in different MOFs and other materials.     

Crystal Structures of Mono-, Di-, and Tri(p-tert-butyl)-thiacalix[4]arenes: Dimeric Self-inclusion Behavior

X-Ray crystal structures of the mono-, di-, and tri(p-tert-butyl)-substituted thiacalix[4]arenes (TC4As; 1, 2, and 3, respectively) have beendetermined. TC4As 1–3 adopt a cone conformation and form dimeric self-inclusion units in such a manner that phenol moieties are inserted into the cavity of each molecule. In all the crystal structures of 1–3, lateralface-to-face interactions exist between the phenol rings that do not bear a tert-butyl substituent, and seemingly, this molecular assembly stabilizes the formation of self-inclusion. TC4As 1 and 2 adopt a cone conformation with C₂ symmetry, leading to the formation of rim-to-rim intermolecular hydrogenbonds so as to link the dimeric units up and down. On the other hand, 3 adopts a regular cone conformation with C₄ symmetry to form cyclic hydrogen bonds withinthe rim part of TC4A.     

Optical modulator using metal-oxide-semiconductor type Si ring resonator

Electric-field drive optical modulators using a Si ring resonator were fabricated on silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafers. The fabricated resonators consisted of Si waveguides with width and thickness of 1.0 and 0.3 μm, respectively. In order to induce the linear electro-optic (EO) effect in the Si core layer, the strain was applied by covering the layer with Si₃N₄ film (0.26 μm thick) deposited by low pressure chemical vapor deposition (LPCVD) at 750 °C. The vertical electric-field was applied to the Si waveguide through the top and bottom cladding layers, and the optical output from the drop port at the resonance wavelength was measured. At a wavelength of 1501.6 nm, the optical modulation of 33% was obtained at 200V (electric-field at the silicon surface ∼3 × 10⁵ V/cm, nearly the breakdown field). The resonance wavelength was shifted toward the short wavelength side by applying both positive and negative voltages, this shift was explained by carrier concentration modulation. The linear EO effect in the Si core layer was not observed, presumably because the strain in the Si core layer was too small.     

GPU-accelerated molecular dynamics simulation for study of liquid crystalline flows

We have developed a GPU-based molecular dynamics simulation for the study of flows of fluids with anisotropic molecules such as liquid crystals. An application of the simulation to the study of macroscopic flow (backflow) generation by molecular reorientation in a nematic liquid crystal under the application of an electric field is presented. The computations of intermolecular force and torque are parallelized on the GPU using the cell-list method, and an efficient algorithm to update the cell lists was proposed. Some important issues in the implementation of computations that involve a large number of arithmetic operations and data on the GPU that has limited high-speed memory resources are addressed extensively. Despite the relatively low GPU occupancy in the calculation of intermolecular force and torque, the computation on a recent GPU is about 50 times faster than that on a single core of a recent CPU, thus simulations involving a large number of molecules using a personal computer are possible. The GPU-based simulation should allow an extensive investigation of the molecular-level mechanisms underlying various macroscopic flow phenomena in fluids with anisotropic molecules.     

Novel synthesis of carbohydrates using electroreduction as key reactions

Glyceraldehyde was transformed to threose, erythrose, and erythrose using electro-reduction as key reactions.