Behavior and surface energies of polybenzoxazines formed by polymerization with argon,oxygen, and hydrogen plasmas

Polybenzoxazine (PBZZ) thin films can be fabricated by the plasma‐polymerization technique with, as the energy source, plasmas of argon, oxygen, or hydrogen atoms and ions. When benzoxazine (BZZ) films are polymerized through the use of high‐energy argon atoms, electronegative oxygen atoms, or excited hydrogen atoms, the PBZZ films that form possess different properties and morphologies in their surfaces. High‐energy argon atoms provide a thermodynamic factor to initiate the ring‐opening polymerization of BZZ and result in the polymer surface having a grid‐like structure. The ring‐opening polymerization of the BZZ film that is initiated by cationic species such as oxygen atoms in plasma, is propagated around nodule structures to form the PBZZ. The excited hydrogen atom plasma initiates both polymerization and decomposition reactions simultaneously in the BZZ film and results in the formation of a porous structure on the PBZZ surface. We evaluated the surface energies of the PBZZ films polymerized by the action of these three plasmas by measuring the contact angles of diiodomethane and water droplets. The surface roughness of the films range from 0.5 to 26 nm, depending on the type of carrier gas and the plasma‐polymerization time. By estimating changes in thickness, we found that the PBZZ film synthesized by the oxygen plasma‐polymerization process undergoes the slowest rate of etching in CF₄ plasma. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part B: Polym Phys 42: 4063–4074, 2004     

Time-resolved chemiluminescence technique for the microdetermination of proteins based on their complexation with copper(II).

Based on the complexation between proteins and Cu(II) coupled with the time-resolved chemiluminescence (CL) technique, a highly sensitive and quantitative assay for measuring proteins in solution is described. The complexes of proteins with Cu(II) have a strongly catalytic effect on the luminol-H2O2 CL reaction. Because the CL emission produced by the complexes is much more long-lived than that by Cu(II), the CL signals originating from proteins can be easily identified and measured with a time-resolved technique. On this basis, bovine albumin fraction V (BAF V) can be quantitatively determined in the range of 0.01 - 5.0 microg/ml with a detection limit of 5.8 ng/ml. The results show that the proposed assay exhibits a small variation in the response values for the same amount of different proteins, as compared to the Lowry as well as Bradford assays. The CL assay has also been studied for the detection of immobilized proteins.     

A mild and simple synthesis of N-aryl substituted toluenesulfamides under solvent-free conditions

N- aryl substituted benzenesulfamides are often used as heating-sensitive recording material1, thermal printing material2, sensitizer3 and developer4. Moreover, some of the benzenesulfamides have antifungal activities5. Many methods have been described for preparation of sulfamides. They are used to carry out in solvent8 or in solid phase condition9. These methods required solvent or solid support and even required heating or cooling. At the same time, the process of these methods is complex. Now we have developed a new method to prepare N-aryl substituted toluenesulfamides under solvent-free conditions.In recent years, solvent-free technology has gained popularity in organic synthesis. For instance,solidstate reaction and microwave reaction have received considerable attention. Solvent-free synthesis of amides has been reported10-11. This technology has many advantages such as high efficiency and selectivity, easy separation and environmental acceptability. All these merits are in accord with green chemistry's requirements of energy-saving, high efficiency and environmental benefits.In our paper, we used a simple and efficient method for preparing N-aryl substituted toluenesulfamides under solvent-free conditions, as a replacement for classic solvent, which gives many environmental benefits.All reactions were completed at room temperature by co-grinding in an agate mortar for 3-20min and the results are shown in Table 1.In conclusion, we have developed an efficient and convenient method of preparation N-aryl substituted toluenesulfamides in high yields. It symbols an improvement for synthesis of benzenesulfamides.     

Direct Observation of Non-covalent Complexes for Phosphorylated Flavonoid-protein Interaction by ESI

Diethyl flavon-7-yl phosphate was synthesized by modified Atheron-Todd reaction. The result of ESI shows that the phosphated flavonoids possess stronger binding affinities toward proteins such as myoglobin, insulin and lysozyme and are easier to form the non-covalent complexes with them.     

Synthesis of Novel Monomeric Dyes with Anthraquinone Residue

Two novel polymerizable dyes with anthraquinone residue have been prepared, and their structures were characterized by FTIR, ^1HNMR and EA.     

Transient binary nucleation from ethanol-hexanol vapour

We study condensation of ethanol-hexanol vapour by numerical solution of kinetic equations. The number of droplets formed in unit volume is computed within self-consistent classical model. It is shown that formation of ethanol-rich droplets prevails at the initial stage of nucleation process, but in the stationary state formation of droplets near the saddle point (on cluster formation energy surface) plays the dominant role. Presented at the 6th Joint Seminar “Development of Materials Science in Research and Education”, Karlštejn, Czech Republic, 17–19 September 1996. This work was supported by Grant No. A1010615 of the Grant Agency of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic.     

Luttinger liquid with asymmetric dispersion

We present an extension of the Tomonaga-Luttinger model in which left and right-moving particles have different Fermi velocities. We derive expressions for one-particle Green's functions, momentum-distributions, density of states, charge compressibility and conductivity as functions of both the velocity difference ε and the strength of the interaction β. This allows us to identify a novel restricted region in the parameter space in which the system keeps the main features of a Luttinger liquid but with an unusual behavior of the density of states and the static charge compressibility κ. In particular κ diverges on the boundary of the restricted region, indicating the occurrence of a phase transition. Received 20 May 2002 / Received in final form 23 August 2002 Published online 19 November 2002     

Some results on fractionaln-factor-critical graphs

A simple graphG is said to be fractionaln-factor-critical if after deleting anyn vertices the remaining subgraph still has a fractional perfect matching. For fractionaln-factor-criticality, in this paper, one necessary and sufficient condition, and three sufficient conditions related to maximum matching, complete closure are given.