A complexometric titration of inorganic sulphate in synthetic detergents

An accurate method for the determination of inorganic sulphate in synthetic detergents has been developed. After addition of a cationic surface-active agent (cetyl pyridinium chloride) to an anionic detergent, sulphate can be determined by means of indirect titration with EDTA, using a mixture of Metalphthalein and Naphthol Green B as indicator.     

New membrane materials for potassium-selective ion-sensitive field-effect transistors

Several polymeric materials were studied as membrane materials for potassium-selective ion-sensitive field-effect transistors (ISFETs) to overcome the problems related with the use of conventional plasticized poly(vinyl chloride) membranes casted on ISFET gate surfaces. Several acrylate materials, such as ACE, Epocryl and derivatives, showed no reproducible results. Three room-temperature vulcanizing (RTV)-type silicone rubbers were tested. The addition-type RTV-2 silicone rubber was not suitable as a membrane material, but the condensation-type RTV-1 and especially the RTV-2 silicone rubber showed good results. ISFETs with a Silopren membrane showed a durability of at least 2 months.     

pH sensitivity of Si--C linked organic monolayers on crystalline silicon surfaces.

The electrochemical behavior of Si--C linked organic monolayers is studied in electrolyte-insulator-Si devices, under conditions normally encountered in potentiometric biosensors, to gain fundamental knowledge on the behavior of such Si electrodes under practical conditions. This is done via titration experiments, Mott-Schottky data analysis, and data fitting using a site-binding model. The results are compared with those of native SiO(2) layers and native SiO(2) layers modified with hexamethyldisilazane. All samples display pH sensitivity. The number of Si--OH groups on the alkylated samples is calculated to be less than 0.7 % of that of a pure SiO(2) insulator, which still causes a pH sensitivity of approximately 25 mV per pH unit in the pH range: 4-7. The alkylated samples hardly suffer from response changes during up- and down-going titrations, which indicates that very little oxide is additionally formed during the measurements. The pK(a) values of all samples with monolayers (4.0-4.4) are lower than that of native SiO(2) (6.0). The long-term drift (of approximately 1 mV h(-1)) is moderate. The results indicate that biosensors composed of alkylated Si substrates are feasible if a cross-sensitivity towards pH in the sensor signal is taken into account.     

Monitoring powder blending by NIR spectroscopy

A strategy is proposed for the monitoring of powder blending. Samples are taken throughout the blender vessel and scanned by diffuse reflectance spectroscopy in the NIR range. The NIR spectra are first subjected to the Standard Normal Variate transformation (SNV). The first approach consists of overlaying the transformed spectra taken from different locations at each time. To quantify the differences between the spectra, the standard deviation spectrum at each time is calculated and the mean standard deviation value is plotted as a function of time. This plot indicates the time at which the blend is most homogeneous. Each individual spectrum can be compared with the mixture spectrum, which is an approximation of the spectrum of a true homogeneous sample. For that purpose several approaches, i.e. determination of the dissimilarity, Principal Component Analysis, are proposed. As an alternative approach to monitoring the blending the use of SIMPLISMA is recommended.Dedicated to Professor Dr. h.c. mult. J.F.K. Huber on the occasion of his 70th birthday     

Investigation of the40Ca(γ,N) reaction at 60 MeV

The values of the angle-integrated cross section for the decay to various low-lying states in³⁹K following the⁴⁰Ca(,) reaction at a mean photon energy of 60 MeV are reported on, together with the values of the reduced Legendre coefficientsa _i . The⁴⁰Ca(,gp) and⁴⁰Ca(,n) reactions yield the same angular cross-section values and these agree with the corresponding RPA-calculations.Senior Research Associate NFWO     

Scaling for a random polymer

LetQ _n ^β be the law of then-step random walk on ?^d obtained by weighting simple random walk with a factore ^?β for every self-intersection (Domb-Joyce model of “soft polymers”). It was proved by Greven and den Hollander (1993) that ind=1 and for every β∈(0, ∞) there exist θ^*(β)∈(0,1) and such that under the lawQ _n ^β asn→∞: $$\begin{array}{l} (i) \theta ^* (\beta ) is the \lim it empirical speed of the random walk; \\ (ii) \mu _\beta ^* is the limit empirical distribution of the local times. \\ \end{array}$$ A representation was given forθ ^*(β) andµ _β ^β in terms of a largest eigenvalue problem for a certain family of ? x ? matrices. In the present paper we use this representation to prove the following scaling result as β?0: $$\begin{array}{l} (i) \beta ^{ - {\textstyle{1 \over 3}}} \theta ^* (\beta ) \to b^* ; \\ (ii) \beta ^{ - {\textstyle{1 \over 3}}} \mu _\beta ^* \left( {\left\lceil { \cdot \beta ^{ - {\textstyle{1 \over 3}}} } \right\rceil } \right) \to ^{L^1 } \eta ^* ( \cdot ) . \\ \end{array}$$ The limitsb ^*∈(0, ∞) and are identified in terms of a Sturm-Liouville problem, which turns out to have several interesting properties. The techniques that are used in the proof are functional analytic and revolve around the notion of epi-convergence of functionals onL ²(?⁺). Our scaling result shows that the speed of soft polymers ind=1 is not right-differentiable at β=0, which precludes expansion techniques that have been used successfully ind≧5 (Hara and Slade (1992a, b)). In simulations the scaling limit is seen for β≦10^?2.     

Dynamic structure factor in a random diffusion model

Let {X _t:0} denote random walk in the random waiting time model, i.e., simple random walk with jump ratew ^–1(X _t), where {w(x):x^d} is an i.i.d. random field. We show that (under some mild conditions) theintermediate scattering function F(q,t)=E ₀ (q^d) is completely monotonic int (E ₀ denotes double expectation w.r.t. walk and field). We also show that thedynamic structure factor S(q, w)=2 ₀ cos(t)F(q, t) exists for 0 and is strictly positive. Ind=1, 2 it diverges as 1/||^1/2, resp. –ln(||), in the limit 0; ind3 its limit value is strictly larger than expected from hydrodynamics. This and further results support the conclusion that the hydrodynamic region is limited to smallq and small such that ||D |q|², whereD is the diffusion constant.