The components of the Wired Spanning Forest are recurrent

 We show that a.s. all of the connected components of the Wired Spanning Forest are recurrent, proving a conjecture of Benjamini, Lyons, Peres and Schramm. Our analysis relies on a simple martingale involving the effective conductance between the endpoints of an edge in a uniform spanning tree. We believe that this martingale is of independent interest and will find further applications in the study of uniform spanning trees and forests. Received: 20 April 2001 / Revised version: 23 July 2002 / Published online: 14 November     

Solid state NMR characterization of formation of poly(ϵ‐caprolactone)/maghnite nanocomposites by in situ polymerization

Results of multinuclear MAS NMR spectroscopy are reported for poly (ε‐caprolactone)/maghnite nanocomposite formation, with ε‐caprolactone in situ polymerized in the presence of maghnite, a proton exchanged montmorillonite clay. Exfoliated and intercalated materials with different maghnite loading in the range 3–15 wt % were investigated. ¹H NMR evidences Brønsted acid hydroxyl groups in the silicate layers and shows that their broad signal at 7.6 ppm present in the parent clay disappears in the nanocomposite material. ²⁷Al MAS NMR results show that beside the hexacoordinated aluminum signal, two additional peaks corresponding to two different tetrahedral Al sites are present in the clay framework. The NMR signal intensity of only one of them was found to be affected in the nanocomposites compared with the parent maghnite, suggesting that these specific aluminum sites are the reactive ones at the initial stages of the polymerization. However almost no changes occurred in the ²⁹Si NMR spectra, confirming that the polymer grafting, as indicated earlier by atomic force microscopy, took place on the aluminum tetracoordinated sites rather than on the silicon sites. A mechanism of maghnite surface catalyzed polymerization of ε‐caprolactone was proposed, involving Brønsted and Lewis acid sites. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part B: Polym Phys 45: 3060–3068, 2007     

Asymmetric hydrogenation of alkyl(vinyl)thioethers: a promising approach to α-chiral thioethers

This paper describes the enantioselective hydrogenation of vinylthioethers. We show that thioether derivatives of maleic esters can be hydrogenated with full conversion and up to 60% ee, and that α-thioether cinnamic acids can be hydrogenated in 51% ee with modest conversion.     

Asymmetric Diels-Alder reactions with 5-menthyloxy-2-(5H)-furanone

A new class of chiral dienophiles, 5-alkoxy-2(5H)-furanones, has been developed. Both enantiomers of 5-menthyloxy-2(5H)-ftiranone are readily available in enantiomerically pure form, starting from furfural and d- or l-menthol. Excellent diastereoselectivities (d.e. β99%) are obtained in thermal Diels-Alder reactions with several cyclic and acyclic dienes. The use of silyl dienol ethers has resulted in new routes to enantiomerically pure cyclohexanones in a highly regioselective manner.     

Fabrication of hexaphenylsilole nanowires and their morphology-tunable photoluminescence.

Immersion of nanoporous alumina membranes into saturated solutions of hexaphenylsilole with subsequent solvent evaporation affords aligned organic nanowires. The luminescent properties of the hexaphenylsilole nanowires can be manipulated by varying their morphologies, which were controlled by changing the channel sizes of the alumina templates.