Low temperature fabrication of efficient porous carbon counter electrode for dye-sensitized solar cells

Porous carbon counter electrodes have been fabricated at low temperature by coating an organic binder free carbon slurry onto F-doped tin oxide conducting glass. The carbon slurry is prepared by ball-milling a dispersion of activated carbon in aqueous SnCl₄ solution. During ball-milling, SnCl₄ hydrolyzes and transforms into stannic acid gel, which acts as an inorganic “glue” to connect the carbon particles during film preparation. Dye-sensitized solar cells employing this carbon electrode achieve efficiency as high as 6.1% which is comparable to that of the cells using sputtering Pt as counter electrode.     

Synthesis of PMMA‐b‐PBA block copolymer in homogeneous and miniemulsion systems by DPE controlled radical polymerization

In this research, poly(methyl methacrylate)‐b‐poly(butyl acrylate) (PMMA‐b‐PBA) block copolymers were prepared by 1,1‐diphenylethene (DPE) controlled radical polymerization in homogeneous and miniemulsion systems. First, monomer methyl methacrylate (MMA), initiator 2,2′‐azobisisobutyronitrile (AIBN) and a control agent DPE were bulk polymerized to form the DPE‐containing PMMA macroinitiator. Then the DPE‐containing PMMA was heated in the presence of a second monomer BA, the block copolymer was synthesized successfully. The effects of solvent and polymerization methods (homogeneous polymerization or miniemulsion polymerization) on the reaction rate, controlled living character, molecular weight (M_n) and molecular weight distribution (PDI) of polymers throughout the polymerization were studied and discussed. The results showed that, increasing the amounts of solvent reduced the reaction rate and viscosity of the polymerization system. It allowed more activation–deactivation cycles to occur at a given conversion thus better controlled living character and narrower molecular weight distribution of polymers were demonstrated throughout the polymerization. Furthermore, the polymerization carried out in miniemulsion system exhibited higher reaction rate and better controlled living character than those in homogeneous system. It was attributed to the compartmentalization of growing radicals and the enhanced deactivation reaction of DPE controlled radical polymerization in miniemulsified droplets. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part A: Polym Chem 47: 4435–4445, 2009     

Model‐based design and synthesis of gradient MMA/tBMA copolymers by computer‐programmed semibatch atom transfer radical copolymerization

Methyl methacrylate (MMA)/tert‐butyl methacrylate (tBMA) gradient copolymers having linear and hyperbolic composition profiles were synthesized. These special copolymer products were achieved via a model‐based computer‐controlled semibatch atom transfer radical copolymerization (ATRcoP) process. A simple ATRcoP model was developed based on the terminal model. The equilibrium constants in the ATRP of MMA and tBMA were estimated by the data correlation. The model was verified by batch experiments and was found to give good correlation for the polymerization rate, molecular weight, and copolymer composition data. The model coupled with a reactor model was then applied to the semibatch ATRcoP and was used to calculate comonomer feeding rates for the targeted gradient composition profiles. It was found that the experimental monomer conversion, molecular weight, and cumulative copolymer composition were in good agreement with their targeted theoretical values. The gradient copolymers had low polydispersities close to 1.1. This work demonstrated the feasibility of the model‐based semibatch ATRcoP in fine‐tuning gradient copolymer composition profiles. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part A: Polym Chem 47: 69–79, 2009     

Directly suspended droplet microextraction in a rotating vial

In this paper, a novel suspended droplet microextraction method was developed for the detection of trace of organic compounds in water samples. The process was executed in a rotating extraction vial without the use of a stir bar. A single drop of octan-1-ol placed on top of the water sample was used as the solvent. The droplet remained on top of the water sample as a thin layer with an expanding surface area during the extraction stage, while during the sampling stage, the droplet was collected and sampled by inserting a needle. The volume of the microdroplet used was 3 μL or less, to ensure high organic compound sensitivity. The microextraction experimental setup was simple, utilizing centrifugal forces and possesses the advantages of low cross-contaminant/interference and applicability to water samples apt to emulsification. Nitrobenzene was selected as a model organic compound, and samples were analyzed using gas chromatography (GC) or UV-vis spectrometry. Analysis of the microextraction method results showed a relative standard deviation (RSD) less than 3.82%.     

Structure elucidation and complete NMR spectral assignments of new furostanol glycosides from Solanum torvum

Two new furostanol glycosides, torvosides O (1) and P (2), were isolated from leaves of Solanum torvum. Their structures were completely and unambiguously assigned by one‐ and two‐dimensional NMR techniques (¹H NMR, ¹³C NMR, TOCSY, HSQC, ROESY and HMBC), ESI‐MS spectrometry and chemical methods. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Improvement of Steroid Biotransformation with Hydroxypropyl-β-Cyclodextrin Induced Complexation

The inclusion complexes induced by cyclodextrins and its derivates have been shown previously to enhance the biotransformation of hydrophobic compounds. Using hydroxypropyl-β-cyclodextrin (HP-β-CD; 20% w/v), the water solubility of cortisone acetate increased from 0.039 to 7.382 g L⁻¹ at 32 °C. The solubilization effect of HP-β-CD was far superior to dimethylformamide (DMF) and ethanol. The dissolution rate also significantly increased in the presence of HP-β-CD. The enzymatic stability of Δ¹-dehydrogenase from Arthrobacter simplex TCCC 11037 was not influenced by the increasing concentrations of HP-β-CD contrary to the organic cosolvents which negatively influenced in the order DMF > ethanol. The activity inhibition effect caused by HP-β-CD was not so conspicuous as ethanol and DMF. Inactivation constants of ethanol, DMF, and HP-β-CD were 5.832, 4.541, and 1.216, respectively. The inactivation energy (E _a) was in the order of HP-β-CD (55.1 kJ mol⁻¹) > ethanol (39.9 kJ mol⁻¹) > DMF (37.1 kJ mol⁻¹).     

Geodesic ideal triangulations exist virtually

It is shown that every non-compact hyperbolic manifold of finite volume has a finite cover admitting a geodesic ideal triangulation. Also, every hyperbolic manifold of finite volume with non-empty, totally geodesic boundary has a finite regular cover which has a geodesic partially truncated triangulation. The proofs use an extension of a result due to Long and Niblo concerning the separability of peripheral subgroups.

     

GLOBAL SUPERCONVERGENCES OF THE DOMAIN DECOMPOSITION METHODS WITH NONMATCHING GRIDS

1. IlltroductionA nonconforming domain decomposition method with Lagrangian multipliers was proposedin [13]. The basic idea of this method is to deal with the nonconforming of nonmatching gridsby illtroducing the Lagrangian multipliers on interfaces of subdomains and its advalltages arethat it allows not only the incompatibility of the internal variables on the interface betweensubdomains, but also the discolltinuity of the boundary variables on the common venices ofsubdomains. Thus one can c…     

R-branch high-lying transition emission spectra of SbNa molecule

The calculation results of the R-branch transition emission spectra of(0–0) band of the A21 → X21 transition system of Sb Na molecule are presented in this paper. These R-branch high-lying transitional emission spectral lines are predicted by using the difference converging method(DCM). Our results show excellent agreement between DCM spectral lines and the experimental values, and the deviations are controlled within 0.0224 cm-1. What is more, based on the principle of over-determined linear equations, the prediction error is quantified in this work, which provides reliable theoretical support for our predicted DCM calculations. This work provides a lot of useful information for understanding the microstructure of Sb Na molecule.     

Research on a Rice Counting Algorithm Based on an Improved MCNN and a Density Map

The thousand grain weight is an index of size, fullness and quality in crop seed detection and is an important basis for field yield prediction. To detect the thousand grain weight of rice requires the accurate counting of rice. We collected a total of 5670 images of three different types of rice seeds with different qualities to construct a model. Considering the different shapes of different types of rice, this study used an adaptive Gaussian kernel to convolve with the rice coordinate function to obtain a more accurate density map, which was used as an important basis for determining the results of subsequent experiments. A Multi-Column Convolutional Neural Network was used to extract the features of different sizes of rice, and the features were fused by the fusion network to learn the mapping relationship from the original map features to the density map features. An advanced prior step was added to the original algorithm to estimate the density level of the image, which weakened the effect of the rice adhesion condition on the counting results. Extensive comparison experiments show that the proposed method is more accurate than the original MCNN algorithm.