Solvent‐free free‐radical frontal polymerization: A new approach to quickly synthesize poly(N‐vinylpyrrolidone)

The first synthesis of poly(N‐vinylpyrrolidone) without solvent by free‐radical frontal polymerization at ambient pressure is reported. The appropriate amounts of two reactants N‐vinyl‐2‐pyrrolidone (NVP) and initiator 2,2′‐azobis‐isobutyronitrile (AIBN) without solvent were mixed together at ambient temperature. Frontal polymerization was initiated by heating the wall of the tube with a soldering iron, and the resultant hot fronts were allowed to self‐propagate throughout the reaction vessel. Once initiated, no further energy was required for polymerization to occur. To suppress the fingers of molten monomer, a small amount of nanosilica was added. The dependence of the front velocity and front temperature on the AIBN concentration was thoroughly investigated. The as‐prepared polymers were characterized by gel permeation chromatography (GPC) and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). Results show that without postpolymerization solvent removal, waste production can be reduced. Solvent‐free FP could be exploited as a means for preparation of PVP with the potential advantage of higher throughput than solvent‐based methods. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part A: Polym Chem 46: 2177–2185, 2008     

A theoretical model of magnetoelastic bucking for soft ferromagnetic thin plates

As an essential model of magnetoelastic interaction between magnetic field and mechanical deformation, the study on magnetoelastic buckling phenomenon of soft ferromagnetic plates in a magnetic environment has been conducted. One of the key steps for the theoretical prediction of the critical magnetic field is how to formulate magnetic force exerted on the magnetized medium. Till today, the theoretical predictions, from theoretical models in publications, of the magnetoelastic buckling of ferromagnetic cantilevered beam-plate in transverse magnetic field are all higher than their experimental data. Sometimes, the discrepancy between them is as high as 100%. In this paper, the macroscope formulation of the magnetic forces is strictly obtained from the microscope Amperion current model. After that, a new theoretical model is established to describe the magnetoelastic buckling phenomenon of ferromagnetic thin plates with geometrically nonlinear deformation in a nonuniform transverse magnetic field. The numerical method for quantitative analysis is employed by combining the finite elemental method for magnetic fields and the finite difference method for deformation of plates. The numerical results obtained from this new theoretical model show that the theoretical predictions of critical values of the buckling magnetic field for the ferromagnetic cantilevered beam-plate are in excellent agreement with their experimental data. By the way, the region of applicability to the Moon-Pao's model, or the couple model, is checked by quantitative results. This project was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the Foundation of the SEdC of China for Returned Chinese Scholars from Abroad.     

Urea coordinated titanium trichloride Ti(III)[OC(NH)2]6Cl3: a single molecular precursor yielding highly visible light responsive TiO2 nanocrystallites

A coordination complex, Ti(III)[OC(NH2)2]6Cl3, was first synthesized via reacting hot alcoholic solutions of TiCl3 and urea, which was subsequently employed as a molecular precursor for nanocrystalline TiO2 via thermal decomposition. Fourier transform IR spectroscopy confirmed C=O-->Ti coordination bond formation, while Rietveld refinement revealed a hexagonal crystal structure (space group: Pc1) for the complex with a = b = 16.438(4) A, c = 15.423(3) A, alpha = beta = 90 degrees , gamma = 120 degrees , and V = 3608.9(13) A3. Thermal decomposition and phase evolution processes of the complex were investigated in air by combined means of elemental analysis, Fourier transform IR, differential thermal analysis/thermogravimetry, X-ray diffraction, and Raman spectroscopy. Characterizations of the resultant TiO2 powders were achieved by scanning electron microscopy, high-resolution transmission electron microscopy, the Brunauer-Emmett-Teller analysis, thermal desorption spectroscopy, and UV-vis spectroscopy. Simultaneous doping of C, N, and Cl was realized upon pyrolyzing the molecular precursor in air, leading to significantly lowered direct and indirect interband transition energies of the resultant TiO2. As a consequence, the anatase nanopowders obtained at 450 and 500 degrees C, with specific surface areas of 97.8 and 64.1 m2/g, respectively, exhibit significantly higher efficiency than Degussa P25 in the bleaching of methyl orange solution under visible light (mainly consisting two wavelengths of 405 and 436 nm at 81:100 intensity ratio) irradiation, either at a fixed weight of TiO2 loading or at a fixed surface area of the loaded TiO2 powder.     

ARGO-YBJ detector simulation using GEANT4

‘G4argo＇, a GEANT4-based simulation package for the ARGO-YBJ detector, is described in this paper. C4argo incorporates in the simulation the true RPC time resolution and another 0.5 ns time uncertainty which is introduced from the offline calibration of TDC. In addition, the correct RPC geometry and the true materials for the ARGO-YBJ experimental hall are implemented. As a result, G4argo simulation shows a very good agreement with real data.     

Lyapunov-type inequality for a class of even-order differential equations

In this paper, we generalize the well-known Lyapunov-type inequality for second-order linear differential equations to a class of even-order linear differential equations, the results of this paper are new and generalize some known inequalities in the literatures.     

Synchronization of Takagi–Sugeno fuzzy stochastic discrete-time complex networks with mixed time-varying delays

In this paper, we propose and investigate a new general model of fuzzy stochastic discrete-time complex networks (SDCNs) described by Takagi–Sugeno (T–S) fuzzy model with discrete and distributed time-varying delays. The proposed model takes some well-studied models as special cases. By employing a new Lyapunov functional candidate, we utilize some stochastic analysis techniques and Kronecker product to deduce delay-dependent synchronization criteria that ensure the mean-square synchronization of the proposed T–S fuzzy SDCNs with mixed time-varying delays. These sufficient conditions are computationally efficient as it can be solved numerically by the LMI toolbox in Matlab. A numerical simulation example is provided to verify the effectiveness and the applicability of the proposed approach.     

Global regularity of solutions of 2D Boussinesq equations with fractional diffusion

The goal of this work is to study the Boussinesq equations for an incompressible fluid in R², with diffusion modeled by fractional Laplacian. The existence, the uniqueness and the regularity of solution has been proved.     

Bregman operator splitting with variable stepsize for total variation image reconstruction

This paper develops a Bregman operator splitting algorithm with variable stepsize (BOSVS) for solving problems of the form $\min\{\phi(Bu) +1/2\|Au-f\|_{2}^{2}\}$ , where ? may be nonsmooth. The original Bregman Operator Splitting (BOS) algorithm employed a fixed stepsize, while BOSVS uses a line search to achieve better efficiency. These schemes are applicable to total variation (TV)-based image reconstruction. The stepsize rule starts with a Barzilai-Borwein (BB) step, and increases the nominal step until a termination condition is satisfied. The stepsize rule is related to the scheme used in SpaRSA (Sparse Reconstruction by Separable Approximation). Global convergence of the proposed BOSVS algorithm to a solution of the optimization problem is established. BOSVS is compared with other operator splitting schemes using partially parallel magnetic resonance image reconstruction problems. The experimental results indicate that the proposed BOSVS algorithm is more efficient than the BOS algorithm and another split Bregman Barzilai-Borwein algorithm known as SBB.     

Solid‐phase extraction of phenoxyacetic acid herbicides in complex samples with a zirconium(IV)‐based metal–organic framework

A zirconium(IV)‐based metal–organic framework material (MOF‐808) has been synthesized in a simple way and used for the extraction of phenoxyacetic acids in complex samples. The material has good thermal and chemical stability, large specific surface area (905.36 m²/g), and high pore size (22.18 Å). Besides, it contains a large amount of Zr‐O groups, easy‐to‐form Zr‐O‐H bond with carboxyl groups of phenoxyacetic acids, and possesses biphenyl skeleton structure, easy to interact with compounds through π‐π and hydrophobic interactions. These characteristics make the material very suitable for the extraction of certain compounds with a high extraction efficiency and excellent selectivity. The extraction conditions were optimized, and then an analytical method was successfully established and applied for analysis of actual samples. The solid‐phase extraction method based on prepared material had a wide linear range of 0.2–250 μg/L and a low detection limit of 0.1–0.5 μg/L for four phenoxyacetic acid compounds including 2,4‐dichlorophenoxyacetic acid, 2‐(2,4‐dichlorophenoxy) propionic acid, 4‐chlorophenoxyacetic acid, and dicamba. The relative standard deviations of intra‐ and interday precision were 1.8–3.8 and 4.3–6.9%, and the recoveries after spiking were between 77.1 and 109.3%. The results showed that the material is a desired substituent for the extraction of compounds with benzene ring structure containing carboxyl groups.