Plugging a Molecular Wire into Photosystem I: Reconstitution of the Photoelectric Conversion System on a Gold Electrode

Plug and play : Photoinduced electron transfer occurs from photoexcited P700 in photosystem I (PSI) to a gold surface (see picture). A novel molecular connector system is used, in which an artificial molecular wire, which is assembled on the gold surface, was plugged into PSI by reconstitution. Analysis of the photoelectron transfer kinetics proved both the output of electrons from PSI and the effectiveness of the molecular wire.

     

Plasmon‐Resonance‐Based Generation of Cathodic Photocurrent at Electrodeposited Gold Nanoparticles Coated with TiO2 Films

Reversed photoresponse: Indium tin oxide (ITO)/Au nanoparticle (NP)/TiO₂ electrodes (see picture) exhibit cathodic photocurrents and positive photopotentials under visible light, whereas ITO/TiO₂/Au NP electrodes show an inverted response. This behavior indicates that electron transfer occurs from the plasmon‐excited Au NPs to the TiO₂ film. An enhanced O₂ photoreduction activity is found for ITO/Au NP/TiO₂/Pt electrodes.

     

Stability of the line soliton of the KP-II equation under periodic transverse perturbations

We prove the nonlinear stability of the KdV solitary waves considered as solutions of the KP-II equation, with respect to periodic transverse perturbations. Our proof uses a Miura transform which sends the solutions of an mKP-II equation to solutions of the KP-II equation.     

High-throughput sodium dodecyl sulfate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis by linking conventional gel plates with automated liquid handler via Gel Adaptor

The automation of SDS-PAGE required substantial investment. To lower this barrier, we devised a cost-effective, simple, and general method where samples are loaded on SDS-PAGE gels held by a newly devised "Gel Adaptor" on a general automated liquid handler. In this method, the liquid handler loads samples on the SDS-PAGE gels held at an angle of 80 degrees on the Gel Adaptor so that the samples can be vertically loaded on the narrow paths of the wells of the slanted gels. This method allows the automated liquid handler to load 144 samples on SDS-PAGE gels in approximately 10 min, greatly reducing the time and cost for high-throughput SDS-PAGE analyses.     

Existence of periodic traveling wave solutions for the Ostrovsky equation

We are concerned with the Ostrovsky equation, which is derived from the theory of weakly nonlinear long surface and internal waves in shallow water under the presence of rotation. On the basis of the variational method, we show the existence of periodic traveling wave solutions. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Enhanced emission of single quantum dot formed by interface fluctuations in photonic-crystal microcavities

We fabricated photonic-crystal (PhC) microcavities tuned to GaAs quantum dots (QDs) formed by interface fluctuation for the first time and observed the spontaneous emission enhancement in a weak coupling regime. A QD is a very thin GaAs quantum well (QW), and its interface steps exhibit quantum dot-like behavior. The emission intensity from the PhC cavity was stronger than that from the area where no PhC pattern was fabricated and the overall shape of the photoluminescence (PL) agreed with the cavity mode calculated with the three-dimensional (3D) finite-difference time domain (FDTD) method. The spontaneous emission enhancement factor was 10.     

Microwave-assisted polyol synthesis of copper nanocrystals without using additional protective agents

We report the synthesis of 2 nm copper nanocrystals (Cu NCs) via a microwave-assisted polyol method without using additional protective and reducing agents. The Cu NCs are oxidation resistant and exhibit photoluminescence and highly stable properties in a colloidal dispersion.