Meilenstein Salicylsäuresynthese

In early Christian times treating the sick was considered as blasphemy, and it had only to be in the hands of the Almighty alone (“Do not meddle in the Almighty's creation”). But by and by people did not take diseases as god‐given, and tried and learned to combat them. For some millenniums only natural “remedies” like herbs, animal, and inorganic products were available. Finally, at the beginning of the 19th century it became possible to isolate pure natural substances from herbs, characterize, and modify them by partial synthesis, in order to optimize efficacy, resorption and side effects.On January 2nd 1874 the total chemical synthesis of drugs in industrial scale began in a mansion in the city of Dresden, when Hermann Kolbe jointly with Rudolf Schmitt and Friedrich von Heyden produced Salicylic acid from phenol and carbon dioxide.Until then this drug substance could only be made from willow bark or the plant Spirea ulmaria. Today many substances of natural origin as well of completely newly structured compounds can be made by total synthesis. Biotechnology, and Gene technology are broadening the methods to prepare new drugs.     

Critical slowing down in the single crystalline relaxor SBN75

The dielectric susceptibility of strontium-barium niobate, Sr_0.75Ba_0.25Nb₂O₆, reveals strong relaxor behaviour. It is shown that the relationship between the frequency of the ac probing field and the temperature, at which the real part of the susceptibility passes through a maximum, satisfactorily follows the activated dynamic scaling law predicted for the random-field Ising model. Applicability of a power law as suggested by the dynamic scaling theory is discussed.     

Linear birefringence studies of incommensurate systems: II. KFeF4

Abstract

The temperature dependence of the linear birefringence (LB), Δn _c , is measured in the range 5 K ? T ? 500 K on samples of KFeF₄, which originate from hydrothermal, flux and Bridgman growth techniques. Pronounced anomalies are found at the orthorhombic-orthorhomic phase transition at T _c ∽ 400 K. It is weakly discontinuous with a near-tricritical exponent β ∽ 0.2. Weak anomalies near T _i ∽ T _c + (25 … 40 K) seem to indicate a transition into an intermediate incommensurate phase. Its XY-model character is reflected by the critical LB exponent β = 0.8 ± 0.1. A smooth LB anomaly below 200 K is due to 2-dimensional ferromagnetic spin-order.