A polymer-based microfluidic device for immunosensing biochips

This paper describes the design, fabrication, and test of a PDMS/PMMA-laminated microfluidic device for an immunosensing biochip. A poly(dimethyl siloxane)(PDMS) top substrate molded by polymer casting and a poly(methyl methacrylate)(PMMA) bottom substrate fabricated by hot embossing are bonded with pressure and hermetically sealed. Two inlet ports and an air vent are opened through the PDMS top substrate, while gold electrodes for electrochemical biosensing are patterned onto the PMMA bottom substrate. The analyte sample is loaded from the sample inlet port to the detection chamber by capillary force, without any external intervening forces. For this and to control the time duration of sample fluid in each compartment of the device, including the inlet port, diffusion barrier, reaction chamber, flow-delay neck, and detection chamber, the fluid conduit has been designed with various geometries of channel width, depth, and shape. Especially, the fluid path has been designed so that the sample flow naturally stops after filling the detection chamber to allow sufficient time for biochemical reaction and subsequent washing steps. As model immunosensing tests for the microfluidic device, functionalizations of ferritin and biotin to the sensing surfaces on gold electrodes and their biospecific interactions with antiferritin antiserum and streptavidin have been investigated. An electrochemical detection method for immunosensing by biocatalyzed precipitation has been developed and applied for signal registration. With the biochip, the whole immunosensing processes could be completed within 30 min.     

Excitation-energy migration in self-assembled cyclic zinc(II)-porphyrin arrays: a close mimicry of a natural light-harvesting system

The excitation-energy-hopping (EEH) times within two-dimensional cyclic zinc(II)-porphyrin arrays 5 and 6, which were prepared by intermolecular coordination and ring-closing metathesis reaction of olefins, were deduced by modeling the EEH process based on the anisotropy depolarization as well as the exciton-exciton annihilation dynamics. Assuming the number of energy-hopping sites N = 5 and 6, the two different experimental observables, that is, anisotropy depolarization and exciton-excition annihilation times, consistently give the EEH times of 8.0 +/- 0.5 and 5.3 +/- 0.6 ps through the 1,3-phenylene linkages of 5 and 6, respectively. Accordingly, the self-assembled cyclic porphyrin arrays have proven to be well-defined two-dimensional models for natural light-harvesting complexes.     

Porphyrin boxes constructed by homochiral self-sorting assembly: optical separation, exciton coupling, and efficient excitation energy migration

meso-Pyridine-appended zinc(II) porphyrins Mn and their meso-meso-linked dimers Dn assemble spontaneously, in noncoordinating solvents such as CHCl3, into tetrameric porphyrin squares Sn and porphyrin boxes Bn, respectively. Interestingly, formation of Bn from Dn proceeds via homochiral self-sorting assembly, which has been verified by optical separations of B1 and B2. Optically pure enantiomers of B1 and B2 display strong Cotton effects in the CD spectra, which reflect the length of the pyridyl arm, thus providing evidence for the exciton coupling between the noncovalent neighboring porphyrin rings. Excitation energy migration processes within Bn have been investigated by steady-state and time-resolved spectroscopic methods in conjunction with polarization anisotropy measurements. Both the pump-power dependence on the femtosecond transient absorption and the transient absorption anisotropy decay profiles are directly associated with the excitation energy migration process within the Bn boxes, where the exciton-exciton annihilation time and the polarization anisotropy rise time are well described in terms of the F?rster-type incoherent energy hopping model by assuming a number of hopping sites of N = 4 and an exciton coherence length of L = 2. Consequently, the excitation energy hopping rates between the zinc(II) diporphyrin units have been estimated for B1 (48 ps)(-1), B2 (98 +/- 3 ps)(-1), and B3 (361 +/- 6 ps)(-1). Overall, the self-assembled porphyrin boxes Bn serve as a well-defined three-dimensional model for the light-harvesting complex.     

Novel titanium complexes of a multidentate dicarbollide ligand. Synthesis and structural characterization of a constrained geometry complex

The multidentate dicarbollide ligand nido-7,8-(NMe2CH2)2-7,8-C2B9H11 has been prepared, structurally characterized, and employed in the preparation of the novel mono- and trimetallic titanium complexes [eta5:eta1-(NMe2CH2)C2B9H9CH2NMe2]Ti(NMe2)2 and [eta5:eta1-[(NMe2CH2)C2B9H9CH2NMe2]Ti(NMe2)]2-mu3-O-Ti(NMe2)2.     

Effect of noise imbalance on dual-MRC over Rayleigh fading channels

The performance analysis of dual (two-branch) maximal ratio combining (MRC) under imperfect weight, named imperfect MRC, due to the noise imbalance is derived over independent but non-identical Rayleigh fading channels. Considering the system (or channel) conditions that the noise level of each branch is different, we present the accurate performance analysis of imperfect dual MRC in terms of average combined signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), outage probability and average symbol error rate for a large class of modulations in closed-form and compare them with the performance of the perfect MRC and the perfect selection combining (SC) over non-identical but independent Rayleigh fading channels based on the interesting statistical results on the combined SNR. From the performance results we provide the criterion in choosing the imperfect MRC, perfect MRC, or SC depending on the degree of the difference of the noise level between branches.     

Performance analysis of channel estimation for OFDM systems with residual timing offset

The authors present an analysis of the effect of timing offset on channel estimation for comb-type pilot-aided orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems. Residual timing offset does not negatively affect the channel estimation of the pilot subcarrier, but does corrupt the channel information obtained via interpolation. This paper provides the mean square error (MSE) channel estimation performance when a linear interpolation technique is used in a comb-type pilot-aided OFDM system. Analysis shows that the performance degradation of the channel estimator due to imperfect frame synchronization is dependent on the frequency correlation of the channels and the amount of timing offset     

Products of Polyaddition of 1,5-Pentanediol Dithioglycolate with 2,4-Tolyene Diisocyanate and with 4,4-Diphenylmethane Diisocyanate

Abstract

Products of polyaddition of isocyanates with other components containing reactive atoms of hydrogen are of growing interest due to various possibilities of their application.