Morphologies of a spherical bimodal polyelectrolyte brush induced by polydispersity and solvent selectivity

It is commonly realized that polydispersity may significantly affect the surface modification properties of polymer brush systems. In light of this, we systematically study morphologies of bidisperse polyelectrolyte brush grafted onto a spherical nanocolloid in the presence of trivalent counterions using molecular dynamics simulations. Via varying polydispersity, grafting density, and solvent selectivity, the effects of electrostatic correlation and excluded volume are focused, and rich phase behaviors of binary mixed polyelectrolyte brush are predicted, including a variety of pinned-patch morphologies at low grafting density and micelle-like structures at high grafting density. To pinpoint the mechanism of surface structure formation, the shape factor of two species of polyelectrolyte chains and the pair correlation function between monomers from different polyelectrolyte ligands are analyzed carefully. Also, electrostatic correlations, manifested as the bridging through trivalent counterions, are examined by identifying four states of trivalent counterions. Our simulation results may be useful for designing smart stimuli-responsive materials based on mixed polyelectrolyte coated surfaces.     

Thermal and mechanical properties and micro-mechanism of SiO2/epoxy nanodielectrics

In addition to electrical insulation properties, the thermal properties of nanodielectrics, such as glass transition temperature, thermal expansion coefficients, thermal conductivity, and mechanical properties, including Young's modulus, bulk modulus, and shear modulus, are also very important. This paper describes the molecular dynamics simulations of epoxy resin doped with SiO₂ nanoparticles and with SiO₂ nanoparticles that have been surface grafted with hexamethyldisilazane (HMDS) at 10% and 20% grafting rates. The results show that surface grafting can improve certain thermal and mechanical properties of the system. Our analysis indicates that the improved thermal performance occurs because the formation of thermal chains becomes easier after the surface grafting treatment. The improved mechanical properties originate from two causes. First, doping with SiO₂ nanoparticles inhibits the degree of movement of molecular chains in the system. Second, the surface grafting treatment weakens the molecular repulsion between SiO₂ and epoxy resin, and the van der Waals excluded region becomes thinner. Thus, the compatibility between SiO₂ nanoparticles and polymers is improved by the grafting treatment. The analysis method and conclusions in this paper provide guidance and reference for the future studies of the thermal and mechanical properties of nanodielectrics.     

固体核磁共振技术在锡硅分子筛表征中的应用

生物质等绿色资源的高效转化利用是催化科学的重要发展方向.锡硅分子筛因具有优良的催化性能而得到相关研究者的普遍关注.准确构建催化剂活性中心结构/酸性与催化反应性能之间的构效关系是新型高效催化剂设计与研发的基础.固体核磁共振（NMR）是研究分子筛活性中心局域结构、酸特性与催化反应机理的重要手段.本文简述了近年来固体NMR技术在锡硅分子筛研究领域的一系列主要进展,并进行了展望.     

高温吸热管内超临界CO2传热特性的数值模拟

研究超临界CO2在高温吸热管内的传热特性是将其应用于聚光太阳能热发电技术中的基础.本文对此进行了数值模拟研究,分析了流体温度、流动方向、系统压力、质量流率和热流密度对对流传热系数和Nu数的影响.结果表明:高温区(800—1050 K)的对流传热系数和Nu数受流动方向和系统压力的影响均很小,但都随着质量流率的增大以及热流密度的减小而明显增大;而随着流体温度的升高,对流传热系数近似线性增大,Nu数则近似线性减小.另外,本文研究发现在高温区可忽略浮升力对传热的影响,而由高热流密度引起的流动加速效应会明显恶化传热.最后,选取了八种管内超临界流体传热关联式与模拟结果进行对比,发现使用基于热物性修正的关联式对高温区传热数据预测的结果优于使用基于无量纲数修正的关联式得到的结果,且其中预测效果最优的关联式得到的计算结果与模拟结果之间的平均绝对相对偏差为8.1%.     

Monte Carlo simulation of salt effect on water structure through 3D mechanistic potentials

Highly concentrated electrolyte solutions were studied through a Monte Carlo-based simulator, developed to consider the water molecules not a homogeneous dielectric as usual, but as dipoles that can move and rotate within a 3D lattice. This approach allowed fast calculations of detailed interactions between the particles, which were described from mechanistic potentials including dipole–dipole, ion–dipole, ion–ion, and hydrogen bonding (HB) interactions. A good agreement was found between experimental data and simulated results. The study also provides new insights about the balance of the different interactions in systems with or without electrolytes, and the effects of the electrolytes addition on the original water structure. The proposed model was also compared with previous explicit models.     

Efficient copper-catalyzed Sonogashira coupling reactions and simulation studies

A practical copper-catalyzed I-substitutions of alkyl-2-iodobenzoates with alkynes have been developed using Cu powder as a catalyst under solvent, cocatalyst, and base-free conditions. This reaction system is new, facile, efficient, and economical that gives Sonogashira coupling products in excellent yields (up to 97%). The coupled products (A–J) were characterized by CHNS, ¹H NMR, and ¹³C NMR and are found soluble in ethyl acetate and dichloromethane. In addition, simulation studies of A–J were performed with aspulvinone dimethylallyltransferase enzyme and observe good binding affinity. The reported compounds may act as anti-cizmatics, anti-fobic in future and also have the inhibition of aspulvinone dimethylallyltransferase properties to control Alzheimer’s, Schizophrenia, etc. diseases.     

Composition assessment of ferric oxide by accurate peak fitting of the Fe 2p photoemission spectrum

A quantitative study of the surface composition of ferric oxide employing photoemission spectra is presented. It was possible to accurately reproduce the expected composition (Fe_2.00±0.05O₃) by modeling the background as a combination of Shirley‐type (Shirley–Vegh–Salvi–Castle) and slope backgrounds through the active approach. The line‐shape employed to fit apparent peak asymmetries was the double‐Lorentzian. It was possible to resolve a previously unreported satellite located at ~729 eV. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Temperature‐shuffled parallel cascade selection molecular dynamics accelerates the structural transitions of proteins

Parallel cascade selection molecular dynamics (PaCS‐MD) is an enhanced conformational sampling method for searching structural transition pathways from a given reactant to a product. Recently, a temperature‐aided PaCS‐MD (Vinod et al., Eur. Biophys. J. 2016, 45, 463) has been proposed as its extension, in which the temperatures were introduced as additional parameters in conformational resampling, whereas the temperature is fixed in the original PaCS‐MD. In the present study, temperature‐shuffled PaCS‐MD is proposed as a further extension of temperature‐aided PaCS‐MD in which the temperatures are shuffled among different replicas at the beginning of each cycle of conformational resampling. To evaluate their conformational sampling efficiencies, the original, temperature‐aided, and temperature‐shuffled PaCS‐MD were applied to a protein‐folding process of Trp‐cage, and their minimum computational costs to identify the native state were addressed. Through the evaluation, it was confirmed that temperature‐shuffled PaCS‐MD remarkably accelerated the protein‐folding process of Trp‐cage compared with the other methods. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

A new type of microemulsion containing task-special ionic liquid [NH2ebim][BF4]

The formation of microemulsions in the presence of cyclohexane, Triton X-100, n-butanol, water, and task-special ionic liquid (TSIL) (1-2-aminoethyl-3-butylimidazolium tetrafluoroborate) was studied at 25°C. The phase behavior of this ternary system was investigated. Three subregions (namely, water-in-oil phase, bicontinuous phase, and oil-in-water phase) were identified in the single-phase region by dynamic light scattering (DLS) technique and electrical conductivity measurement. Microstructures of microemulsions with different water contents have been predicted by using dissipative particle dynamics (DPD) simulation. It was found that the DPD simulations successfully reproduce the experimental results in the article. The location of TSIL in the microemulsions was predicted by DPD simulation further. The result indicates that TSIL is more easy to locate in the surfactant and cosurfactant layer and has amphiphilicity, which provides us new insights into the potential applications of TSIL-based microemulsions in separation and new nano-scale material preparation because of the interaction of TSIL with some special components at the interface of oil and water.