2,2-双(4-氯-2-氟苄基)丙二酸二乙酯的晶体结构和密度泛函理论研究

标题化合物是一个重要的精细化工中间体,可用于制备嘧啶类、吡唑类等产品.本文利用红外光谱(IR)、质谱(MS)、核磁共振氢谱(1 H NMR)、核磁共振碳谱(13 C NMR)和X-射线单晶衍射对此化合物进行了表征,并在B3LYP/6-311G(d,p)模式下使用密度泛函理论(DFT)计算了此化合物的最稳定晶体结构以及最...     

金催化乙炔氢氯化的密度泛函理论研究进展

乙炔氢氯化(AH)是生产氯乙烯的主要途径之一,传统上使用高毒性的汞催化剂,因此开发无汞催化剂迫在眉睫。金(Au)催化剂是最有潜力的替代催化剂之一,然而其活性Au物种、反应物的活化过程或反应过渡态结构等催化机理仍不够清晰。密度泛函理论（DFT）在研究由Au催化AH的反应机理中发挥了极其重要的作用。本文综述了DFT对金催化剂活性位点、反应物在催化剂上的吸附性质及反应机理的研究进展。重点讨论了DFT对阳离子金和金簇催化AH反应过程的模拟计算,包括Au电子状态、其它原子掺杂及金簇尺寸和形状对催化AH反应影响的模拟。结果表明DFT模拟计算在微观分子尺度上研究反应物的吸附、反应中间体及过渡态等方面发挥了关键作用,对理解Au催化AH反应机理做出了重要贡献。     

Theragnostic Applications of Mammal and Plant-Derived Extracellular Vesicles: Latest Findings,Current Technologies,and Prospects

The way cells communicate is not fully understood. However, it is well-known that extracellular vesicles (EVs) are involved. Researchers initially thought that EVs were used by cells to remove cellular waste. It is now clear that EVs function as signaling molecules released by cells to communicate with one another, carrying a cargo representing the mother cell. Furthermore, these EVs can be found in all biological fluids, making them the perfect non-invasive diagnostic tool, as their cargo causes functional changes in the cells upon receiving, unlike synthetic drug carriers. EVs last longer in circulation and instigate minor immune responses, making them the perfect drug carrier. This review sheds light on the latest development in EVs isolation, characterization and, application as therapeutic cargo, novel drug loading techniques, and diagnostic tools. We also address the advancement in plant-derived EVs, their characteristics, and applications; since plant-derived EVs only recently gained focus, we listed the latest findings. Although there is much more to learn about, EV is a wide field of research; what scientists have discovered so far is fascinating. This paper is suitable for those new to the field seeking to understand EVs and those already familiar with it but wanting to review the latest findings.     

Coffee Chlorogenic Acids Incorporation for Bioactivity Enhancement of Foods: A Review

The demand of foods with high antioxidant capacity have increased and research on these foods continues to grow. This review is focused on chlorogenic acids (CGAs) from green coffee, which is the most abundant source. The main CGA in coffee is 5-O-caffeoylquinic acid (5-CQA). Coffee extracts are currently the most widely used source to enhance the antioxidant activity of foods. Due to the solubility of CGAs, their extraction is mainly performed with organic solvents. CGAs have been associated with health benefits, such as antioxidant, antiviral, antibacterial, anticancer, and anti-inflammatory activity, and others that reduce the risk of cardiovascular diseases, type 2 diabetes, and Alzheimer’s disease. However, the biological activities depend on the stability of CGAs, which are sensitive to pH, temperature, and light. The anti-inflammatory activity of 5-CQA is attributed to reducing the proinflammatory activity of cytokines. 5-CQA can negatively affect colon microbiota. An increase in anthocyanins and antioxidant activity was observed when CGAs extracts were added to different food matrices such as dairy products, coffee drinks, chocolate, and bakery products. The fortification of foods with coffee CGAs has the potential to improve the functionality of foods.     

Effect of Wearing Surgical Face Masks on Gas Detection from Respiration Using Photoacoustic Spectroscopy

Wearing surgical face masks is among the measures taken to mitigate coronavirus disease (COVID-19) transmission and deaths. Lately, concern was expressed about the possibility that gases from respiration could build up in the mask over time, causing medical issues related to the respiratory system. In this research study, the carbon dioxide concentration and ethylene in the breathing zone were measured before and immediately after wearing surgical face masks using the photoacoustic spectroscopy method. From the determinations of this study, the C₂H₄ was established to be increased by 1.5% after one hour of wearing the surgical face mask, while CO₂ was established to be at a higher concentration of 1.2% after one hour of wearing the surgical face mask, when the values were correlated with the baseline (control).     

Surface Modification Strategy for Enhanced NO2 Capture in Metal–Organic Frameworks

The interaction strength of nitrogen dioxide (NO₂) with a set of 43 functionalized benzene molecules was investigated by performing density functional theory (DFT) calculations. The functional groups under study were strategically selected as potential modifications of the organic linker of existing metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) in order to enhance their uptake of NO₂ molecules. Among the functional groups considered, the highest interaction energy with NO₂ (5.4 kcal/mol) was found for phenyl hydrogen sulfate (-OSO₃H) at the RI-DSD-BLYP/def2-TZVPP level of theory—an interaction almost three times larger than the corresponding binding energy for non-functionalized benzene (2.0 kcal/mol). The groups with the strongest NO₂ interactions (-OSO₃H, -PO₃H₂, -OPO₃H₂) were selected for functionalizing the linker of IRMOF-8 and investigating the trend in their NO₂ uptake capacities with grand canonical Monte Carlo (GCMC) simulations at ambient temperature for a wide pressure range. The predicted isotherms show a profound enhancement of the NO₂ uptake with the introduction of the strongly-binding functional groups in the framework, rendering them promising modification candidates for improving the NO₂ uptake performance not only in MOFs but also in various other porous materials.     

Orbital-Free Density Functional Theory for Molecular Structure Calculations

We give here an overview of the orbital-free density functional theory that is used for modeling atoms and molecules.We review typical approximations to the kinetic energy,exchange-correlation corrections to the kinetic and Hartree energies, and constructions of the pseudopotentials.We discuss numerical discretizations for the orbital-free methods and include several numerical results for illustrations.     

Perturbative Power Counting,Lowest-Index Operators and Their Renormalization in Standard Model Effective Field Theory

We study two aspects of higher dimensional operators in standard model effective field theory.We first introduce a perturbative power counting rule for the entries in the anomalous dimension matrix of operators with equal mass dimension.The power counting is determined by the number of loops and the difference of the indices of the two operators involved,which in turn is defined by assuming that all terms in the standard model Lagrangian have an equal perturbative power.Then we show that the operators with the lowest index are unique at each mass dimension d,i.e.,(H~?H)~(d/2)for even d≥4,and(L~TεH)C(L~TεH)~T(H~?H)~((d-5)/2)for odd d≥5.Here H,L are the Higgs and lepton doublet,andε,C the antisymmetric matrix of rank two and the charge conjugation matrix,respectively.The renormalization group running of these operators can be studied separately from other operators of equal mass dimension at the leading order in power counting.We compute their anomalous dimensions at one loop for general d and find that they are enhanced quadratically in d due to combinatorics.We also make connections with classification of operators in terms of their holomorphic and anti-holomorphic weights.     

HSH-carbon: A novel sp2−sp3 carbon allotrope with an ultrawide energy gap

An sp²-sp³ hybrid carbon allotrope named HSH-carbon is proposed by the first-principles calculations. The structure of HSH-carbon can be regarded as a template polymerization of [1.1.1]propellane molecules in a hexagonal lattice, as well as, an AA stacking of recently reported HSH-C₁₀ consisting of carbon trigonal bipyramids. Based on calculations, the stability of this structure is demonstrated in terms of the cohesive energy, phonon dispersion, Born−Huang stability criteria, and ab initio molecular dynamics. HSH-carbon is predicted to be a semiconductor with an indirect energy gap of 3.56 eV at the PBE level or 4.80 eV at the HSE06 level. It is larger than the gap of Si and close to the gap of c-diamond, which indicates HSH-carbon is potentially an ultrawide bandgap semiconductor. The effective masses of carriers in the VB and CB edge are comparable with wide bandgap semiconductors such as GaN and ZnO. The elastic behavior of HSH-carbon such as bulk modulus, Young’s modulus and shear modulus is comparable with that of T-carbon and much smaller than that of c-diamond, which suggests that HSH-carbon would be much easier to be processed than c-diamond in practice.     

Benzothiadiazole-based Conjugated Polymers for Organic Solar Cells

Benzothiadiazole(BT) is an electron-deficient unit with fused aromatic core, which can be used to construct conjugated polymers for application in organic solar cells(OSCs). In the past twenty years, huge numbers of conjugated polymers based on BT unit have been developed,focusing on the backbone engineering(such as by using different copolymerized building blocks), side chain engineering(such as by using linear or branch side units), using heteroatoms(such as F, O and S atoms, and CN group), etc. These modifications enable BT-polymers to exhibit distinct absorption spectra(with onset varied from 600 nm to 1000 nm), different frontier energy levels and crystallinities. As a consequence, BT-polymers have gained much attention in recent years, and can be simultaneously used as electron donor and electron acceptor in OSCs, providing the power conversion efficiencies(PCEs) over 18% and 14% in non-fullerene and all-polymer OSCs. In this article, we provide an overview of BTpolymers for OSCs, from donor to acceptor, via selecting some typical BT-polymers in different periods. We hope that the summary in this article can invoke the interest to study the BT-polymers toward high performance OSCs, especially with thick active layers that can be potentially used in large-area devices.