Preparation and nonlinear optical properties of novel Y-type polyesters with highly enhanced thermal stability of second harmonic generation

3,4-Di-(2′-hydroxyethoxy)benzylidenemalononitrile (3) was prepared and condensed with terephthaloyl chloride and adipoyl chloride to yield novel Y-type polyesters (4-5) containing 3,4-dioxybenzylidenemalononitrile groups as NLO-chromophores, which constituted parts of the polymer main-chains. The resulting polymers 4-5 are soluble in common organic solvents such as acetone and N,N-dimethylformamide. They showed thermal stability up to 300 °C in thermogravimetric analysis with glass-transition temperatures obtained from differential scanning calorimetry in the range 89-91 °C. The second harmonic generation (SHG) coefficients (d₃₃) of poled polymer films at the 1064 nm fundamental wavelength were around 2.47 pm/V. The dipole alignment exhibited high thermal stability even at 10 °C higher than T_g, and there is no SHG decay below 100 °C due to the partial main-chain character of polymer structure, which is acceptable for NLO device applications.     

Fast response in TN liquid-crystal cells: effect of functionalised carbon nanotubes

The optical response time of a nematic liquid crystal (NLC) decreases due to incorporation of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) in the liquid-crystal host. Such reduction is believed to be due to an increase in the elastic constant of the nanotube-doped LC system. In this paper, we present the effect on optical response due to doping an NLC with octadecylamine functionalised single-walled carbon nanotubes (ODA-SWCNT) in a twisted alignment mode. The electro-optic switching amplitude of ODA-SWCNT nanocomposites of NLC decreases compared to pure NLC. A fast response time is observed with an increase in the concentration of ODA-SWCNT in NLC host. Additionally, optical response of pure NLC in a twisted nematic (TN) cell fabricated using mixtures of polyimide (PI) and ODA-SWCNT as an alignment layer is investigated. The optical response time decreased by ~75% in a TN cell fabricated with a mixture of PI and ODA-SWCNT compared to that of a TN cell prepared using a pure PI alignment layer. The presence of ODA-SWCNT in the alignment layer enhances the surface anchoring of the NLC molecules leading to an increase in the elastic constant and a decrease in the optical response time of NLC.     

Influence of the remanent polarisation on the liquid crystal alignment in composite films of ferroelectric poly(vinylidene fluoride-trifluoroethylene) and a cyanobiphenyl-based liquid crystal

Polymer-dispersed liquid crystals (PDLCs) of ferroelectric poly(vinylidene fluoride-trifluoroethylene) and nematic 4-cyano-4?-n-hexylbiphenyl (6CB) or 4-cyano-4?-n-pentylbiphenyl (5CB) were prepared to study the effect of the remanent polarisation of the polymer on the liquid crystal alignment. We measured the macroscopic alignment of the liquid crystal molecules in the thickness direction by means of Infrared Transition-Moment Orientational Analysis. Electrical poling at 100 V/µm caused an increased order parameter up to 0.15. After subsequent annealing above the nematic-to-isotropic phase-transition temperature, the order parameter was reduced to 0.02. Nevertheless, the order parameter was still higher than for non-poled film indicating a slight orientation in thickness direction. Both values are lower than those expected from model calculations. In agreement with dielectric measurements, we attribute this result to the shielding effect of mobile charge carriers within the liquid crystal inclusions.     

An Alignment Medium for Measuring Residual Dipolar Couplings in Pure DMSO: Liquid Crystals from Graphene Oxide Grafted with Polymer Brushes

Residual dipolar couplings (RDCs) have attracted attention in light of their great impact on the structural elucidation of organic molecules. However, the effectiveness of RDC measurements is limited by the shortage of alignment media compatible with widely used organic solvents, such as DMSO. Herein, we present the first liquid crystal (LC) based alignment medium that is compatible with pure DMSO, thus enabling RDC measurements of polar and intermediate polarity molecules. The liquid crystals were obtained by grafting polymer brushes onto graphene oxide (GO) using free radical polymerization. The resulting new medium offers several advantages, such as absence of background signals, narrow line shapes, and tunable alignment. Importantly, this medium is compatible with π‐conjugated molecules. Moreover, sonication‐induced fragmentation can reduce the size of GO sheets. The resulting anisotropic medium has moderate alignment strength, which is a prerequisite for an accurate RDC measurement.     

Magnetically Alignable Bicelles with Unprecedented Stability Using Tunable Surfactants Derived from Cholic Acid

Five novel surfactants were prepared by modifying the three hydroxy groups of sodium cholate with triethylene glycol chains endcapped with an amide ( SC‐C₁ , SC‐ ⁿ C₄ , and SC‐ ⁿ C₅ ) or a carbamoyl group ( SC‐O ⁿ C₄ and SC‐O ^t C₄ ). The phase behavior of aqueous mixtures of these surfactants with 1,2‐dimyristoyl‐sn‐glycero‐3‐phosphatidylcholine (DMPC) was systematically studied by ³¹P NMR spectroscopy. The surfactants endcapped with carbamate groups ( SC‐O ⁿ C₄ and SC‐O ^t C₄ ) formed magnetically alignable bicelles over unprecedentedly wide ranges of conditions, in terms of temperature (from 21–23 to >90 °C), lipid/surfactant ratio (from 5 to 8), total lipid content (5–20 wt %), and lipid type [DMPC, 1,2‐dilauroyl‐sn‐glycero‐3‐phosphatidylcholine (DLPC), or 1‐palmitoyl‐2‐oleoyl‐sn‐glycero‐3‐phosphatidylcholine (POPC)]. In conjunction with appropriate phospholipids, the carbamate‐endcapped surfactants afforded unique bicelles, characterized by exceptional thermal stabilities (from 0 to >90 °C), biomimetic lipid compositions (DMPC/POPC=25:75 to 50:50), and extremely large ²H quadrupole splittings (up to 71 Hz).     

SUMONA: A supervised method for optimizing network alignment

This study focuses on improving the multi-objective memetic algorithm for protein–protein interaction (PPI) network alignment, Optimizing Network Aligner – OptNetAlign, via integration with other existing network alignment methods such as SPINAL, NETAL and HubAlign. The output of this algorithm is an elite set of aligned networks all of which are optimal with respect to multiple user-defined criteria. However, OptNetAlign is an unsupervised genetic algorithm that initiates its search with completely random solutions and it requires substantial running times to generate an elite set of solutions that have high scores with respect to the given criteria. In order to improve running time, the search space of the algorithm can be narrowed down by focusing on remarkably qualified alignments and trying to optimize the most desired criteria on a more limited set of solutions. The method presented in this study improves OptNetAlign in a supervised fashion by utilizing the alignment results of different network alignment algorithms with varying parameters that depend upon user preferences. Therefore, the user can prioritize certain objectives upon others and achieve better running time performance while optimizing the secondary objectives.     

Tunable Liquid Crystal Lens Based on Pretilt Angle Gradient Alignment

The new method of LC lenses fabrication based on innovative alignment material for pretilt angle gradient generation is developed. The alignment layer provides LC lens pretilt angle gradient via two-step treatment: uniform rubbing and gradient nonpolarized UV exposure. LC lens has uniform cell-gap, 2–10 V tunable voltage range. The fabrication method is scalable for lens arrays for two-dimensional/three-dimensional autostereoscopic and light-field displays.     

Light exposure dependence of molecular orientation of glassy polyfluorene layers formed on photo-aligned polyimide films

We have investigated the molecular orientation of glassy poly(9,9-dioctylfluorenyl-2,7-diyl) (PFO) layers formed on photo-aligned polyimide films with different in-plane anisotropy. The polyimide contains azobenzene in the backbone structure (Azo-PI), allowing us to control the in-plane anisotropy of the film by varying linearly polarized light (LP-L) exposure. The glassy PFO layers (30 nm thick) were obtained by annealing the samples at the liquid crystalline phase of PFO and then quenching them to room temperature. The degree of alignment of PFO was assessed by the polarization ratio of photoluminescence (PL). The PL polarization ratio increased rapidly with the LP-L exposure, and it reached 10 at 2.8 J/cm². Beyond this LP-L exposure, it became almost constant around 10.4. This PL polarization ratio was much higher than the absorption dichroic ratio of the underlying Azo-PI film. This result suggests that the degree of alignment of PFO is determined by its liquid crystalline nature. The saturation dependence of the degree of alignment is very useful for fabricating alignment patterns by a simple photo-mask exposure method. We have succeeded in fabricating 3 μm line-and-space alignment patterns of PFO.     

Regular expression constrained sequence alignment

We introduce regular expression constrained sequence alignment as the problem of finding the maximum alignment score between given strings $S_1$ and $S_2$ over all alignments such that in these alignments there exists a segment where some substring $s_1$ of $S_1$ is aligned to some substring $s_2$ of $S_2$, and both $s_1$ and $s_2$ match a given regular expression R, i.e. $s_1,s_2\in L(R)$ where $L(R)$ is the regular language described by R. For complexity results we assume, without loss of generality, that $n=|S_1|⩾|m|=|S_2|$. A motivation for the problem is that protein sequences can be aligned in a way that known motifs guide the alignments. We present an $\mathrm{O}(nmr)$ time algorithm for the regular expression constrained sequence alignment problem where $r=\mathrm{O}(t^4)$, and t is the number of states of a nondeterministic finite automaton N that accepts $L(R)$. We use in our algorithm a nondeterministic weighted finite automaton M that we construct from N. M has $\mathrm{O}(t^2)$ states where the transition-weights are obtained from the given costs of edit operations, and state-weights correspond to optimum alignment scores we compute using the underlying dynamic programming solution for sequence alignment. If we are given a deterministic finite automaton D accepting $L(R)$ with $t_d$ states then our construction creates a deterministic finite automaton $M_d$ with $t_d^2$ states. In this case, our algorithm takes $\mathrm{O}(t_d^{2}nm)$ time. Using $M_d$ results in faster computation than using M when $t_d<t^2$. If we only want to compute the optimum score, the space required by our algorithm is $\mathrm{O}(t^{2}n)$ ($\mathrm{O}(t_d^{2}m)$ if we use a given $M_d$). If we also want to compute an optimal alignment then our algorithm uses $\mathrm{O}(t^{2}m+t^2|s_1||s_2|)$ space ($\mathrm{O}(t_d^{2}m+t_d^2|s_1||s_2|)$ space if we use a given $M_d$) where $s_1$ and $s_2$ are substrings of $S_1$ and $S_2$, respectively, $s_1,s_2\in L(R)$, and $s_1$ and $s_2$ are aligned together in the optimal alignment that we construct. We also show that our method generalizes for the case of the problem with affine gap penalties, and for finding optimal regular expression constrained local sequence alignments.     

黑腔端置靶辐照不均匀性分析

提供一种解析方法来研究激光加热黑腔所产生的平面辐射场的不均匀度与平面靶大小和位置的关系,解析结果与数值模拟结果进行了比较,两者的曲线形状基本一致,辐照不均匀度最小值的位置也是一致的。并用此方法给出了能产生有最小辐照不均匀度的平面辐射场的腔靶尺寸的范围。