The Photochemical Synthesis of Fine Chemicals with Sunlight

The light of the sun can be used directly for changing chemical structures photochemically. Any industrial application must conform to the limitations imposed by the spectral distribution of the photons from the sun, the interruptions to the radiation due to the day/night rhythm, and the weather. In this review, we describe the photochemical potential of the sun, give a fundamental treatment of the concept of photoreactors driven by sunlight (abbreviated to solar photoreactors), and give an account of the realization of this concept in the first pilot plant on the “Plataforma Solar de Almeria” in southern Spain and in other activities in this field. Based on experimental data from photochemical investigations on the pilot plant scale, possibilities, limitations, and the potential growth of solar photochemistry are described. Solar photochemistry, in our opinion, is a technique which could make a contribution to the chemistry of the future because of its photochemical synthesis potential, the avoidance of waste products, and the direct utilization of the sun, not only as a primary energy source, but also as a reaction partner.     

Domination of uniformly continuous semigroups

We prove that a bounded operator on a Banach lattice, satisfying a growth condition, is regular. Also, we prove that the generator of a C ₀-semigroup on such a lattice for which such an operator exists is bounded.     

The mathematics of playing golf, or: a new class of difficult non-linear mixed integer programs

We consider a class of non-linear mixed integer programs with n integer variables and k continuous variables. Solving instances from this class to optimality is an NP-hard problem. We show that for the cases with k=1 and k=2, every optimal solution is integral. In contrast to this, for every k≥3 there exist instances where every optimal solution takes non-integral values. Received: August 2001 / Accepted: January 2002?Published online March 27, 2002     

Fluorine containing poly(amide-imide)s: synthesis and formation of Langmuir-Blodgett monolayers

Soluble fluorine containing poly(amide-imide)s, PAI(1-4), were synthesized from diimide-dicarboxylic acid, 2,2-bis[N-(4-carboxyphenyl)-phthalimide-1,4-yl]hexafluoropropane with various diamines by direct polycondensation in N-methyl-2-pyrrolidone (NMP) containing CaCl₂ and using triphenyl phosphite and pyridine as condensing agents. The polymers were readily soluble in aprotic polar solvents such as NMP, N,N-dimethylacetamide, dimethyl sulfoxide and tetrahydrofuran. Their Langmuir monolayers were studied at the air/water interface. The monolayers were generally stable at the water surface and could be reproducibly transferred onto solid substrates to build up Langmuir-Blodgett (LB) multilayers. The LB mono- and multilayers were characterized by ultra-violet/visible spectroscopy (UV-Vis), surface plasmon resonance, atomic force microscopy.