Advances in rapid and effective break-in/conditioning/recovery of automotive PEMFC stacks

Automotive proton exchange membrane fuel cell stacks need to meet manufacturer specified rated beginning-of-life (BOL) performance before being assembled into vehicles and shipped off to customers. The process of “breaking-in” of a freshly assembled stack is often referred to as “conditioning.” It has become an intensely researched area especially in automotive companies, where imminent commercialization of fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs) demands a short, energy- and cost-efficient, and practical conditioning protocol. Significant advances in reducing the conditioning time from 1 to 2 days to as low as 4h or less, in some cases without the use of additional inert gases such as nitrogen, and with minimal use of hydrogen, and specialized test stations will be discussed.     

The effect of rapid rotation on a vertical bridgman furnace at large Rayleigh number

In quasi-steady operation, convection currents in a Bridgmandevice, used for producing a semi-conductor crystal, createinhomogeneities that may make the crystal unusable. It has oftenbeen suggested that additional forces due to rotation or magnetismmight be efficacious in reducing the segregation of the elementsof the alloy. It has been found that, over a wide range of rotationrates, there is no improvement in performance due to rotationabout the vertical axis. However, numerical results that havebeen obtained previously (Lee & Pearlstein, J. Crys. Growth240, 2002) indicate that, when effects of centrifugal buoyancyare introduced, a substantial reduction in segregation is achieved.In the work reported here, by contrast, in which we extend previouslarge-Rayleigh-number asymptotic analysis to include centrifugalbuoyancy, we find no improvement in radial segregation, butrather increasing segregation with increasing rotation rate.     

Sulfonylcarbamimidic azides from sulfonyl chlorides and 5-aminotetrazole

Treatment of o-nitrobenzenesulfonyl chloride ( 3 ) with 5-aminotetrazole (5-AT) gave [(2-nitrophenyl)-sulfonyl]carbamimidic azide ( 6 ), a ring-opened isomer of the expected N-(1H-tetrazol-5-yl)-2-nitrobenzenesulfonamide ( 4 ). Sulfonylcarbamimidic azide 6 was converted to 2-amino-N-(aminoiminomethyl)benzene-sulfonamide ( 7 ) with ethanolic stannous chloride, and to 3-amino-1,2,4-thiadiazine 1,1-dioxide ( 8 ) with sodium dithionite. Methanesulfonyl chloride ( 9 ) and 5-AT gave 2-(methylsulfonyl)carbamimidic azide ( 10 ), which isomerized to 5-[(methylsulfonyl)amino]-1H-tetrazole ( 11 ) in warm ethanol. Attempted cycloaddition of 2-(phenylsulfonyl)carbamimidic azide ( 13 ) and ethyl vinyl ether led only to alkylated tetrazole products. In addition, other tetrazole-alkylating reactions are described. Isomers produced from these alkylations were differentiated with ¹³C nmr spectroscopy.     

BonDNet: a graph neural network for the prediction of bond dissociation energies for charged molecules

A broad collection of technologies, including e.g. drug metabolism, biofuel combustion, photochemical decontamination of water, and interfacial passivation in energy production/storage systems rely on chemical processes that involve bond-breaking molecular reactions. In this context, a fundamental thermodynamic property of interest is the bond dissociation energy (BDE) which measures the strength of a chemical bond. Fast and accurate prediction of BDEs for arbitrary molecules would lay the groundwork for data-driven projections of complex reaction cascades and hence a deeper understanding of these critical chemical processes and, ultimately, how to reverse design them. In this paper, we propose a chemically inspired graph neural network machine learning model, BonDNet, for the rapid and accurate prediction of BDEs. BonDNet maps the difference between the molecular representations of the reactants and products to the reaction BDE. Because of the use of this difference representation and the introduction of global features, including molecular charge, it is the first machine learning model capable of predicting both homolytic and heterolytic BDEs for molecules of any charge. To test the model, we have constructed a dataset of both homolytic and heterolytic BDEs for neutral and charged (−1 and +1) molecules. BonDNet achieves a mean absolute error (MAE) of 0.022 eV for unseen test data, significantly below chemical accuracy (0.043 eV). Besides the ability to handle complex bond dissociation reactions that no previous model could consider, BonDNet distinguishes itself even in only predicting homolytic BDEs for neutral molecules; it achieves an MAE of 0.020 eV on the PubChem BDE dataset, a 20% improvement over the previous best performing model. We gain additional insight into the model''s predictions by analyzing the patterns in the features representing the molecules and the bond dissociation reactions, which are qualitatively consistent with chemical rules and intuition. BonDNet is just one application of our general approach to representing and learning chemical reactivity, and it could be easily extended to the prediction of other reaction properties in the future.

Prediction of bond dissociation energies for charged molecules with a graph neural network enabled by global molecular features and reaction difference features between products and reactants.     

Reactions of 3-chloro-6-hydrazinopyridazine with michael-retro-michael reagents

Although pyrazole formation results from treatment of 3-chloro-6-hydrazinopyridazine ( 2 ) with both ethoxymethylenemalononitrile and ethyl (ethoxymethylene)cyanoacetate, 6-chlorotriazolo[4,3-b]pyridazine ( 5 ) was produced (75% yield) when 2 was treated with diethyl ethoxymethylenemalonate. Treatment of 2 with diethyl acetylmalonate ( 8 ) gave both 6-chloro-3-methyltriazolo[4,3-b]pyridazine ( 10 ) and 5-hydroxy-3-methyl-1-(6-chloro-3-pyridazinyl)-1H-pyrazole-4-carboxylic acid ethyl ester ( 12 ). Pyrazole 12 was initially isolated as a salt of triazolopyridazine 10 .     

Preparation of a DSCG-like bisbenzofuran

The preparation of 6,6′-[(2-hydroxy-1,3-propanediyl)]bis(oxy)]bis(3-hydroxy)]-2-benzofurancarboxylic acid) diethyl ester trisodium salt trihydrate ( 6 ), a compound structurally related to disodium cromoglycate (DSCG), is described.     

Synthesis of benzofuro[3,2-b] quinolin-6(11H) one and derivatives

A new and efficient synthesis of benzof'uro[3,2-b]quinolin-6(11H) one ( 3 ) is reported, by treatment of 2- {[(phenoxy)acetyl]amino} benzoic acid ( 6a ) with polyphosphoric acid. An intermediate in the conversion of 3 to 6a , namely, 2-(3-benzofuranylamino)benzoic acid ( 7 ), was defined. An improved method for the synthesis of 6a is also described, which was used to prepare analogs ( 6b-n ) of 6a . In addition, an 11-alkoxy derivative ( 8 ) and 11-dialkylamino derivatives ( 10 and 11 ) of benzofuro [3,2-b]quinoline were prepared from 3 .     

Salient features of the aza-Wacker cyclization reaction

The intramolecular aza-Wacker reaction has unparalleled potential for the site-selective amination of olefins, but it is perhaps underappreciated relative to other alkene oxidations. The first part of this review makes the distinction between classical and tethered aza-Wacker cyclization reactions and summarizes examples of the latter. The second portion focuses on developments in asymmetric aza-Wacker cyclization technology. The final part of the review summarizes applications of all classes of aza-Wacker cyclization reactions to natural product assembly.

The aza-Wacker cyclization reaction is a powerful strategy for alkene amination.     

Diversity-oriented synthesis of biaryl-containing medium rings using a one bead/one stock solution platform

Diversity-oriented synthesis of structurally complex and diverse small molecules can be used as the first step in a process to explore cellular and organismal pathways. The success of this process is likely going to be dependent on advances in the synthesis of small molecules having natural product-like structures in an efficient and stereoselective manner. The development, scope, and mechanism of the oxidation of organocuprates was investigated and exploited in the atropdiastereoselective synthesis of biaryl-containing medium rings (9-, 10-, and 11-membered rings). The methodology was performed on high-capacity, large polystyrene beads by metalating aryl bromides with i-PrBu(2)MgLi, followed by transmetalating with CuCN x 2LiBr and then oxidizing with 1,3-dinitrobenzene, and was used in a diversity-oriented synthesis of biaryl-containing medium rings (library total theoretical maximum 1412 members). The high capacity beads were arrayed into 384-well plates and, using a process optimized during the development of a one bead/one stock solution technology platform, converted into arrays of stock solutions, with each stock solution containing largely one compound. These stock solutions were used in numerous phenotypic and protein-binding assays. The process described outlines a pathway that we feel will contribute to a comprehensive and systematic chemical approach to exploring biology (chemical genetics).     

Cu (II) and Co (II/III) complexes of N,O‐chelated Schiff base ligands: DNA interaction,protein binding,cytotoxicity, cell death mechanism and reactive oxygen species generation studies

A series of copper (II) ( 1 and 3 ) and cobalt (II/III) ( 2 , 4 and 5 ) complexes comprising different imino‐phenolate ligands DCH , DTH and DBH ₂ (where DCH = 2,4‐dichloro‐6‐((mesitylimino)methyl)phenol, DTH = 2,4‐di‐tert‐butyl‐6‐((mesitylimino)methyl) phenol and DBH ₂ = 2,4‐dibromo‐6‐((mesitylimino)methyl)phenol) have been prepared with excellent yield and high purity. By utilizing different spectroscopic tools such as UV–visible, electrospray ionization (ESI)‐mass, Fourier‐transform infrared (FTIR) spectrometry and elemental analysis, the prepared complexes ( 1 – 5 ) were thoroughly characterized. The molecular structure of the synthesized complexes was ascertained by using single‐crystal X‐ray diffraction studies (SCXRDs). The experiment reveals that Complexes 1 – 5 bind to calf thymus DNA (CT‐DNA) through non‐intercalative way with good interacting abilities. However, 1 – 5 are excellent quenchers of the fluorescence intensity of bovine serum albumin (BSA) following the static pathway. Additionally, they had shown remarkable cytotoxic potential against MCF‐7 (mammary gland adenocarcinoma) and A549 (lung adenocarcinoma) cell lines. The IC₅₀ values associated with these complexes were much lower than the conventional drug cisplatin. Apoptosis‐induced cell death was confirmed from the DNA fragmentation studies and Hoechst 33342 staining. The 2′,7′‐dichlorofluorescein diacetate (DCFDA) assay indicates that the complex mediated reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation is accountable for governing the apoptosis mechanism via oxidative cell distress. Apart from these studies, by carrying out density functional theory (DFT) method, highest occupied molecular orbital–lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (HOMO–LUMO) energy gap calculations and optimized structures of the synthesized complexes were accomplished.