Effect of hydrostatic pressure on submicrocrack formation in oriented polymers

Small-angle x-ray scattering has been used to obtain a quantitative estimate of the concentration and size of the submicrocracks in Kapron and polypropylene equally extended at 1 and 1500 atm. Direct evidence of the retarding effect of pressure on fracture development has been obtained.Institute of Polymer Mechanics, Academy of Sciences of the Latvian SSR, Riga: Ioffe Physicotechnical Institute, Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Leningrad. Translated from Mekhanika Polimerov, No. 5, pp. 917–921, September–October, 1971.     

Silyl modification of biologically active compounds. 12. Silyl group as true incentive to antitumour and antibacterial action of choline and colamine analogues

A series of triorganylsilyl(β‐dialkylaminoethoxy)silanes was prepared and characterized by elemental analysis, ¹H, ¹³C, ²⁹Si NMR and mass spectroscopy. Comparative study of ²⁹Si resonance of newly synthesized compounds showed correlation between its value and substituent nature at the silicon atom, and is shifted upfield for β‐triorganyl(N,N‐dialkylaminoethoxy)silanes in comparison with corresponding methiodides, revealing weak N^…Si interaction for proper silanes. In vitro antitumour and antimicrobial properties were investigated. The biological activity data exhibited a marked enhancement of inhibitory activity on trialkylsilylation against tumour cell lines and all the test bacterial/fungal strains. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Guided self-assembly of diblock copolymer thin films on chemically patterned substrates

We study the guided self-assembly of symmetric/asymmetric diblock copolymer (BCP) films on heterogeneous substrates with chemically patterned surface by using a coarse-grained phase-separation model. During the procedure, the free energy employed for the BCP films was modeled by the Ginzburg-Landau free energy with nonlocal interaction, and the flat, chemically patterned surface was considered as a heterogeneous surface with short-range interaction with the BCP molecules. The resulting Cahn-Hilliard equation was solved by means of an efficient semi-implicit Fourier-spectral algorithm. Effects of pattern scale, surface chemical potential, and BCP asymmetry on the self-assembly process were explored in detail and compared with those without chemically patterned substrate surfaces. It was found that the morphology of both symmetric and asymmetric BCP films is strongly influenced by the commensurability between the unconstrained natural period lambda* of the bulk BCP and the artificial pattern period. Simulation shows that patterned surface with period close to lambda* leads to highly ordered morphology after self-assembly for both symmetric and asymmetric BCP films, and it also dramatically accelerates the guided self-assembly process. The present simulation is in a very good agreement with the recent experimental observation in BCP nanolithography. Finally, the present study also expects an innovative nanomanufacturing method to produce highly ordered nanodots based on the guided self-assembly of asymmetric BCP films on chemically patterned substrates.     

Correlations between the velocities of ultrasonic surface waves and the characteristics of the mechanical properties of human bone tissue

The correlation between the ultrasonic surface wave velocities in the human tibia, on the one hand, and the characteristics of the mechanical properties of compact bone tissue, the ultrasonic longitudinal wave velocities, and the principal biochemical components of the bone, on the other, has been investigated. The regression equations obtained make it possible to estimate the state of the bone tissue on the basis of the data of one of the most convenient methods of nondestructive materials testing.