Oriented Crystallization on Organic Monolayers to Control Concomitant Polymorphism

Nucleation events and crystal growth can be guided by molecular recognition at interfaces through intermolecular interactions. The short-acting antimicrobial sulfa drug sulfathiazole is known for its concomitant crystallization, which has five known polymorphs, due to conformational flexibility and hydrogen-bond synthon variation. In its development stage of a drug the issue of concomitant crystallization needs to be addressed with respect to patent litigation, including legal actions to protect patents against infringement. A functional self-assembled monolayer (SAM) of organic thiol on a gold surface has been employed as an efficient approach to control concomitant nucleation of such flexible drugs. The crystallization on a SAM surface is mostly kinetically driven and often leads to the nucleation of novel metastable forms. Spectroscopic, thermal analysis and X-ray diffraction studies reveal that a previously unknown, sixth form of the drug nucleates on the designed SAM surface.     

A Facile and Convenient Method for the Synthesis of 8-Methoxy 10,11-Dihydronaphtho [1,2-b]Quinolines

Dihydronaphthoquinolines are relatively rare polycyclic heterocyclic compounds. We wish to report a simple and convenient preparative method for hitherto unknown compounds with these new structural features. 6-methoxy tetralone¹ (I) 3.5g (.02 mole) in 3 ml DMF was added slowly to 4.6g (.02 mole) of POCl₃ in 3ml DMF at 0°C. The mixture was stirred for 5 hrs. and the temp. was then gradually raised from 0° to 60–65°C. The resultant complex was treated with aq. sodium acetate solution till pH5–6 was reached. The extract on usual purification, furnished 3.2g (80°%.) of 1-chloro, 6-methoxy, 1,2,3,4 tetrahydro naphthalene-2-aldehyde(II)⁺²     

Effects of electronic state modulation on the high-frequency response characteristics of GaAs quantum wells

The effect of electronic-state modulation on the high frequency response of GaAs quantum well with thin inserted barrier layer is studied. The carrier scattering by polar optic phonons, acoustic deformation potential and background ionized impurities are incorporated in the present calculations considering the carrier distribution to be heated drifted Fermi-Dirac distribution. Modified phonon spectra and modulated electron wave function give different values of form factor compared to bulk mode phonon. Mobility is found to be enhanced on insertion of thin layer inside the quantum well. The ac mobility and the phase lag increases with the increase in both the channel width and the 2D carrier concentration. Cutoff frequency, where ac mobility drops down to 0.707 of its low frequency value, is observed to be enhanced reflecting better high frequency response.     

Digital speckle pattern interferometry (DSPI) with increased sensitivity: Use of spatial phase shifting

This paper presents a real-time digital speckle pattern interferometry system with twofold increase in sensitivity for the measurement of in-plane displacement and first order derivative of out-of-plane displacement (slope). Spatial phase shifting technique has been used for quantitative fringe analysis. The system employs a double aperture arrangement in front of the imaging system that introduces spatial carrier fringes within the speckle for spatial phase shifting. For in-plane displacement measurement, the scattered fields from the object are collected independently along the direction of illumination beams, and combined at the image plane. For slope measurement, a shear is introduced between the two scattered fields. Experimental results on an edge clamped circular plate subjected to in-plane rotation for in-plane displacement measurement and central loading for slope measurement are presented.     

Study of band offsets in InN/Ge heterojunctions

InN layers were directly grown on Ge substrate by plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy (PAMBE). The valence band offset (VBO) of wurtzite InN/Ge heterojunction is determined by X-ray photoemission spectroscopy (XPS). The valence band of Ge is found to be 0.18 ± 0.04 eV above that of InN and a type-II heterojunction with a conduction band offset (CBO) of ~ 0.16 eV is found. The accurate determination of the VBO and CBO is important for the design of InN/Ge based electronic devices.     

The impact of ultra thin silicon nitride buffer layer on GaN growth on Si (1 1 1) by RF-MBE

Ultra thin films of pure silicon nitride were grown on a Si (1 1 1) surface by exposing the surface to radio-frequency (RF) nitrogen plasma with a high content of nitrogen atoms. The effect of annealing of silicon nitride surface was investigated with core-level photoelectron spectroscopy. The Si 2p photoelectron spectra reveals a characteristic series of components for the Si species, not only in stoichiometric Si₃N₄ (Si⁴⁺) but also in the intermediate nitridation states with one (Si¹⁺) or three (Si³⁺) nitrogen nearest neighbors. The Si 2p core-level shifts for the Si¹⁺, Si³⁺, and Si⁴⁺ components are determined to be 0.64, 2.20, and 3.05 eV, respectively. In annealed sample it has been observed that the Si⁴⁺ component in the Si 2p spectra is significantly improved, which clearly indicates the crystalline nature of silicon nitride. The high resolution X-ray diffraction (HRXRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and photoluminescence (PL) studies showed a significant improvement of the crystalline qualities and enhancement of the optical properties of GaN grown on the stoichiometric Si₃N₄ by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE).     

Kinetics of self-assembled InN quantum dots grown on Si (111) by plasma-assisted MBE

One of the scientific challenges of growing InN quantum dots (QDs), using Molecular beam epitaxy (MBE), is to understand the fundamental processes that control the morphology and distribution of QDs. A systematic manipulation of the morphology, optical emission, and structural properties of InN/Si (111) QDs is demonstrated by changing the growth kinetics parameters such as flux rate and growth time. Due to the large lattice mismatch, between InN and Si (~8%), the dots formed from the Strannski–Krastanow (S–K) growth mode are dislocated. Despite the variations in strain (residual) and the shape, both the dot size and pair separation distribution show the scaling behavior. We observed that the distribution of dot sizes, for samples grown under varying conditions, follow the scaling function.     

Photochemistry of refractive index structures in poly(methyl methacrylate) by femtosecond laser irradiation

Femtosecond, subablation threshold photomodification of poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) at 387 nm is explored to enable fabrication of optical components. Volatile fragment analysis (thermal desorption gas chromatography-mass spectrometry) and molecular weight distribution monitoring (size exclusion chromatography) suggest photochemical modification, involving direct cleavage of the polymer backbone and propagation via chain unzipping under formation of monomers, similar to the pyrolytic degradation of PMMA. Waveguides were produced in undoped, clinical-grade PMMA, showing an increased refractive index in the laser focal region (Dnmax=4x10(-3)).     

A numerical technique based on B-spline for a class of time-fractional diffusion equation

This paper presents an efficient numerical technique for solving a class of time-fractional diffusion equation. The time-fractional derivative is described in the Caputo form. The L1 scheme is used for discretization of Caputo fractional derivative and a collocation approach based on sextic B-spline basis function is employed for discretization of space variable. The unconditional stability of the fully-discrete scheme is analyzed. Two numerical examples are considered to demonstrate the accuracy and applicability of our scheme. The proposed scheme is shown to be sixth order accuracy with respect to space variable and (2 − α)-th order accuracy with respect to time variable, where α is the order of temporal fractional derivative. The numerical results obtained are compared with other existing numerical methods to justify the advantage of present method. The CPU time for the proposed scheme is provided.