Structural and Morphological Properties of Boron Doped V2O5 Thin Films: Highly Efficient Photocatalytic Degradation of Methyl Blue

Russian Journal of Applied Chemistry - Boron doped vanadium thin films were fabricated on the micro-slide glass substrates by spray pyrolysis technique at substrate temperature of 400°C....     

Towards the Discrimination of Carboxylates by Hydrogen‐Bond Donor Anion Receptors

The binding constants (log K_ass) of small synthetic receptor molecules based on indolocarbazole, carbazole, indole, urea and some others, as well as their combinations were measured for small carboxylate anions of different basicity, hydrophilicity and steric demands, that is, trimethylacetate, acetate, benzoate and lactate, in 0.5 % H₂O/[D₆]DMSO by using the relative NMR‐based measurement method. As a result, four separate binding affinity scales (ladders) including thirty‐eight receptors were obtained with the scales anchored to indolocarbazole. The results indicate that the binding strength is largely, but not fully, determined by the strength of the primary hydrogen‐bonding interaction. The latter in turn is largely determined by the basicity of the anion. The higher is the basicity of the anion the stronger in general is the binding, leading to the approximate order of increasing binding strength, lactate<benzoate<acetate≤trimethylacetate, which holds with all investigated receptors. Nevertheless, there are a number of occasions when the binding order changes with changing of the carboxylate anion, sometimes quite substantially. Principal component analysis (PCA) reveals that this is primarily connected to preferential binding of trimethylacetate, supposedly caused by an additional hydrophobic/solvophobic interaction. These findings enable making better predictions, which receptor framework or cavity is best suited for carboxylate anions in receptor design.     

Effect of Ethanol on the Photovoltaic Performance of ZnO Based Dye Sensitized Solar Cells

Crystallography Reports - In this study, ZnO particles were grown at different ethanol–water concentrations by using a simple hydrothermal method at 97°C. The changes in structure and...     

Central Part Interpolation Schemes for Integral Equations

In a weakly singular integral equation of the second kind, we perform a smoothing change of variables and solve the resulting equation either by the collocation or by the product integration method based on a “central part” interpolation by polynomials on the uniform grid. Optimal convergence order of both methods is established. The latter method is hopeful due to especially simple and cheap assembling of the algebraic system of equations.     

Nyström type methods for Fredholm integral equations with weak singularities

Nyström type methods are constructed and justified for a class of Fredholm integral equations of the second kind with kernels which may have weak diagonal and boundary singularities. The proposed approach is based on a suitable smoothing change of variables and product integration techniques. Global convergence estimates are derived and a collection of numerical results is given.     

Solid‐contact Acetate‐selective Electrode Based on a 1,3‐bis(carbazolyl)urea‐ionophore

The construction and study of solid‐contact acetate‐selective electrodes is described using a 1,3‐bis(carbazolyl)urea derivative as a neutral hydrogen‐bonding ionophore and poly(3,4‐ethylenedioxythiophene) as the solid contact. It was shown recently that this ionophore binds acetate (logK_ass=4.98) that is used as primary ion in this study. The electrodes show linearity over the activity range of 10^?4.50–10^?1.10 with a sub‐Nernstian slope of ?51.3 mV per decade and a detection limit of 10^?5.00. The anion‐selectivity pattern of these electrodes deviates markedly from the Hofmeister pattern. When adding ionophore to the membrane the logarithm of the selectivity coefficient (logK) for SCN^? decreased from 6.5 to 1.2, logK for I^? decreased from 5.7 to 0.9, logK for NO₃^? decreased from 4.3 to 0.6 and logK for Br^? decreased from 3.3 to 0.1. The selectivity coefficients of hydrophilic anions such as Cl^?, F^?, HPO₄^2?, and SO₄^2? are significantly lower than in case of the ionophore‐free membrane. It was discovered that the constructed electrodes are also relatively selective to bicarbonate. This work is an important step towards the further development of solid‐contact anion‐selective electrodes.