Self-assembled metallasupramolecular cages towards light harvesting systems for oxidative cyclization

Designing artificial light harvesting systems with the ability to utilize the output energy for fruitful application in aqueous medium is an intriguing topic for the development of clean and sustainable energy. We report here facile synthesis of three prismatic molecular cages as imminent supramolecular optoelectronic materials via two-component coordination-driven self-assembly of a new tetra-imidazole donor (L) in combination with 180°/120° di-platinum(ii) acceptors. Self-assembly of 180° trans-Pt(ii) acceptors A1 and A2 with L leads to the formation of cages Pt₄L₂(1a) and Pt₈L₂(2a) respectively, while 120°-Pt(ii) acceptor A3 with L gives the Pt₈L₂(3a) metallacage. PF₆⁻ analogues (1b, 2b and 3b) of the metallacages possess a high molar extinction coefficient and large Stokes shift. 1b–3b are weakly emissive in dilute solution but showed aggregation induced emission (AIE) in a water/MeCN mixture as well as in the solid state. AIE active 2b and 3b in aqueous (90% water/MeCN mixture) medium act as donors for fabricating artificial light harvesting systems via Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) with organic dye rhodamine-B (RhB) with high energy efficiency and good antenna effect. The metallacages 2b and 3b represent an interesting platform to fabricate new generation supramolecular aqueous light harvesting systems with high antenna effect. Finally, the harvested energy of the LHSs (2b + RhB) and (3b + RhB) was utilized successfully for efficient visible light induced photo-oxidative cross coupling cyclization of N,N-dimethylaniline (4) with a series of N-alkyl/aryl maleimides (5) in aqueous acetonitrile with dramatic enhancement in yields compared to the reactions with RhB or cages alone.

Synthesis of Pt(ii) based metallacages as aggregation induced emissive supramolecular architectures for fabricating artificial light harvesting systems for cross coupling cyclization under visible light is achieved.     

Stable drop shapes under disjoining pressure. III. Sharp contact lines

The shape and stability of a drop with a sharp contact line are analyzed. The disjoining pressure is included. The choice made for the latter is special in that it admits a sharp contact angle as appropriate in this case. The stability analysis is considered for two scenarios, one where the contact line cannot be moved which mode turns out to be stable to small perturbations, and the other where it can be moved but the contact angle is fixed at the equilibrium value. This second case turns out to be unstable to small perturbations due to the curvature effect of the drop.     

Wettability of Nematic Liquid Crystals

Organic liquids such as nematic liquid crystals should wet solids with high surface energies like mica, yet they generally do not. In the model proposed here, the affinity to wet the solid in form of Hamaker forces is opposed by elastic effects due to nematic order. Results predict correctly that such liquids show small contact angles and the formation of ultrathin liquid films ahead of the bulk drops. Copyright 2001 Academic Press.     

Condensed cyclic and bridged-ring systems. VII. Acid-catalysed cyclisation of methyl substituted benzylcyclohexanols. Factors influencing the nature of cyclisation products

The gross structures of the cyclised products from the acid-catalysed cyclisations of 2-benzyl-1, 3-dimethylcyclohexanol (6) and 1-benzyl-3, 5-dimethylcyclohexanol (11) revealing the influence of the structure of the benzylcyclohexanol derivative, and of the cyclisation reagent, have been evaluated. Polyphosphoric acid and aluminium chloride catalysed cyclisations of (6) result in the formation of predominantly 1, 4a-dimethyl-1, 2, 3, 4, 4a, 9a-hexahydrofluorene (7) and 4, 9-dimethyl-7, 8-benzobicyclo [3.3.1] non-7-ene (9) respectively. Under the same conditions, (11) produced cyclised products consisting mostly the benzobicyclo [3.3.1] non-7-ene derivative (12), characterised through 1,3-dimethyl-7,8-benzobicyclo [3.3.1] non-6-oxo-7-ene (14) by oxidation with chromium trioxide. Phosphorus pentoxide induced cyclisation of (6), followed by oxidation gave a mixture of the bridged-ring ketone (10) and the 9-oxohydrofluorene (8) in a ratio ofca. 3 : 2, whereas 2-benzyl-5-methylcyclohexanol (19) resulted in mostly 2-methyl-7,8-benzobicyclo [3.3.1] non-6-oxo-7-ene (19).     

Chemoselective reduction of aldehydes with zinc borohydride in tetrahydrofuran

A variety of structurally different aldehydes undergo chemoselectire reduction over ketones with zinc borohydride in tetrahydrofuran at −10°C to the corresponding alcohols.     

Isolation of sesquiterpenoids from sponge Dysidea avara and chemical modification of avarol as potential antitumor agents

The marine sponge Dysidea avara contained avarol (1) and avarone (2). Avarol on acylation yielded 2',5'-O-dibenzoylavarol (3); 2,5'-O-(4-chlorobenzoyl)avarol (4); 2,5'-O-dicinnamoylavarol (5); 2,5'-O-(4-bromobenzoyl)avarol(6); 2',5'-O-dioctanoylavarol (7); 2',5'-O-(4-fluorobenzoyl)avarol (8) and diacetylavarol (9). The structural elucidation of all the compounds 1-9 have been done by spectral analysis. The cytotoxicity of these compounds were also determined and evaluated. Compounds 6 and 9 showed selective cytotoxicity against Hepa (human hepatoma) and KB cell lines respectively.     

AIPO4 Supported Zinc Borohydride as a Novel Reagent for the Hydration of Aromatic Alkenes and Alkynes

Hydration of aromatic alkenes (styrene, α-methylstyrene and E-stilbene) and alkynes (phenyl and diphenylacetylene) has been achieved by the reaction of the corresponding alkenes or alkynes on zinc borohydride combined with AIPO₄ in DME. Except in the case of α-methylstyrene, Zn(BH₄)₂/AIPO₄ provides a more efficient and selective catalytic system than the combination with SiO₂ or Al₂O₃.     

Structure and spectroscopic aspects of water‐halide ion clusters: A study based on a conjunction of stochastic and quantum chemical methods

In this article, we propose a stochastic search based method, namely genetic algorithm in conjunction with density functional theory to evaluate structures of water‐halide microclusters, with the halide ion being Cl^?, Br^?, and I^?. Once the structures are established, we evaluate the infrared spectroscopic modes, vertical detachment energies and natural population analysis based charges. We compare our results with available experimental and theoretical results. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Simple theoretical analysis of the thermoelectric power in quantum dot superlattices of non-parabolic heavily doped semiconductors with graded interfaces under strong magnetic field

We study theoretically the thermoelectric power in the presence of a large magnetic field (TPM) in heavily doped III–V, II–VI, PbTe/PbSnTe, strained layer and HgTe/CdTe quantum dot superlattices (QDSLs) with graded structures on the basis of newly formulated electron energy spectra and compare the same with that of the constituent materials. It has been found, taking heavily doped GaAs/Ga_1−xAl_xAs, CdS/CdTe, PbTe/PbSnTe, InAs/GaSb and HgTe/CdTe QDSLs as examples, that the TPM increases with increasing inverse electron concentration and film thickness, respectively, in different oscillatory manners and the nature of oscillations is totally band structure dependent. We have also suggested the experimental methods of determining the Einstein relation for the diffusivity–mobility ratio, the Debye screening length and the electronic contribution to the elastic constants for materials having arbitrary dispersion laws.