Fabrication of a metal particle array based on a self-assembled template from a two-armed polymer

A two-armed polymer with a crown ether core self-assembles to produce macroporous films with pores perpendicularly reaching through the film down to the substrate. A possible assembling mechanism is discussed. The pore size can be conveniently adjusted by changing the solution concentration. These through-hole macroporous films provide a template for fabricating an array of Cu nanoparticle aggregates.

Extraction mechanism of rare earths with sec-octylphenoxy acetic acid by two-phase titration technique

The compositions of the extracted complexes of La, Gd, Er and Y with sec-octyl-phenoxy acetic acid in heptane and the related apparent extraction equilibrium constants K-M were determined using two-phase titration technique. The stoichiometric compounds for La, Gd, Er and Y should be LaA(3) . 2.5HA, GdA(3) . 3HA, ErA(3) . 3.1HA and YA(3) . 4.3HA respectively. And their pK(M) are 3.43, 3.46, 3.08 and 2.58 respectively.

生物活性有机锗及HPCPC双水相分离生物大分子的研究

本论文内容主要分为4个部分：“有机锗化合物抑制Maillard反应的研究”、“Ge-132对体外培养幼鼠胰岛细胞的作用研究”、“PEG／磷酸盐双水相体系中生物大分子分配的研究”和“HPCPC（High Performance Centrifugal Partition Chromatography，高效离心分配色谱）双水相体系对生物大分子分离的研究”。前两部分主要从有机锗化合物防治糖尿病及其并发症的代谢机理和细胞学角度进行研究，本文引入HPCPC和双水相体系分离生物大分子的技术，为进一步阐明有机锗化合物在Maillard反应过程中的作用机理：对双水相体系中生物大分子的分配及HPCPC在双水相体系中分离生物大分子也做了大量的基础性研究，为开发HPCPC的应用作出了有价值的探索工作。本论文的主要创新点归纳如下：一、有机锗化合物对Maillard反应的抑制作用：针对国际上有机锗发展的前沿课题，在国内首先开展了有机锗化合物对Maillard反应抑制作用的研究，取得了有价值的研究结果。1、在模拟体内的生理条件下，研究了不同浓度Ge-132对精氨酸、组氨酸、甘氨酸和缬氨酸对Maillard反应荧光峰强度的影响：不同类型的氨基酸Maillard反应产物结构上的差异和不同浓度有机锗对组氨酸糖化反应420nm处特征吸光度的影响。2、苯丙氨酸是侧链带有苯环的芳香族氨基酸，是一种具有弱的天然荧光的生物小分子，其荧光最大发射位置在281.6nm。由于aillard反应是葡萄糖和氨基酸的-NHR基发生的反应，其反应产物的特征荧光在440nm附近。这两类荧光的发射位置相差较远，相互之间没有影响，因此利用荧光法观察Phe在反应过程中自身的荧光变化和Ge-132对Phe的Maillard反应荧光产物的抑制情况。3、血清白蛋白是哺乳动物体内的重要蛋白质，可作为多种内源性、外源性物质的存储和转运蛋白，其Maillard反应已经被广泛重视，但较复杂的实验条件限制了它的研究。通过观测蛋白质Maillard反应产物特征荧光的变化是一有效的研究方法。BSA的内源性荧光是由肽链色氨酸和酪氨酸残基贡献的，其最大发射位置340nm左右。其Maillard反应产物的特征荧光在440nm附近，这两类荧光发射位置相差较远，基本上没有影响，因此能够通过荧光光谱研究BSA的Maillard反应荧光产物的情况。本文观测了Ge-132对BSA的Maillard反应荧光产物的抑制作用，同时还通过荧光法确定了一个文献中没有的新的反应位点。4、本文研究了具有更高水溶性的一类双有机锗化合物(HO)_2Ge(CHR_1CHR_2COOH)_2．2H_20抑制Maillard反应的特性，结果证明它比Ge-132具有更高的抑制作用，我们通过化合物的构效关系解释了上述作用的机制。5、本文研究了Tb(Ge-132)_3和Eu(Ge-132)_3两种含稀土的配合物对氨基酸、蛋白质Maillard反应的影响，观察了稀土离子对Maillard反应体系的影响，对实验现象作出了合理的解释。二、Ge-132对体外培养幼鼠胰岛细胞的作用为进一步考察有机锗对糖尿病的防治作用，我们与白求恩医大合作，首次观察了Ge-132对体外培养的幼鼠胰岛细胞结构和功能的影响，研究了不同剂量的含锗化合物对幼鼠胰岛细胞分泌胰岛素的作用，认为低浓度的Ge-132对胰岛细胞分泌胰岛素具有明显的促进作用。该部分内容为首次报导。三、PEG／磷酸盐双水相体系中生物大分子分配的研究双水相萃取TPE(Aqueous Two-Phase Extraction)具有下述优点：生物相容性好、界面张力低、能量低、易于工业规模的放大、可以进行连续操作等。本论文系统地研究了各种蛋白质在PEG／磷酸盐体系中的分离情况，如在各种pH条件下，从6.8到9.2，各种分子量的PEG，包括PEGl000，2000，5000，6000，10000，和20000和磷酸盐双水相体系的物化性质，以及对lysozyme（溶菌酶），BSA（牛血清白蛋白），HSA（人血清白蛋白），Hemoglobin（血红蛋白）在各种体系中的分配系数，探讨了各种因素对生物大分子分配的影响。四、HPCPC在双水相体系对生物大分子分离的研究由于荧光光谱法证实了Ge-132对牛血清白蛋白Maillard反应的抑制作用。但对于如何能够分离出糖化产物，达到进行定量表征的目的是我们研究的一个重要内容。九十年代初，由日本研制出一种色谱中新技术HPCPC。HPCPC与传统的液相色谱(LC)和高效液相色谱(HPLC)不同，不需要固体作为支持体。流动相和固定相分别为两种不相混溶的液体，通过离心力的作用使其中一相作为固定相保持在类似多级萃取器的微小分配槽中，另一相作为流动相流经固定相。HPCPC在双水相体系的应用是一种利用多级连续萃取从双水相中分离生物物质的方法它具有运行时间快、高效高选择性，流动相与固定相之间比例可以任意改变，并在任何pH值均可进行正向和反向操作并且实验室规模可一步直接放大到生产规模。它不仅可以作为一种分离的工具，而且也是一种研究生物萃取反应动力学机理，反映热力学与动力学之间相关性的重要方法。本论文中研究了常用的两种双水相体系，利用PEG6000／Dex20000／H_20对BSA和Maillard反应产生的糖化BSA进行了初步分离，取得了一些阶段性结论。另外，通过对各种条件的筛选，选择了具有代表性的lysozyme和BSA，BSA和血红蛋白(Hb)进行HPCPC色谱仪上的分离，研究了色谱分离条件如：转数、流速、pH等对分离效率及理论塔板数的影响，取得了一系列重要的结论。为工业上大规模的生物样品分离提供了重要的参数。

Thermal analysis of microstructural evolution of Al2O3 surface modified layers

Solidification behavior and microstructural evolution of surface modified layers in plasma cladding technique are studied via numerical simulations. Both the coupling effect of temperature and solid volume fraction are considered in the proposed thermal analytical model, by which the transient temperature distributions are calculated and the shape of melting pool is determined. Furthermore, we perform microscopic thermal analysis on the nucleation and growth behaviors of ceramic hardening phases and dendrites, as well as the kinetics of related two-phase flow systems. By comparing with experimental observations, the evolution mechanisms of the morphology of Al2O3 ceramic hardening layer are explained. Based on the above results, a relationship among the scanning velocity of plasma stream, dendritic growth rate and the advancing speed of solid/liquid interface is found, and an energy criterion is proposed for predicting the pushing/engulfing transition of ceramic particles by grain growth fronts. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

White electrolumineseence from a single-polymer system with simultaneous two-color emission: Polyfluorene as the blue host and a 2,1,3-benzothiadiazole derivative as the orange dopant on the main chain

New single-polymer electroluminescent systems containing two individual emission species - polyfluorenes as a blue host and 2,1,3-benzothiadiazole derivative units as an orange dopant on the main chain - have been designed and synthesized. The resulting single polymers are found to have highly efficient white electroluminescence with simultaneous blue(lambda(max) = 421 nm/445 nm) and orange emission (lambda(max) = 564 nm)from the corresponding emitting species. The influence of the photoluminescence (PL) efficiencies of both the blue and orange species on the electroluminescence (EL) efficiencies of white polymer light-emitting diodes (PLEDs) based on the single-polymer systems has been investigated. The introduction of the highly efficient 4,7-bis(4-(N-phenyl-N-(4-methylphenyl)amino)phenyl)-2,1,3-benzothiadiazole unit to the main chain of polyfluorene provides significant improvement in EL efficiency. For a single-layer device fabricated in air (indium tin oxide/poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene): poly(styrene sulfonic acid/polymer/Ca/Al), pure-white electroluminescence with Commission Internationale de l'Eclairage (CIE) coordinates of (0.35,0.32), maximum brightness of 12 300 cd m(-2), luminance efficiency of 7.30 cd A(-1), and power efficiency of 3.34 lm W-1 can be obtained.

Dewetting and phase behaviors for ultrathin films of polymer blend

Dynamics of dewetting and phase separation in ultrathin films (thickness is ca. one radius of gyration, approximate to 1 R-g) of poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) and poly(styrene-ran-acrylonitrile) (SAN) blends on Si substrate has been studied by in situ atomic force microscopy (AFM). In the miscible region, a "spinodal-like" dewetting driven by a composition fluctuation recently predicted by Wensink and Jerome (Langmuir 2002, 18, 413) occurs. In the two-phase region, the dewetting of the whole film is followed by phase separation in the droplets, coupling with the wetting of the substrate by the PMMA extracted by the strong attractive interaction between them.

Tensile modulus of polymer nanocomposites

Based on Takayanagi's two-phase model, a three-phase model including the matrix, interfacial region, and fillers is proposed to calculate the tensile modulus of polymer nanocomposites (E-c). In this model, fillers (sphere-, cylinder- or plate-shape) are randomly distributed in a matrix. If the particulate size is in the range of nanometers, the interfacial region will play an important role in the modulus of the composites. Important system parameters include the dispersed particle size (t), shape, thickness of the interfacial region (tau), particulate-to-matrix modulus ratio (E-d/E-m), and a parameter (k) describing a linear gradient change in modulus between the matrix and the surface of particle on the modulus of nanocomposites (E-c). The effects of these parameters are discussed using theoretical calculation and nylon 6/montmorillonite nanocomposite experiments. The former three factors exhibit dominant influence on E-c At a fixed volume fraction of the dispersed phase, smaller particles provide an increasing modulus for the resulting composite, as compared to the larger one because the interfacial region greatly affects E-c. Moreover, since the size of fillers is in the scale of micrometers, the influence of interfacial region is neglected and the deduced equation is reduced to Takayanagi's model. The curves predicted by the three-phase model are in good agreement with experimental results. The percolation concept and theory are also applied to analyze and interpret the experimental results.

Large Scale Numerical Simulations For Multi-Phase Fluid Dynamics With Moving Interfaces

This short communication presents our recent studies to implement numerical simulations for multi-phase flows on top-ranked supercomputer systems with distributed memory architecture. The numerical model is designed so as to make full use of the capacity of the hardware. Satisfactory scalability in terms of both the parallel speed-up rate and the size of the problem has been obtained on two high rank systems with massively parallel processors, the Earth Simulator (Earth simulator research center, Yokohama Kanagawa, Japan) and the TSUBAME (Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan) supercomputers.

Outer membrane proteins induced by iron deficiency in Anabaena sp PCC 7120

Iron deficiency can induce cyanobacteria to synthesize siderophore receptor proteins on the outer membrane to enhance the uptake of iron. In this study, an outer membrane of high purity was prepared from Anabaena sp. PCC 7120 based on aqueous polymer two-phase partitioning and discontinuous sucrose density ultra-centrifugation, and the induction of outer membrane proteins by iron deficiency was investigated using 2-D gel electrophoresis. At least. five outer membrane proteins were newly synthesized or significantly up-regulated in cells transferred to iron-deficient conditions, which were all identified to be siderophore receptor proteins according to MALDI-TOF-MS analyses. Bacterial luciferase reporter genes luxAB were employed to monitor the transcription of the encoding genes. The genes were induced by iron deficiency at the transcriptional level in different responsive modes. Luciferase activity expressed from an iron-regulated promoter may be used as a bioreporter for utilizable iron in natural water samples. (C) 2009 National Natural Science Foundation of China and Chinese Academy of Sciences. Published by Elsevier Limited and Science in China Press. All rights reserved.

Comparison of aggregation behaviors between branched and linear block polyethers: MesoDyn simulation study

The comparison of aggregation behaviors between the branched block polyether T1107 (polyether A) and linear polyether (EO)(60)(PO)(40)(EO)(60) (polyether B) in aqueous solution are investigated by the MesoDyn simulation. Polyether A forms micelles at lower concentration and has a smaller aggregation number than B. Both the polyethers show the time-dependent micellar growth behaviors. The spherical micelles appear and then change to rod-like micelles with time evolution in the 10 vol% solution of polyether A. The micellar cluster appears and changes to pseudo-spherical micelles with time evolution in the 20 vol% solution of polyether A. However, the spherical micelles appear and change to micellar cluster with time evolution in the 20 vol% polyether B solution. The shear can induce the micellar transition of both block polyethers. When the shear rate is 1x10(5) s(-1), the shear can induce the sphere-to-rod transition of both polyethers at the concentration of 10 and 20 vol%. When the shear rate is lower than 1x10(5) s(-1), the huge micelles and micellar clusters can be formed in the 10 and 20 vol% polyether A systems under the shear, while the huge micelles are formed and then disaggregated with the time evolution in the 20 vol% polyether B system.

Studies on coarsening of microdomains in binary polymer mixtures by Lattice Boltzmann methods

An improved free energy approach Lattice Boltzmann model(LBM) is proposed by introducing a forcing term instead of the pressure tensor. This model can reach the proper thermodynamic equilibrium after enough simulation time. On the basis of this model, the phase separation in binary polymer mixtures is studied by applying a Flory-Huggins-type free energy. The numerical results show good agreement with the analytic coexistence curve. This model can also be used to study the coarsening of microdomains in binary polymer mixtures at the early and intermediate stages.

Study of morphology and phase diagram of the H-shaped (AC)B(CA) ternary block copolymers using self-consistent field theory

By using a combinatorial screening method based on the self-consistent field theory (SCFT) for polymer systems, the micro-phase morphologies of the H-shaped (AC)B(CA) ternary block copolymer system are studied in three-dimensional (3D) space. By systematically varying the volume fractions of the components A, B, and C, six triangle phase diagrams of this H-shaped (AC)B(CA) ternary block copolymer system with equal interaction energies among the three components are constructed from the weaker segregation regime to the strong segregation regime, In this study, thirteen 3D micro-phase morphologies for this H-shaped ternary block copolymer system are identified to be stable and seven 3D microphase morphologies are found to be metastable.

Morphology, structure, and properties of in situ compatibilized linear low-density polyethylene/polystyrene and linear low-density polyethylene/high-impact polystyrene blends

Blends of linear low-density polyethylene (LLDPE) with polystyrene (PS) and blends of LLDPE with high-impact polystyrene (HIPS) were prepared through a reactive extrusion method. For increased compatibility of the two blending components, a Lewis acid catalyst, aluminum chloride (AlCl3), was adopted to initiate the Friedel-Crafts alkylation reaction between the blending components. Spectra data from Raman spectra of the LLDPE/PS/AlCl3 blends extracted with tetrahydrofuran verified that LLDPE segments were grafted to the para position of the benzene rings of PS, and this confirmed the graft structure of the Friedel-Crafts reaction between the polyolefin and PS. Because the in situ generated LLDPE-g-PS and LLDPE-g-HIPS copolymers acted as compatibilizers in the relative blending systems, the mechanical properties of the LLDPE/PS and LLDPE/HIPS blending systems were greatly improved. For example, after compatibilization, the Izod impact strength of an LLDPE/PS blend (80/20 w/w) was increased from 88.5 to 401.6 J/m, and its elongation at break increased from 370 to 790%. For an LLDPE/HIPS (60/40 w/w) blend, its Charpy impact strength was increased from 284.2 to 495.8 kJ/m(2). Scanning electron microscopy micrographs showed that the size of the domains decreased from 4-5 to less than 1 mum, depending on the content of added AlCl3.

Incorporation of surface-derivatized gold nanoparticles into electrochemically generated polymer films

Stable colloidal solutions of gold nanoparticles surface-derivatized with a thiol monolayer have been prepared using two-phase (water-nitrobenzene) reduction of AuCl4- by sodium borohydride in the presence of 2-mercapto-3-n-octylthiophene (MOT). This kind of surface-functionalized gold nanoparticles can be easily incorporated into the poly(3-octylthiophene) (POT) films on electrode in the process of electrochemical polymerization leading to POT-gold nanoparticle (POT-Au) composite films. Scanning probe microscopy (SPM) and X-ray photoelectric spectroscopy (XPS) have been employed to characterize the surface-derivatized particles and the resulting films. The method of incorporation of nanoparticles into polymer by surface-derivatization and in situ polymerization can also be employed to prepare many other polymer-nanoparticle compostie materials.