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Photoresponsive molecular crystals have sparked interest owing to their potential application prospects. In this study, we achieved dual mechanical responses of a cyanostilbene-based crystal BN. The crystal exhibited both stress-induced mechanical flexibility and light-induced photomechanical bending. Two distinct mechanical responses are related to different underlying phenomena and were not interlinked. While elasticity is attributed to criss-cross packing arrangement in the isotropic structure, photomechanical bending is attributed to the formation of heterogeneous phase distribution due to monomer to dimer cycloaddition product formation. The crystal did not demonstrate photoswitching activity. However, it exhibited thermal reversibility, highlighting reversible dimer to monomer conversion.
AbstractUnderstanding the origin of low thermal conductivities in ionic conductors is essential for improving their thermoelectric efficiency, although accompanying high ionic conduction may present challenges for maintaining thermoelectric device integrity. This study investigates the thermal and ionic transport in Cu7PSe6, aiming to elucidate their fundamental origins and correlation with the structural and dynamic properties. Through a comprehensive approach including various characterization techniques and computational analyses, it is demonstrated that the low thermal conductivity in Cu7PSe6 arises from structural complexity, variations in bond strengths, and high lattice anharmonicity, leading to pronounced diffuson transport of heat and fast ionic conduction. It is found that upon increasing the temperature, the ionic conductivity increases significantly in Cu7PSe6, whereas the thermal conductivity remains nearly constant, revealing no direct correlation between ionic and thermal transport. This absence of direct influence suggests innovative design strategies in thermoelectric applications to enhance stability by diminishing ionic conduction, while maintaining low thermal conductivity, thereby linking the domains of solid‐state ionics and thermoelectrics. Thus, this study attempts to clarify the fundamental principles governing thermal and ionic transport in Cu+‐superionic conductors, similar to recent findings in Ag+ argyrodites.
Mechanochemistry is drawing attention from the pharmaceutical industry given its potential for sustainable material synthesis and manufacture. Scaling mechanochemical processes to industrial level remains a challenge due to an incomplete understanding of their underlying mechanisms. We here show how time-resolved in situ powder X-ray diffraction data, coupled with analytical kinetic modelling, provides a powerful approach to gain mechanistic insight into mechanochemical reactions. By using the ibuprofen–nicotinamide co-crystal mechanosynthesis as a benchmark system, we investigate the behaviour of the solids involved and identify the factors that promote the reaction. As mechanochemical mechanisms become increasingly clear, it promises to become a breakthrough in the industrial preparation of advanced pharmaceuticals.
We simulate a homologous series of guanidinium-based columnar ionic liquid crystals (ILCs) using coarse-grained molecular dynamics (MD) simulations with the Martini force field. We systematically vary the length of alkyl side chains, ILC-n (n = 8, 12, 16), and compare our results with previous experimental findings. Experimentally, ILC-8 exhibits a narrow mesophase window and weak columnar order, while ILC-12 and ILC-16 display a broad mesophase window and high columnar order. The MD simulations show that ILC-8 forms a percolated structure, whereas the longer chain analogues self-assemble into columns, with columnar assembly becoming more prominent as the side chain length increases, in qualitative agreement with the experiments. Furthermore, the intercolumnar distance increases monotonically with increasing side chain length and decreases with increasing temperature. Finally, we find that the diffusion coefficient and ionic conductivity decrease substantially with increasing chain length, consistent with experimental observations. We attribute this decrease in mobility to the formation of hexagonally ordered columns, which restrict transport more than percolated networks.
This work studies the influence of the adsorbed layer on the glass transition of thin films of polysulfone. Therefore, the growth kinetics of the irreversibly adsorbed layer of polysulfone on silicon substrates was first investigated using the solvent leaching approach, and the thickness of the remaining layer was measured with atomic force microscopy. Annealing conditions before leaching were varied in temperature and time (0–336 h). The growth kinetics showed three distinct regions: a pre-growth step where it was assumed that phenyl rings align parallel to the substrate at the shortest annealing times, a linear growth region, and a crossover from linear to logarithmic growth observed at higher temperatures for the longest annealing times. No signs of desorption were observed, pointing to the formation of a strongly adsorbed layer.
Second, the glass transition of thin polysulfone films was studied in dependence on the film thickness using spectroscopic ellipsometry. Three annealing conditions were compared: two with only a tightly bound layer formed in the linear growth regime and one with both tightly bound and loosely adsorbed layers formed in the logarithmic growth regime. The onset thickness and increase in the glass transition temperature increases with annealing time and temperature. These differences were attributed to the distinct conformations of the formed adsorbed layers.
AbstractRecently, we have developed an algorithm to quantitatively evaluate the roughness of spherical microparticles using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images. The algorithm calculates the root-mean-squared profile roughness (RMS-RQ) of a single particle by analyzing the particle’s boundary. The information extracted from a single SEM image yields however only two-dimensional (2D) profile roughness data from the horizontal plane of a particle. The present study offers a practical procedure and the necessary software tools to gain quasi three-dimensional (3D) information from 2D particle contours recorded at different particle inclinations by tilting the sample (stage). This new approach was tested on a set of polystyrene core-iron oxide shell-silica shell particles as few micrometer-sized beads with different (tailored) surface roughness, providing the proof of principle that validates the applicability of the proposed method. SEM images of these particles were analyzed by the latest version of the developed algorithm, which allows to determine the analysis of particles in terms of roughness both within a batch and across the batches as a routine quality control procedure. A separate set of particles has been analyzed by atomic force microscopy (AFM) as a powerful complementary surface analysis technique integrated into SEM, and the roughness results have been compared.
Alcohol-initiated polymerizations of glycolide (GL) catalyzed by tin(II) 2-ethylhexanoate (SnOct2) were carried out in bulk with variation of GA/In ratio, temperature and time. Due to a rather strong competition of cyclization polyglycolide (PGA) free of cycles were never obtained. When the cyclic catalysts 2,2-dibutal-2-stanna − 1,3-dithiolane (DSTL) or 2-stanna 1,3-dioxo-4,5,6,7 bibenzepane (SnBiph) were used in combination with 1,4-butanediol the influence of cyclization was even stronger. Furthermore, the degrees of polymerization were higher than the GA/alcohol ratio due to rapid polycondensation in the solid state. At 160 °C or below, the matrixassisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight (MALDI-TOF) mass spectra indicated separate crystallization of low molar mass cyclic and linear PGAs from the same reaction mixture (also observed for poly(L-lactide)s).
AbstractRecent studies have hypothesized that the reinforcing effects of boehmite nanoparticles (BNPs) in polymer nanocomposites (PNCs) are partly related to the particles themselves and partly to the water released from the BNP during curing. In this work, PNCs made from dried BNP (dBNP) with concentrations up to 15 wt% are investigated to differentiate particle and water related effects. The observed trend of the storage modulus in dynamic mechanical thermal analysis measurements was found to be independent of the drying procedure. Stiffness maps from intermodulation atomic force microscopy showed that dBNP leads to a stiffening of the interphase surrounding the particles compared with the unaffected epoxy matrix, while a softer interphase was reported for PNCs with as received BNP. A slight decrease in the glass transition temperature was observed by broadband dielectric spectroscopy related to a lowered crosslink density due to the particles. A significantly higher decrease was reported for PNCs with BNP, attributed to water influencing the curing process. In conclusion, the stiffening of PNC with BNP is related to the particles themselves, while the release of water causes the formation of a soft interphase in the vicinity of the particles and a significant decrease in crosslink density.
Development and fundamental understanding of precious-group-metal-free electrocatalysts is hampered by limitations in the quantification of the intrinsic activity of different catalytic sites and understanding the different reaction mechanisms. Comparing isomorphic nitrogen-doped carbons, Zn-N-Cs and Fe-N-Cs with the common tetrapyrrolic motif, a catalyst-independent outer-sphere rate-determining step in the alkaline oxygen reduction reaction is observed. Density functional theory (DFT) simulations on tetrapyrrolic model structures indicate the highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) level as a good descriptor for the catalytic activity. Contour plots suggest that the electron transfer occurs directly from the tetrapyrrolic coordination site, rather than from the metal center. Metal-free tetrapyrrolic N4 sites are discovered to be highly active oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) active sites in alkaline that reach turnover frequencies (TOF) of 0.33 and 1.84 s−1 at 0.80 and 0.75 VRHE in the order of magnitude of tetrapyrrolic Fe–N4 sites in the acidic ORR. While Zn-coordination lowers the HOMO level and therefore the catalytic activity, Fe-coordination lifts the HOMO level resulting in TOF values of 0.4 and 4 s−1 for tetrapyrrolic Fe–N4 sites at 0.90 and 0.85 VRHE, respectively. At higher mass activities, the peroxide reduction becomes rate-limiting, where highest peroxide production rates are observed for the nitrogen-doped carbon.