Kommunikationsoberfläche Membran‐ Vorbild für moderne Nanoanalytik

A central event in the life of a cellular system is the interaction between the exterior and the interior compartments. Biochemical signals arrive at the cellular surface, bind to their membrane bound receptor followed by a conformational change triggering the release of an internal chemical or electrical signal.This basic principle is followed by all our perceptive abilities like sense of smell or taste, but also by different signal transduction pathways involved in nerve conductivity, vision, sense of touch or hearing. To follow and mimic this principle of parallel registration is one of the aims of modern nanobiotechnology. If we are able to specifically biofunctionalize small arrays of a solid surface, which could be an electrode or a semiconductor, this approach will enable us to build up devices called “biochips” or “biosensors” that allow the determination of bioactive molecules with high specificity at lowest concentrations. Potential pharmacological active substrates might be screened as well as new receptors may be determined. Applications in genomics as well as proteomics are realistic. The major prerequisite for such a broad spectrum of applications is the fabrication of receptive surfaces. Biomolecules have to be surface‐adsorbed in a highly reproducible, oriented and well organised fashion, a task which in biology is taken by the cellular membranes as external or internal receptive surfaces. The physical principles like hydrogen bonds, electrostatic or hydrophobic interactions that lead to such an organized surface are well known. To synthesize molecular building blocks and to position them onto an otherwise unspecific surface is one of the challenges of nanobiotechnology combining biological knowledge and chemical skills with biophysical techniques that allow to handle or analyze even single molecules.     

Phosphorus‐containing polyaryloxydiphenylsilanes with high flame retardance arising from a phosphorus–silicon synergistic effect

Polyaryloxydiphenylsilanes were prepared from phosphorus‐containing diols and diphenydichlorolsilane through solution polymerization. With a stoichiometric imbalance in feed monomers, the resulting polymers exhibited moderate melting points and good processing properties. The polymers prepared showed initial decomposition temperatures above 340 °C, excellent thermal stability, high char yields at 850 °C and very high limited oxygen index values of 56–59. The polymers' char yields and their (P + Si) contents showed linear relationships. © 2003 Society of Chemical Industry     

Development of a Continuous Segmented Flow Tubular Reactor and the “Scale‐out” Concept – In Search of Perfect Powders

The synthesis of powders with controlled shape and narrow particle size distributions is still a major challenge for many industries. A continuous Segmented Flow Tubular Reactor (SFTR) has been developed to overcome homogeneity and scale‐up problems encountered when using batch reactors. Supersaturation is created by mixing the co‐reactants in a micromixer inducing precipitation; the suspension is then segmented into identical micro‐volumes by a non‐miscible fluid and sent through a tube. These micro‐volumes are more homogeneous when compared to large batch reactors leading to narrower size distributions, better particle morphology, polymorph selectivity and stoichiometry. All these features have been demonstrated on single tube SFTR for different chemical systems. To increase productivity for commercial application the SFTR is being “scaled‐out” by multiplying the number of tubes running in parallel instead of scaling‐up by increasing their size. The versatility of the multi‐tube unit will allow changes in type of precipitate with a minimum of new investment as new chemistry can be researched, developed and optimised in a single tube SFTR and then transferred to the multi‐tube unit for powder production.     

Environmental-stress-screening using degradation measurements

ESS (environmental stress screening) has been extensively used to reduce infant mortality by precipitating defects. The existing ESS plans precipitate defects by stressing all products for specified durations. The plans usually require long screen durations to allow nearly all defective items to fail, and thus generate excessive aging effects on good items. For some products, failures are defined in terms of performance characteristics exceeding their critical values. This paper describes the principles of using degradation measurements of performance characteristics to screen the products. In an ESS, the performance characteristics of defective items degrade considerably faster than those of good ones, yielding a bimodal distribution of the characteristics. As screen duration increases, the 2 modes of the distribution shift apart. It is possible to find a tightened critical value to weed out the defective items before they fail. This paper, based on these principles, further designs the optimal 2-level screen plans which minimize a segment of life-cycle cost and which simultaneously meet the reliability requirement. The minimum cost is achieved by choosing optimal part-level and unit-level screen durations and tightened critical values of parts. A numerical example is followed by discussion. Because the ESS regime of this paper allows defective parts to be screened out before they fail, the developed optimal ESS plans can reduce life-cycle cost, shorten part-level screen duration, and alleviate aging effects on good products     

NO emission characteristics in counterflow diffusion flame of blended fuel of H2/CO2/Ar

Flame structure and NO emission characteristics in counterflow diffusion flame of blended fuel of H₂/CO₂/Ar have been numerically simulated with detailed chemistry. The combination of H₂, CO₂ and Ar as fuel is selected to clearly display the contribution of hydrocarbon products to flame structure and NO emission characteristics due to the breakdown of CO₂. A radiative heat loss term is involved to correctly describe the flame dynamics especially at low strain rates. The detailed chemistry adopts the reaction mechanism of GRI 2.11, which consists of 49 species and 279 elementary reactions. All mechanisms including thermal, NO₂, N₂O and Fenimore are taken into account to separately evaluate the effects of CO₂ addition on NO emission characteristics. The increase of added CO₂ quantity causes flame temperature to fall since at high strain rates a diluent effect is prevailing and at low strain rates the breakdown of CO₂ produces relatively populous hydrocarbon products and thus the existence of hydrocarbon products inhibits chain branching. It is also found that the contribution of NO production by N₂O and NO₂ mechanisms are negligible and that thermal mechanism is concentrated on only the reaction zone. As strain rate and CO₂ quantity increase, NO production is remarkably augmented. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Guest Editorial

The UK-China Research Network on Intelligent Automation, Computing and Manufacturing has been established since September 2004 by grants from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) of the UK and the National Natural Science Foundation of China. The initiative of the network is motivated by the last visit of the UK Science Minister Lord Sainsbury to China to open the first UK-China Hi-Tech Forum and by the current EPSRC initiative to set up specific network programmes in collaboration with partners in China.     

An EM‐based adaptive multiple target tracking filter

Tracking targets of interest is one of the major research areas in radar surveillance systems. We formulate the problem as incomplete data estimation and apply EM to the MAP estimate. The resulting filter has a recursive structure analogous to the Kalman filter. The advantage is that the measurement‐update deals with multiple measurements in parallel and the parameter‐update estimates the system parameters on the fly. Experiments tracking separate targets in parallel show that tracking maintenance ratio of the proposed system is better than that of NNF and RMS position error is smaller than that of PDAF. Also, the system parameters are correctly obtained even from incorrect initial values. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Cooling and Solidification of Melted Drops in an Immiscible Cooling Medium

The cooling and solidification of melted drops during their movement in an immiscible cooling medium is widely employed for granulation in the chemical industry, and a study of these processes to provides a basis for the design of the granulation tower height and the temperature of the cooling medium is reported. A physical model of the cooling and solidification of the drop is established and the numerical calculation is performed. The influences of the key factors in the solidification, i.e., Bi number, drop diameter, temperature of the cooling medium, etc. are presented. The cooling and solidification during wax granulation in a water‐cooling tower and during urea granulation in an air‐cooling tower (spraying tower) are described in detail. Characteristics of the solidification and temperature distribution within the particle at different times are shown. The model and calculations can be used for structure design of the granulation tower and optimization of the operation parameters.     

Poly(butylene terephthalate)–clay nanocomposites prepared by melt intercalation: morphology and thermomechanical properties

Nanocomposites based on poly(butylene terephthalate) (PBT) and an organoclay (Cloisite 30B) were prepared by melt blending using a twin‐screw extruder. Two kinds of PBTs, ie PBT‐A and PBT‐B, with different inherent viscosities (η_inh), were used for this study (η_inh of PBT‐A and PBT‐B were 0.74 and 1.48, respectively). Dispersion of the clay layers in the PBT nanocomposites was characterized by using X‐ray diffraction (XRD) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Tensile and dynamic mechanical properties and non‐isothermal crystallization temperatures of the nanocomposites were also examined. Nanocomposites based on the higher‐viscosity PBT (PBT‐B) showed a higher degree of exfoliation of the clay and a higher reinforcing effect when compared to the composites based on the lower‐viscosity PBT (PBT‐A). The clay nanolayers dispersed in PBT matrices lead to increases in the non‐isothermal crystallization temperatures of the PBTs, with such increases being more significant for the PBT‐B nanocomposites than for the PBT‐A nanoocomposites. Copyright © 2004 Society of Chemical Industry     

Facile modifications of polyimide via chloromethylation: II. Synthesis and characterization of thermocurable transparent polyimide having methylene acrylate side groups

From chloromethylated polyimide, a useful starting material for modification of aromatic polyimides, a thermocurable transparent polyimide having acrylate side groups was prepared. In the presence of 1,8‐diazabicyclo[5,4,0]undec‐7‐ene, chloromethylated polyimide was esterified with acrylic acid to synthesize poly(imide methylene acrylate). The polymer was soluble in organic solvent, which makes it possible to prepare a planar film by spin coating. The polymer film became insoluble after thermal treatment at 230 °C for 30 min. Optical transparency of the film at 400 nm (for 1 µm thickness) was higher than 98 % and not affected by further heating at 230 °C for 250 min. Adhesion properties measured by the ASTM D3359‐B method ranged from 4B to 5B. Preliminary results of planarization testing showed a high degree of planarization (DOP) value (>0.53). These properties demonstrate that poly(imide methylene acrylate) could be utilized as a thermocurable transparent material in fabricating display devices such as TFT‐LCD. Copyright © 2004 Society of Chemical Industry