Interstitial Water Enhances Sliding Friction.

This study examines how surfaces with different water contact angles (wettability) affect dry and underwater adhesion and friction. These studies were conducted by bringing a deformable hydrophobic poly(dimethylsiloxane) lens in contact with surfaces of gradient wettability. On the basis of our adhesion and friction results, we divide the results in three regions.

Multicomponent reassembly of terpyridine-based materials: quantitative metallomacrocyclic rearrangement.

Mixing of metallocyclic trimers and tetramers in an exact 1 : 1.5 stoichiometry provided new supramolecular triangles in quantitative yields. Characterization of the new hetero-nuclear metallomacrocycles was achieved by (1)H, 2D-COSY, 2D-NOESY, and (13)C NMR spectroscopy, along with ESI and TWIM mass spectrometry.

Consequences of water between two hydrophobic surfaces on adhesion and wetting.

The contact of two hydrophobic surfaces in water is of importance in biology, catalysis, material science, and geology. A tenet of hydrophobic attraction is the release of an ordered water layer, leading to a dry contact between two hydrophobic surfaces. Although the water-free contact has been inferred from numerous experimental and theoretical studies, this has not been directly measured.

Ultrafast dynamics of epicocconone, a second generation fluorescent protein stain.

Femtosecond upconversion experiment has been carried out for epicocconone and its butylamine adduct in acetonitrile and tert-butanol. An ultrafast component is found to dominate the decay of fluorescence of epicocconone in acetonitrile solution. Upon reacting with butylamine, a model for the epicocconone-protein adduct, this ultrafast component remains almost unaffected but an additional rise time occurs, indicating the formation of a highly emissive species from the locally excited state.

Slow solvation dynamics in the microheterogeneous water channels of nafion membranes.

Solvation dynamics in Nafion membrane is studied using the well-known solvation probe, coumarin 102 (C102). In native Nafion membrane, the fluorescence maximum of C102 occurs at 525 nm. The decays recorded at different wavelengths are superimposable.

Early events associated with the excited state proton transfer in 2-(2'-pyridyl)benzimidazole.

2-(2(')-Pyridyl)benzimidazole (2PBI) undergoes excited state proton transfer (ESPT) in acidic solutions, leading to a tautomer emission at 460 nm. This photoprocess has been studied using ultrafast fluorescence spectroscopic techniques in acidic neat aqueous solutions, in viscous mixtures of glycerol with water, as well as in sucrose solutions. The tautomer is found to be stabilized in the more viscous medium, leading to a greater relative quantum yield as well as lifetime.