Rapid and Efficient Pesticide Detection via Cyclodextrin-Promoted Energy Transfer

Cyclodextrins facilitate non-covalent fluorescence energy transfer from a variety of pesticides to high quantum-yield fluorophores, resulting in a rapid, sensitive detection scheme for these compounds with detection limits as low as two micromolar. Such a facile detection tool has significant potential applications in agriculture and public health research

Nanoscale Stoichiometric Analysis of a High-Temperature Superconductor by Atom Probe Tomography

The functional properties of the high-temperature superconductor Y1Ba2Cu3O7−δ (Y-123) are closely correlated to the exact stoichiometry and oxygen content. Exceeding the critical value of 1 oxygen vacancy for every five unit cells (δ>0.2, which translates to a 1.5 at% deviation from the nominal oxygen stoichiometry of Y7.7Ba15.3Cu23O54−δ) is sufficient to alter the superconducting properties. Stoichiometry at the nanometer scale, particularly of oxygen and other lighter elements, is extremely difficult to quantify in complex functional ceramics by most currently available analytical techniques. The present study is an analysis and optimization of the experimental conditions required to quantify the local nanoscale stoichiometry of single crystal yttrium barium copper oxide (YBCO) samples in three dimensions by atom probe tomography (APT). APT analysis required systematic exploration of a wide range of data acquisition and processing conditions to calibrate the measurements. Laser pulse energy, ion identification, and the choice of range widths were all found to influence composition measurements. The final composition obtained from melt-grown crystals with optimized superconducting properties was Y7.9Ba10.4Cu24.4O57.2

Solid state NMR and X-ray studies of the structural evolution of nanocrystalline zirconia

A combination of X-ray techniques [diffraction and Zr K-edge absorption (EXAFS and XANES)] and multinuclear (H-1, C-13, O-17) solid-state NMR spectroscopy is employed to follow in detail the structural development of nanocrystalline zirconia. O-17 magic-angle spinning NMR spectroscopy of sol-gel produced undoped ZrO2 shows unequivocally that oxygen sites in the initial gel are monoclinic-like. This result is consistent with X-ray absorption measurements, which also suggest that the structures of the initial amorphous phases of doped and undoped samples produced by the hydroxide-precipitation and sol-gel methods are very similar. On crystallization, the local structure of the crystalline component is tetragonal, but a significant fraction of the sample remains disordered. Heating to higher temperatures results in conversion to monoclinic zirconia in undoped samples at room temperature. For sol-gel-produced ZrO2, C-13 NMR shows that loss of all of the organic fragments occurs prior to crystallization. The H-1 NMR experiments determined that the proton content remains significant until well above the crystallization temperature, so that the composition is not accurately described as ZrO2 until > 500 degreesC