3 research outputs found
Why APRC is misleading and how it should be reformed
The annual percentage rate of charge (APRC) designed to reflect all costs of borrowing is a widely used measure to compare different credit products. It disregards completely, however, risks of possible future changes in interest and exchange rates. As an unintended consequence of the general advice to minimize APRC, many borrowers take adjustable-rate mortgages with extremely short interest rate period or foreign currency denominated loans and run into an excessive risk without really being aware of it. To avoid this, we propose a new, risk-adjusted APRC incorporating also the potential costs of risk hedging. This new measure eliminates most of the virtual advantages of riskier structures and reduces the danger of excessive risk taking. As an illustration, we present the latest Hungarian home loan trends but lessons are universal
Ratiometric Singlet Oxygen Detection in Water Using Acene-Doped Conjugated Polymer Nanoparticles
Although
fluorescent probes for the detection of singlet oxygen
(<sup>1</sup>O<sub>2</sub>) have been an active area of research,
most such probes rely upon change in intensity of a single band. Herein,
we report a FRET-based, <sup>1</sup>O<sub>2</sub>-sensitive aqueous
suspension of conjugated polymer nanoparticles (CPNs) comprising the
energy-donating host polymer polyÂ[{9,9-dioctyl-2,7-divinylene-fluorenylene}-<i>alt</i>-<i>co</i>-{2-methoxy-5-(2-ethylhexyloxy)-1,4-phenylene}]
doped with an energy acceptor, the <sup>1</sup>O<sub>2</sub>-sensitive
thienoacene 5,12-bisÂ(4-methoxyphenyl)-2-butyltetracenoÂ[2,3-<i>b</i>]Âthiophene. Using a phthalocyanine-based sensitizer, IRDye
700DX, our probe shows a rapid, ratiometric response to photosensitized <sup>1</sup>O<sub>2</sub> in water in both cuvettes and 96-well plates
that compares favorably to the commercial <sup>1</sup>O<sub>2</sub>-sensitive dye, singlet oxygen sensor green. The response to irradiation
of even nanomolar concentrations of photosensitizer demonstrates the
sensitivity of our ratiometric probe
Substituent Effects That Control Conjugated Oligomer Conformation through Non-covalent Interactions
Although understanding the conformations
and arrangements of conjugated
materials as solids is key to their prospective applications, predictive
power over these structural factors remains elusive. In this work,
substituent effects tune non-covalent interactions between side-chain
fluorinated benzyl esters and main-chain terminal arenes, in turn
controlling the conformations and interÂchromophore aggregation
of three-ring phenylene-ethynylenes (PEs). Cofacial fluoroÂarene–arene
(ArF–ArH) interactions cause twisting in the PE backbone, interrupting
intraÂmolecular conjugation as well as blocking chromophore aggregation,
both of which prevent the typically observed bathoÂchromic shift
observed upon transitioning PEs from solution to solid. This work
highlights two structural factors that determine whether the ArF–ArH
interactions, and the resulting twisted, unaggregated chromophores,
occur in these solids: (i) the electron-releasing characteristic of
substituents on ArH, with more electron-releasing character favoring
ArF–ArH interactions, and (ii) the fluorination pattern of
the ArF ring, with 2,3,4,5,6-pentaÂfluoroÂphenyl favoring
ArF–ArH interactions over 2,4,6-triÂfluoroÂphenyl.
These trends indicate that considerations of electrostatic complementarity,
whether through a polar−π or substituent–substituent
mechanism, can serve as an effective design principle in controlling
the interaction strengths, and therefore the optoelectronic properties,
of these molecules as solids