The kinetics of the reaction of atomic sulfur with acetylene (S (3P) + C2H2) were investigated experimentally via the flash photolysis resonance fluorescence method, and the theoretical potential energy surface for the reaction CN + SO was modeled via the density functional and configuration interaction computational methods. Sulfur is of interest in modern chemistry due to its relevance in combustion and atmospheric chemistry, in the Claus process, in soot and diamond-film formation and in astrochemistry. Experimental conditions ranged from 295 – 1015 K and 10 – 400 Torr of argon. Pressure-dependence was shown at all experimental temperatures. The room temperature high-pressure limit second order rate constant was (2.10 ± 0.08) × 10-13 cm3 molecule-1 s-1. The Arrhenius plot of the high-pressure limit rate constants gave an Ea of (11.34 ± 0.03) kJ mol-1 and a pre-exponential factor of (2.14 ± 0.19) × 10-11 cm3 molecule-1 s-1. S (3P) + C2H2 is likely an adduct forming reaction due to pressure-dependence (also supported by a statistical mechanics analysis) which involves intersystem crossing. The potential energy surface for CN + SO was calculated at the B3LYP/6-311G(d) level and refined at the QCISD/6-311G(d) level. The PES was compared to that of the analogous reaction …

The Abraham solvation parameter model is a good approach for analyzing and predicting biological activities and partitioning coefficients. The general solvation equation has been used to predict the solute property (SP) behavior of drug compounds between biological barriers. Gas chromatography (GC) retention time can be used to predict molecular descriptors, such as E, S, A, B & L for existing and newly developed drug compounds. In this research, six columns of different stationary phases were used to predict the Abraham molecular descriptors more accurately. The six stationary phases used were 5% phenylmethyl polysiloxane, 6% cyanopropylphenyl 94% dimethylpolysiloxane, 5% diphenyl 95% dimethylpolysiloxane, 100% dimethylpolysiloxane, polyethylene glycol and 35% diphenyl 65% dimethylpolysiloxane. Retention times (RT) of 75 compounds have been measured and logarithm of experimental average retention time Ln(RTexp) are calculated. The Abraham solvation model is then applied to predict the process coefficients of these compounds using the literature values of the molecular descriptors (Acree Compilation descriptors). Six correlation equations are built up as a training set for each of the six columns. The six equations are then used to predict the molecular descriptors of the illegal drugs as a test set. This work shows the ability to extract molecular information from …

The details of dye sensitized solar cells was explained and phenothiazine and porphyrin based dyes were synthesized for use in DSSCs. DSSCs offer a unique and cost effective method of renewable energy. DSSCs are characterized through various tests, with the overall efficiency, η, bearing the greatest importance. Incident photon to current conversion efficiency, or IPCE, is also another important characterization of DSSCs. Effect of positioning of the cyanoacrylic acid anchoring group on ring periphery of phenothiazine dye on the performance of dye sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) is reported. The performances of the cells are found to be prominent for solar cells made out of Type-1 dyes compared to Type-2 dyes. This trend has been rationalized based on spectral, electrochemical, computational and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy results. Free-base and zinc porphyrins bearing a carboxyl anchoring group at the para, meta, or ortho positions of one of the meso-phenyl rings were synthesized for DSSCs. Photoelectrochemical studies were performed after immobilization of porphyrins onto nanocrystalline TiO2. The performance of DSSCs with the porphyrin anchoring at the para or meta position were found to greatly exceed those in the ortho position. Additionally, zinc porphyrin derivatives outperformed the free-base porphyrin analogs, including better dye regeneration efficiency …

The world is facing a tough challenge regarding fulfilling human energy needs. Scientists are motivated to find alternative ways to the fossil fuel at a lower cost with little or no environmental pollution. Among the available renewable resources, the solar energy is an alternative energy to fossil fuel. Scientists are engaged in mimicking the photosynthesis to create the new energy devices such as dye sensitized solar cells. The fundamental theory and properties of the dye sensitized solar cells is given in the first chapter. In this research, the application of the different methods for surface alteration of SnO2 with water soluble porphyrins and phthalocyanine is studied. Using optical absorbance and steady state fluorescence studies, the formation of porphyrins and phthalocyanine discuss on the SnO2 surface is shown. Moreover, the different results of photoelectrochemical cells are show on chapter 2 to understand the porphyrin and phthalocyanine modified on SnO2 as electron injector. In summary, the application porphyrin and phthalocyanine of dimers as a broad band capturing photosensitized dye is discussed.

Photoinduced electron transfer in self-assembled via axial coordination porphyrin-fullerene dyads is investigated. Fullerene functionalized with imidazole and fullerenes functionalized with pyridine are chosen as electron acceptors, while zinc pophyrin derivatives are utilized as electron donors. The electron withdrawing ability of halogen atoms make the porphyrin ring electrophilic, which explained the binding of (F20TPP)Zn with fullerene derivatives having the highest binding constant around 105M-1. Another important observation is that the fullerene imidazole binding to zinc pophyrin had higher stability than fullerene pyridine-porphyrin dyad. Computational DFT B3LYP-21G(*) calculations are used to study the geometric and electronic structures. The HOMO and LUMO was found to be located on the porphyrin and fullerene entities, respectively. Photoinduced electron transfer is investigated by the steady-state absorption and emission, differential pulse voltammetry, and nanosecond and femtosecond transient absorption studies. The measurements provided the same conclusion that the increasing number of the halogen atoms on the porphyrin ring leads to the higher binding of porphyrin-fullerene supramolecular dyads and efficient charge separation and charge recombination processes.

In this work we address two problems in computational chemistry relevant to biomolecular modeling. In the first project, we consider the conformer space of melatonin as a a representative example of “real-life” flexible biomolecules. Geometries for all 52 unique conformers are optimized using spin-component scaled MP2, and then relative energies are obtained at the CCSD (T) level near the complete basis set limit. These are then used to validate a variety of DFT methods with and without empirical dispersion corrections, as well as some lower-level ab initio methods. Basis set convergence is found to be relatively slow due to internal C-H…O and C-H…N contacts. Absent dispersion corrections, many DFT functionals will transpose the two lowest conformers. Dispersion corrections resolve the problem for most functionals. Double hybrids yield particularly good performance, as does MP2.5. In the second project, we propose a simple DFT-based diagnostic for nondynamical correlation effects. Aλ= (1-TAE [ΧλC]/TAE[XC])/λ where TAE is the total atomization energy, XC the “pure” DFT exchange-correlation functional, and ΧλC the corresponding hybrid with 100λ% HF-type exchange. The diagnostic is a good predictor for sensitivity of energetics to the level of theory, unlike most of the wavefunction-based diagnostics. For GGA functionals, Aλ values approaching unity …