Junwei Yangac, Jige Chenbc* & Haiping Fangda School of Arts and Sciences, Shanghai Dianji University, Shanghai, People’s Republic Chinab Synchrotron Radiation Facility, Zhangjiang Laboratory, Advanced Research Institute, Chinese Academy Chinac Institute Applied Physics, Chinad Department East China University Science Technology,

Alkali metals can react explosively with water and it is textbook knowledge that this vigorous behaviour results from heat release, steam formation and ignition of the hydrogen gas that is produced. Here we suggest that the initial process enabling the alkali metal explosion in water is, however, of a completely different nature. High-speed camera imaging of liquid drops of a sodium/potassium a...

We report a combined experimental and computational study of the whey protein β-lactoglobulin (BLG) in different electrolyte solutions. Vibrational sum-frequency generation (SFG) and ellipsometry were used to investigate the molecular structure of BLG modified air-water interfaces as a function of LiCl, NaCl, and KCl concentrations. Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations and thermodynamic integrat...

High-sensitivity radioluminescence (RL) and thermoluminescence (TL) measurements were carried out on samples of natural leucite (with 2.95% of Na2O) from Campania Vessa (Italy). Samples were annealed to modify the charge compensation through alkali metal self-diffusion and to produce luminescence centres. High-temperature powder diffraction, scanning electron microscopy and chemical analyses we...

We have quantified the extent of the nonadditivity of the short-range exchange-repulsion energy, E(exch-rep), in several polycoordinated complexes of alkali, alkaline-earth, transition, and metal cations. This was done by performing ab initio energy decomposition analyses of interaction energies in these complexes. The magnitude of E(exch-rep(n-body, n > 2)) was found to be strongly cation-depe...

Synthesis of new podands from resorcinarene and diethylene glycols are reported. The binding properties of these podands with alkali metal cations was studied by means of ESI-MS. The experimental results for podands with long diethylene glycol arms show the stable inclusion complexes with one or two metal cations and high affinity for sodium and potassium ions. This podands under appropriate co...

We present a detailed theoretical analysis of the noble-gas nuclear spin relaxation due to the anisotropic magnetic-dipole hyperfine interaction between the noble-gas nucleus and alkali-metal valence electron vis à vis the already well-understood (spin-conserving) isotropic magnetic-dipole hyperfine interaction in alkali-metal–noble-gas systems. We find that, for all pairs in which the noblegas...

Potassium ions at low concentrations stimulate cytokinin-dependent betacyanin synthesis in Amaranthus tricolor seedlings more than other alkali metal ions when tested as the chloride salts. The sequence of relative stimulation is K(+) > Rb(+) > (Na(+) = Li(+)). Calcium and Mg(2+) ions are inhibitory at concentrations > 1 millimolar when tested as chlorides. Anions also have an effect on the deg...

Multiferroics have been investigated extensively in the last decades due to their wide range of applications high-density multistate storage, spintronics, and novel multifunctional magnetic–electric devices. One peculiar subgroup multiferroic materials comprises 3D perovskite metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) with general formula ABX3 (A = monovalent organic cation (such as an alkali metal or pro...

Alkali metal triphenylsilyls [Li(12-crown-4)SiPh3]·(thf)0.5 (2), [Na(15-crown-5)SiPh3]·(thf)0.5 (3) and [K(18-crown-6)SiPh3(thf)] (4) were synthesized using 1,1,1-trimethyl-2,2,2-triphenyldisilane (Ph3SiSiMe3) and isolated in high yields. Solid state structures were determined by single crystal X-ray diffraction. These alkali metal silyls catalyzed the regioselective hydrosilylation of 1,1-diph...