The Electrostatic Interaction of Two Arbitrary Charge Distributions

The Dispersion and Coagulation of Negatively Charged Ca2Nb3O10 Perovskite Nanosheets in Sodium Alginate Dispersion

Chemically exfoliated nanosheets have been extensively employed as functional nanofillers for the fabrication of polymer nanocomposites due to their remarkable electrical, magnetic and optical properties. However, achieving a good dispersion of charged nanosheets in polymer matrix, which will determine the performance of polymer nanocomposites, remains a challenge. Herein, we investigated the dispersion and aggregation behavior of negatively charged Ca₂Nb₃O₁₀ (CNO) perovskite nanosheets in negatively charged sodium alginate (SA) aqueous dispersion using dynamic light scattering (DLS). When CNO nanosheets meet with SA, aggregation and coagulation inevitably occurred owing to the absorption of SA on nanosheets. By controlling the electrostatic attraction between positively charged poly(ethylene imine) (PEI) and negatively charged SA, the charge density and hydrodynamic size of SA can be tuned to enable the good dispersion of CNO nanosheets in SA. This result may provide a new strategy to achieve the good dispersion of charged nanosheets in charged polymers for the rational design of multifunctional nanocomposites.

Electrostatics of charged dielectric spheres with application to biological systems. II. A formalism bypassing Wigner rotation matrices

Given the crucial role of electrostatic forces in biological systems, accurate and rapid calculations of electrostatic forces are imperative in faithfully simulating biological systems. More than a decade ago, we proposed a surface charge method, applied it to a system of an arbitrary number of charged dielectric spheres, and obtained an exact solution for arbitrary configuration of the spheres. The precision depends only on the number of terms kept in a series expansion, and can therefore be controlled at will. However, the numerical implementation can be significantly slowed down by the need to compute a large number of Wigner rotation matrix elements each time the electrostatic energy is calculated. In this paper, we provide the proof of a formula introduced in 1992 and apply it to arrive at a useful closed form for the electrostatic interaction energy without computing any Wigner rotation matrix elements, hence significantly improving the efficiency for numeric implementation of the rigorous surface charge method. This new Wigner-matrix-free formalism may also be used to speed up the computation of the electrostatic energy in the presence of permanent and induced multipoles, which can be very important for atomic modeling with polarization effect included.

Calculations of laser induced dipole-quadrupole collisional energy transfer in Sr-Ca

A three-state model for calculating the cross section of laser-induced dipole-quadrupole collisional energy transfer in Sr-Ca system is presented. The motion equations for the probability amplitudes of the three intermediate states are obtained. The expression of the cross section is derived. Various factors including field intensity, relative speed, system temperature which influence the collisional cross section are discussed to illustrate the features of the dipole-quadrupole laser-induced collisional energy transfer (LICET)process. Calculating results show that the peak of the LICET profiles moves to the red, the tuning range of the profiles obviously becomes narrower with the laser field intensity increasing and a cross section of 1.25 × 10(-13)cm(2) at a laser intensity of 8.29 × 10(9)W/cm(2) is obtained. Our results indicate that dipole-quadrupole LICET process can be the effective way to transfer energy selectively from a storage state of arbitrary parity to a target state of arbitrary parity.