Publications

An entry from the Cambridge Structural Database, the world’s repository for small molecule crystal structures. The entry contains experimental data from a crystal diffraction study. The deposited dataset for this entry is freely available from the CCDC and typically includes 3D coordinates, cell parameters, space group, experimental conditions and quality measures.

In this article, the supernatant of the soil-borne pathogen <i>Bacillus</i> mn14 was used as the catalyst for the synthesis of AgNPs. The antibacterial and antifungal activity of Bs-AgNPs was evaluated, in which <i>S. viridans</i> and <i>R. solani</i> showed susceptibility at 70 µL and 100 µL concentrations. Enzyme properties of the isolates, according to minimal inhibitory action and a growth-enhancing hormone-indole acetic acid (IAA) study of the isolates, were expressed in TLC as a purple color with an Rf value of 0.7. UV/Vis spectroscopy revealed the presence of small-sized AgNPs, with a surface plasmon resonance (SPR) peak at 450 nm. The particle size analyzer identified the average diameter of the particles as 40.2 nm. The X-ray diffraction study confirmed the crystalline nature and face-centered cubic type of the silver nanoparticle. Scanning electron microscopy characterized the globular, small, round shape of the silver nanoparticle. AFM revealed the two-dimensional topology of the silver nanoparticle with a characteristic size ranging around 50 nm. Confocal microscopy showed the cell-wall disruption of <i>S. viridans</i> treated with Bs-AgNPs. High-content screening and compound microscopy revealed the destruction of mycelia of <i>R. solani</i> after exposure to Bs-AgNPs. Furthermore, the Bs-AgNPs cured sheath blight disease by reducing lesion length and enhancing root and shoot length in <i>Oryza sativa</i> seeds. This soil-borne pathogen <i>Bacillus</i>-mediated synthesis approach of AgNPs appears to be cost-efficient, ecofriendly, and farmer-friendly, representing an easy way of providing valuable nutritious edibles in the future.

Developing highly active and sustained oxygen evolution reaction (OER) catalysts for energy-saving electrolytic hydrogen generation is highly attractive. In this work, we report the development of a Cu₃Mo₂O₉ nanosheet array on nickel foam (Cu₃Mo₂O₉/NF) as a highly active OER catalyst. Such Cu₃Mo₂O₉/NF shows high catalytic activity in 1.0 M KOH, passing 50 mA cm^-2 at an overpotential of 325 mV. It also shows superior long-term durability more than 24 h with a turnover frequency (TOF) of 0.09 mol O₂ s^-1 at overpotential of 400 mV.

The present study was dedicated to the classical piezoelectric, lead-zirconate-titanate ceramic with composition Pb(Zr0.54Ti0.46)O3 at the Zr-rich side of the morphotropic phase boundary at which two phases co-exists. The pressure-induced changes in the phase fractions were studied by high-pressure neutron powder diffraction technique up to 3 GPa and 773 K. The two co-existing phases were rhombohedral R3c and monoclinic Cm at room temperature and R3c and P4mm above 1 GPa and 400 K. The experiments show that pressure favors the R3c phase over the Cm and P4mm phases, whereas at elevated temperatures entropy favours the P4mm phase. At 1 GPa pressure, the transition to the cubic Pm3¯m phase occurred at around 600 K. Pressure lowers the Cm→P4mm transition temperature. The Cm phase was found to continuously transform to the P4mm phase with increasing pressure, which is inline with the usual notion that the hydrostatic pressure favours higher symmetry structures. At the same time, the phase fraction of the R3c phase was increasing, implying discontinuous Cm→R3c phase transition. This is in clear contrast to the polarization rotation model according to which the Cm would link the tetragonal and rhombohedral phases by being a phase in which the polarization would, more or less continuously, rotate from the tetragonal polarization direction to the rhombohedral direction. Pressure induces large changes in phase fractions contributing to the extrinsic piezoelectricity. The changes are not entirely reversible, as was revealed by noting that after high-pressure experiments the amount of rhombohedral phase was larger than initially, suggesting that on the Zr-rich side of the phase boundary the monoclinic phase is metastable. An important contribution to the intrinsic piezoelectricity was revealed: a large displacement of the B cations (Zr and Ti) with respect to the oxygen anions is induced by pressure.

Recently, bio-based composites are the prominent material to replace several synthetic fiber-based composites because of their abundant availability, ecological, biodegradable, and sustainable properties. This study aims to examine the use of new natural fibers, which were extracted from the Momordica charantia plant stem as reinforcement in polymer composites. The results showed that the Momordica charantia fibers had cellulose content (61.2 %), density (1339 ± 6.4 kg/m3), fiber diameter (198 ± 3.9 µm). The thermal studies using thermogravimetric analysis revealed the degradation temperature as 339.1°C with a char residue of 21% at 600°C. The results of this work confirmed that the properties of the Momordica charantia plant stem fibers are suitable materials as a reinforcement for the development of the biocomposite for potential applications.

In this communication, we report a two-step strategy for low-temperature construction of Ni2P nanoparticle films supported on a Ti plate (Ni2P/Ti). When used as an integrated hydrogen evolution cathode, the Ni2P/Ti electrode exhibits remarkable catalytic activity, superior stability and nearly 100% Faradaic efficiency in acidic solutions, and it needs overpotentials of 138 and 188 mV to afford current densities of 20 and 100 mA cm(-2), respectively.

Curcumin is a natural product with enormous biological potential. In this study, curcumin synthesis was revisited using different reaction solvents, a catalyst (n-butylamine) and a water scavenger [(n-BuO)3B], to develop the optimal procedure for its rapid acquisition. During synthesis, solvent choice was found to be an important parameter for better curcumin yield and high purity. In a typical reaction, acetyl acetone was treated with boron trioxide, followed by condensation with vanillin in the presence of tri-n-butyl borate as water scavenger and n-butylamine as catalyst at 80 °C in ethyl acetate to afford curcumin. Moreover, curcumin was also extracted from turmeric powder and spectroscopic properties such as IR, MS, 1H NMR and 13C NMR with synthetic curcumin were established to identify any impurity. The purity of synthetic and extracted curcumin was also checked by TLC and HPLC-DAD. To computationally assess its therapeutic potential against cyclin dependent kinases (CDKs), curcumin was docked in different isoforms of CDKs. It was observed that it did not dock at the active sites of CDK2 and CDK6. However, it could enter into weak interactions with CDK4 protein.

In the title compound, C(17)H(16)BrN(3)O(2)S, the two fused rings are twisted by a dihedral angle of 6.61 (15)°. The thia-zine ring adopts a sofa conformation. The toluene ring is oriented at dihedral angles of 15.5 (2) and 20.6 (2)° with respect to the bromo-benzene and thia-zine rings, respectively. The benzyl-idene system is approximately planar [r.m.s. deviation = 0.0388 Å]. In the cyrstal, weak inter-molecular C-H⋯O hydrogen bonds connects the mol-ecules into a chain along the b axis.