Chemical Differentiation of Planets: A Core Issue

By plotting empirical chemical element abundances on Earth relative to the Sun and normalized to silicon versus their first ionization potentials, we confirm the existence of a correlation reported earlier. To explain this, we develop a model based on principles of statistical physics that predicts differentiated relative abundances for any planetary body in a solar system as a function of its orbital distance. This simple model is successfully tested against available chemical composition data from CI chondrites and surface compositional data of Mars, Earth, the Moon, Venus, and Mercury. We show, moreover, that deviations from the proposed law for a given planet correspond to later surface segregation of elements driven both by gravity and chemical reactions. We thus provide a new picture for the distribution of elements in the solar system and inside planets, with important consequences for their chemical composition. Particularly, a 4 wt% initial hydrogen content is predicted for bulk early Earth. This converges with other works suggesting that the interior of the Earth could be enriched with hydrogen.

Near-Ambient Pressure XPS and MS Study of CO Oxidation over Model Pd-Au/HOPG Catalysts: The Effect of the Metal Ratio

In this study, the dependence of the catalytic activity of highly oriented pyrolytic graphite (HOPG)-supported bimetallic Pd-Au catalysts towards the CO oxidation based on the Pd/Au atomic ratio was investigated. The activities of two model catalysts differing from each other in the initial Pd/Au atomic ratios appeared as distinctly different in terms of their ignition temperatures. More specifically, the PdAu-2 sample with a lower Pd/Au surface ratio (~0.75) was already active at temperatures less than 150 °C, while the PdAu-1 sample with a higher Pd/Au surface ratio (~1.0) became active only at temperatures above 200 °C. NAP XPS revealed that the exposure of the catalysts to a reaction mixture at RT induces the palladium surface segregation accompanied by an enrichment of the near-surface regions of the two-component Pd-Au alloy nanoparticles with Pd due to adsorption of CO on palladium atoms. The segregation extent depends on the initial Pd/Au surface ratio. The difference in activity between these two catalysts is determined by the presence or higher concentration of specific active Pd sites on the surface of bimetallic particles, i.e., by the ensemble effect. Upon cooling the sample down to room temperature, the reverse redistribution of the atomic composition within near-surface regions occurs, which switches the catalyst back into inactive state. This observation strongly suggests that the optimum active sites emerge under reaction conditions exclusively, involving both high temperature and a reactive atmosphere.

Matching the Cellulose/Silica Films Surface Properties for Design of Biomaterials That Modulate Extracellular Matrix

The surface properties of composite films are important to know for many applications from the industrial domain to the medical domain. The physical and chemical characteristics of film/membrane surfaces are totally different from those of the bulk due to the surface segregation of the low surface energy components. Thus, the surfaces of cellulose acetate/silica composite films are analyzed in order to obtain information on the morphology, topography and wettability through atomic force microscopy (AFM), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and contact angle investigations. The studied composite films present different surface properties depending on the tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS) content from the casting solutions. Up to a content of 1.5 wt.% TEOS, the surface roughness and hydrophobicity increase, after which there is a decrease in these parameters. This behavior suggests that up to a critical amount of TEOS, the results are influenced by the morphology and topographical features, after which a major role seems to be played by surface chemistry—increasing the oxygenation surfaces. The morphological and chemical details and also the hydrophobicity/hydrophilicity characteristics are discussed in the attempt to design biological surfaces with optimal wettability properties and possibility of application in tissue engineering.