Toluene in the context of "Solvent"

Lipophilicity (from Greek λίπος "fat" and φίλος "friendly") is the ability of a chemical compound to dissolve in fats, oils, lipids, and non-polar solvents such as hexane or toluene. Such compounds are called lipophilic (translated as "fat-loving" or "fat-liking"). Such non-polar solvents are themselves lipophilic, and the adage "like dissolves like" generally holds true. Thus lipophilic substances tend to dissolve in other lipophilic substances, whereas hydrophilic ("water-loving") substances tend to dissolve in water and other hydrophilic substances.

Lipophilicity, hydrophobicity, and non-polarity may describe the same tendency towards participation in the London dispersion force, as the terms are often used interchangeably. However, the terms "lipophilic" and "hydrophobic" are not synonymous, as can be seen with silicones and fluorocarbons, which are hydrophobic but not lipophilic.

Petrochemicals (sometimes abbreviated as petchems) are the chemical products obtained from petroleum by refining. Some chemical compounds made from petroleum are also obtained from other fossil fuels, such as coal or natural gas, or renewable sources such as maize, palm fruit or sugar cane.

The two most common petrochemical classes are olefins (including ethylene and propylene) and aromatics (including benzene, toluene and xylene isomers).

A marker pen, fine liner, marking pen, felt-tip pen, felt pen, flow marker, sign pen (in South Korea), vivid (in New Zealand), flomaster (in East and South Slavic countries), texta (in Australia), sketch pen (in South Asia), koki (in South Africa) or simply marker is a pen which has its own ink source and a tip made of porous, pressed fibers such as felt.A marker pen consists of a container (glass, aluminum or plastic) and a core of an absorbent material that holds the ink. The upper part of the marker contains the nib that was made in earlier times of a hard felt material, and a cap to prevent the marker from drying out.

Until the early 1990s, the most common solvents that were used for the ink in permanent markers were toluene and xylene. These two substances are both harmful and characterized by a very strong smell. Today, the ink is usually made on the basis of alcohols (e.g. 1-Propanol, 1-butanol, diacetone alcohol and cresols).

Self-assembly is a process in which a disordered system of pre-existing components forms an organized structure or pattern as a consequence of specific, local interactions among the components themselves, without external direction. When the constitutive components are molecules, the process is termed molecular self-assembly.

Self-assembly can be classified as either static or dynamic. In static self-assembly, the ordered state forms as a system approaches equilibrium, reducing its free energy. However, in dynamic self-assembly, patterns of pre-existing components organized by specific local interactions are not commonly described as "self-assembled" by scientists in the associated disciplines. These structures are better described as "self-organized", although these terms are often used interchangeably.

A mesocrystal is a material structure composed of numerous small crystals of similar size and shape, which are arranged in a regular periodic pattern. It is a form of oriented aggregation, where the small crystals have parallel crystallographic alignment but are spatially separated.

When the sizes of individual components are at the nanoscale, mesocrystals represent a new class of nanostructured solids made from crystiallographically oriented nanoparticles. The sole criterion for determining whether a material is mesocrystal is the unique crystallographically hierarchical structure, not its formation mechanism.