Winkler, Robert; Ré, Elisa; Arrachart, Guilhem; Pellet-Rostaing, Stéphane
Impact of Solvent Structuring in Water/tert-Butanol Mixtures on the Assembly of Silica Nanoparticles to Aerogels
Soft matter structuring is a useful tool for the preparation of well-structured inorganic materials. Here, we report a strategy using a structured solvent based on binary mixtures as a directing agent for silica nanoparticles in aerogel elaboration. Binary mixtures involving water/ethanol and water/tert-butanol have been respectively chosen as representatives of…
Unlocking Simultaneously the Temperature and Electrochemical Windows of Aqueous Phthalocyanine Electrolytes
Huang, Zhifeng; Zhang, Peng; Gao, Xinpei; Henkensmeier, Dirk; Passerini, Stefano; Chen, Ruiyong
The change from organic solvents to aqueous solvents for safe and robust battery electrolytes is desirable for electrochemical energy storage. Thermodynamically, water has an electrochemical stability window of 1.23 V, and pure water freezes at 0 °C. Such properties clearly restrict the high-voltage applications and temperature adaptability of aqueous electrolytes.…
Transforming an inert nanopolymer into broad-spectrum bactericidal by superstructure tuning
Scilletta, Natalia A.; Pezzoni, Magdalena; Desimone, Martín F.; Soler-Illia, Galo J.A.A.; Catalano, Paolo N.; Bellino, Martín G.
Poloxamer block copolymers (also known as Pluronic®) are particularly useful for drug delivery and self-assembly techniques. These nanopolymers are generally considered to be biologically inert and they were used to generate only bacteria repellent surfaces but keeps bacteria alive and as a latent threat. However, the inherent capabilities of these…
Reprocessable Supramolecular Thermoplastic BAB-Type Triblock Copolymer Elastomers with Enhanced Tensile Strength and Toughness via Metal–Ligand Coordination
Wang, Wentao; Zhang, Juan; Jiang, Feng; Wang, Xuehui; Wang, Zhigang
A new strategy was proposed to enhance tensile strength, toughness, and extensibility of BAB-type reprocessable supramolecular triblock copolymer elastomers (STBCPEs) by simply incorporating 1-vinylimidazole (VI) as a minor comonomer to introduce metal–ligand coordinate bonds of minor contents into the soft matrix. Poly(n-butyl acrylate-co-1-vinylimidazole)-b-poly(isobornyl…
De-symmetrizing periodically grafted amphiphilic copolymers: design, synthesis and generation of Janus folded chains
Sarkar, Ramkrishna; Gowd, E. Bhoje; Ramakrishnan, S.
Periodically grafted amphiphilic copolymers (PGACs) were earlier shown to fold in a zigzag fashion to enable segregation of the two immiscible segments, namely the backbone and the pendant segments; crystallization of one or both segments led to the formation of a lamellar structure with the two segments located in alternate…
Enhanced functional properties of biopolymer film incorporated with curcurmin-loaded mesoporous silica nanoparticles for food packaging
Wu, Chunhua; Zhu, Yang; Wu, Tiantian; Wang, Lin; Yuan, Yi; Chen, Jicheng; Hu, Yaqin; Pang, Jie
Curcumin loaded mesoporous silica nanoparticle (SBA-15) was incorporated into chitosan (CS) film to improve the functional properties of pure CS film. Curcumin was loaded into SBA-15 (SBA-15-Cur) through a rotavapor method. The structural properties of SBA-15-Cur were characterised in detail by small-angle X-ray scattering, fourier transform-infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy, transmission electron…
Sustainable in Situ Approach to Covalently Functionalize Graphene Oxide with POSS Molecules Possessing Extremely Low Dielectric Behavior
Joseph, Angel Mary; Nagendra, Baku; Surendran, K. P.; Gowd, E. Bhoje
Incorporation of multifunctional inorganic additives into the commercial polymers still stands as the most captivating and effective way to realize new-generation electronic components. Here, we introduce a simple, cost-effective, and environmentally benign method to covalently functionalize graphene oxide (GO) with vinyl- and aminopropyl-functionalized hybrid silica spheres with a polyhedral…
Dynamics of proteins confined in non-ionic bicontinuous microemulsions: a FCS study
Wrede, Oliver; Großkopf, Sören; Seidel, Thorsten; Hellweg, Thomas
In our present work we present an approach which allows one to confine proteins in structurally nearly identical bicontinuous microemulsions with systematically decreasing water domain size. It is shown that sub-diffusive behaviour occurs already at water domain sizes below 13 nm. However, above 13 nm normal diffusion is seen. Moreover,…
Rich lamellar crystal baklava-structured PZT/PVDF piezoelectric sensor toward individual table tennis training
Tian, Guo; Deng, Weili; Gao, Yuyu; Xiong, Da; Yan, Cheng; He, Xuebing; Yang, Tao; Jin, Long; Chu, Xiang; Zhang, Haitao; Yan, Wei; Yang, Weiqing
Real-time monitoring of interaction between ball and racket can provide the extremely important information for high quality guidance of individual table tennis training. However, the existing visual monitoring system is hard to reflect the specific interaction force and accurate hit position. Here, we design a self-powered rich lamellar crystal baklava-structured…
Influence of Trimethylsilyl Side Groups on the Molecular Mobility and Charge Transport in Highly Permeable Glassy Polynorbornenes
Yin, Huajie; Chapala, Pavel; Bermeshev, Maxim; Pauw, Brian R.; Schönhals, Andreas; Böhning, Martin
Superglassy polymers with a large fractional free volume have emerged as novel materials with a broad range of applications, especially in the field of membrane separations. Highly permeable addition-type substituted polynorbornenes with high thermal resistance and chemical stability are among the most promising materials. The major obstacle for extending the…