Bargain, François; Panine, Pierre; Domingues Dos Santos, Fabrice; Tencé-Girault, Sylvie
From solvent-cast to annealed and poled poly(VDF-co-TrFE) films: New insights on the defective ferroelectric phase
Films of ferroelectric vinylidene fluoride-trifluoroethylene copolymers, poly(VDF-co-TrFE), are investigated for future applications in organic electronics. For these developments, a composition ∼70 mol % VDF is selected, thin and isotropic films are evaporated, then annealing and poling steps are performed to increase the amount of ferroelectric phase. Over the past decades, many…
Formation of hydrogels based on chitosan/alginate for the delivery of lysozyme and their antibacterial activity
Wu, Tiantian; Huang, Jiaqi; Jiang, Yangyang; Hu, Yaqin; Ye, Xingqian; Liu, Donghong; Chen, Jianchu
Novel hydrogels based on chitosan/sodium alginate (CS-ALG) were prepared to deliver and protect lysozyme while eliminating food-borne microorganisms. These hydrogels were characterized according to the zeta potential, optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), UV–visible spectroscopy (UV–vis), fourier transform infrared (FT-IR), and small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS). The results…
Formation of a transient amorphous solid in low density aqueous charged sphere suspensions
Niu, Ran; Heidt, Sabrina; Sreij, Ramsia; Dekker, Riande I.; Hofmann, Maximilian; Palberg, Thomas
Colloidal glasses formed from hard spheres, nearly hard spheres, ellipsoids and platelets or their attractive variants, have been studied in great detail. Complementing and constraining theoretical approaches and simulations, the many different types of model systems have significantly advanced our understanding of the glass transition in general. Despite their early…
Fluorescent silica nanoparticles with chemically reactive surface: Controlling spatial distribution in one-step synthesis
Vera, María L.; Cánneva, Antonela; Huck-Iriart, Cristián; Requejo, Felix G.; Gonzalez, Mónica C.; Dell’Arciprete, María L.; Calvo, Alejandra
The encapsulation of fluorescent dyes inside silica nanoparticles is advantageous to improve their quality as probes. Inside the particle, the fluorophore is protected from the external conditions and its main emission parameters remains unchanged even in the presence of quenchers. On the other hand, the amine-functionalized nanoparticle surface enables a…
Fast response and highly sensitive humidity sensors based on CaCl2-doped sulfonated poly (ether ether ketone)s
Zhuang, Zhuang; Qi, Duo; Ru, Chunyu; Pan, Jing; Zhao, Chengji; Na, Hui
This study presented a novel polymeric humidity sensor based on CaCl2-doped sulfonated poly (ether ether ketone) (SPEEK). For the first time, we developed a crosslinking procedure to modify SPEEK for humidity sensors application. SPEEKs with fixed value of sulfonation degree were synthesized by a direct aromatic nucleophilic substitution polymerization of…
Facile method for the synthesis of Fe3O4@HCP core–shell porous magnetic microspheres for fast separation of organic dyes from aqueous solution
Pan, Long; Xu, Meng-Ying; Liu, Zi-Lu; Du, Bi-Bai; Yang, Kun-Hao; Wu, Li; He, Peng; He, Yu-Jian
A novel type of porous magnetic microsphere (Fe3O4@HCP) was firstly synthesized just via one-step Friedel–Crafts alkylation promoted by FeCl3. This universal and facile method to fabricate porous magnetic microspheres possesses distinct advantages such as cheap reactants, mild reaction conditions, a short reaction time and a simple post-treatment process. The core–shell…
Evolution of morphologies of a PE-b-PEO block copolymer in an epoxy solvent induced by polymerization followed by crystallization-driven self-assembly of PE blocks during cooling
Puig, Julieta; Zucchi, Ileana A.; Ceolín, Marcelo; Schroeder, Walter F.; Williams, Roberto J. J.
Polymerization-induced nanostructuration combined with crystallization-driven self-assembly was used to generate complex nanostructures in an epoxy network. A PE-b-PEO block copolymer (Mn = 1400; 50 wt% PEO), was dispersed in diglycidylether of bisphenol A (DGEBA) and homopolymerization initiated by a tertiary amine was carried out at 120 °C (above the melting…
Evolution of morphology and open-circuit voltage in alloy-energy transfer coexisting ternary organic solar cells
Xia, Benzheng; Yuan, Liu; Zhang, Jianqi; Wang, Zaiyu; Fang, Jin; Zhao, Yifan; Deng, Dan; Ma, Wei; Lu, Kun; Wei, Zhixiang
The oligomer-type small molecule PDT2FBT-ID is applied in a polymer/small molecule/fullerene ternary system. The PTB7-Th/PDT2FBT-ID/PC71BM ternary active layer shows complementary absorption spectra, enhanced face-on orientation and energy transfer properties. Compared to the binary system, the FF of the ternary system is improved from 66.72% to 76.14% and the Jsc is…
Ethanol-induced whey protein gels as carriers for lutein droplets
Uzun, Suzan; Kim, Hojun; Leal, Cecilia; Padua, Graciela W.
Lutein-in-safflower oil was dispersed in ethanol-water mixtures to form droplets of nano- and micron scale size. Such dispersions were stabilized by stirring them in a whey protein isolate (WPI) solution, which gelled immediately upon coming in contact with ethanol, entrapping the lutein droplets. Gels were dried in a vacuum oven…
Enzyme-Responsive Amphiphilic PEG-Dendron Hybrids and Their Assembly into Smart Micellar Nanocarriers
Harnoy, Assaf J.; Rosenbaum, Ido; Tirosh, Einat; Ebenstein, Yuval; Shaharabani, Rona; Beck, Roy; Amir, Roey J.
Enzyme-responsive micelles have great potential as drug delivery platforms due to the high selectivity of the activating enzymes. Here we report a highly modular design for the efficient and simple synthesis of amphiphilic block copolymers based on a linear hydrophilic polyethyleneglycol (PEG) and an enzyme-responsive hydrophobic dendron. These amphiphilic hybrids…