Lin, Shihui; Ye, Chao; Zhang, Wenwen; Xu, Anchang; Chen, Shixian; Ren, Jing; Ling, Shengjie
Nanofibril Organization in Silk Fiber as Inspiration for Ductile and Damage-Tolerant Fiber Design
Ductile and damage-tolerant fibers (DDTFs) are desired in aerospace engineering, mechanical engineering, and biomedical engineering because of their ability to prevent the catastrophic sudden structural/mechanical failure. However, in practice, design and fabrication of DDTFs remain a major challenge due to finite fiber size and limited processing techniques. In this regard,…
Phase separation and performance of polyethersulfone/cellulose nanocrystals membranes
Lessan, Fatemeh; Karimi, Mohammad; Bañuelos, Jose Leobardo; Foudazi, Reza
We investigate the effect of cellulose nanocrystals (CNC) as a hydrophilic nanoparticle on the characteristics of polyethersulfone (PES) based membranes. The membranes are fabricated using typical nonsolvent induced phase separation (NIPS) method. We study the radius of gyration and aggregation of PES in dimethylformamide in the presence of CNC, the…
Strong, Water-Stable Ionic Cable from Bio-Hydrogel
Kong, Weiqing; Li, Tian; Chen, Chaoji; Chen, Gegu; Brozena, Alexandra H.; Liu, Dapeng; Liu, Yang; Wang, Chengwei; Gan, Wentao; Wang, Sha; He, Shuaiming; Hu, Liangbing
Nanofluids have attracted much attention due to their various applications in energy storage, water desalination, and ionic circuits. However, the practical applications of the existing ionic conductors are limited due to their poor mechanical strength and stability in water. Here, inspired by nature, we develop a mechanically robust and water-stable…
Highly Stretchable Photonic Crystal Hydrogels for a Sensitive Mechanochromic Sensor and Direct Ink Writing
Chen, Jiayao; Xu, Lirong; Yang, Meijia; Chen, Xiaochuan; Chen, Xudong; Hong, Wei
Photonic crystals, which are materials with periodic dielectric constants on the submicroscale, have been the focus of research for an extended period. Photonic soft materials have been extensively developed for use as colorimetric indicators and mechanochromic sensors, but their limited mechanical properties and molding characteristics only suitable for films restrict…
In-Depth Study of Coating Multimodal Porosity Using Ellipsometry Porosimetry in Desorption Scanning Mode
Loizillon, Jérôme; Baumgartner, Bettina; Sinturel, Christophe; Abbarchi, Marco; Lendl, Bernhard; Grosso, David
Ellipsometry porosimetry provides full adsorption/desorption isotherms and is among the most accurate techniques to probe porosity in thin films. Here we address a novel technique based on desorption scanning for a precise assessment of the porosity features revealing the size distribution of interconnections between the various populations of pores in…
Adsorption of organic pollutants by amine functionalized mesoporous silica in aqueous solution. Effects of pH, ionic strength and some consequences of APTES stability
Otalvaro, Julian Ortiz; Avena, Marcelo; Brigante, Maximiliano
A mesoporous silica with MCM-41 type pore array was synthesized by hydrothermal method and then was functionalized with known amounts of 3-aminopropyltriethoxysilane (APTES) in order to study the selective adsorption towards several species/pollutants. Antibiotics doxycycline hydrochloride (DC) and norfloxacin (NFX), the dye methyl orange(MO) and the pesticide 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid
Pressure-Driven Solvent Transport and Complex Ion Permeation through Graphene Oxide Membranes
Wang, Kai; Ausri, Irfani R.; Chu, Kyle A.; Seddon, Annela; Tang, Xiaowu (Shirley)
In this paper, an in-depth investigation of three graphene oxide (GO) based membranespure GO, Al3+ intercalated GO (Al-GO), and poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) modified GO (PEG-GO)is presented. Both Al-GO and PEG-GO membranes have wider interlayer d-spacing compared to pure GO, and the d-spacing size correlates well to the cross-membrane water flux…
Wet spinning and radial self-assembly of a carbohydrate low molecular weight gelator into well organized hydrogel filaments
Chalard, Anaïs; Joseph, Pierre; Souleille, Sandrine; Lonetti, Barbara; Saffon-Merceron, Nathalie; Loubinoux, Isabelle; Vaysse, Laurence; Malaquin, Laurent; Fitremann, Juliette
In this work, we describe how a simple single low molecular weight gelator (LMWG) molecule – N-heptyl-D-galactonamide, which is easy to produce at the gram scale – is spun into gel filaments by a wet spinning process based on solvent exchange. A solution of the gelator in DMSO is injected…
Millimeter-Scale Unipolar Transport in High Sensitivity Organic–Inorganic Semiconductor X-ray Detectors
Jayawardena, K. D. G. Imalka; Thirimanne, Hashini M.; Tedde, Sandro Francesco; Huerdler, Judith E.; Parnell, Andrew J.; Bandara, R. M. Indrachapa; Mills, Christopher A.; Silva, S. Ravi P.
Hybrid inorganic-in-organic semiconductors are an attractive class of materials for optoelectronic applications. Traditionally, the thicknesses of organic semiconductors are kept below 1 μm due to poor charge transport in such systems. However, recent work suggests that charge carriers in such organic semiconductors can be transported over centimeter length scales opposing…
Morphology and ionic conductivity relationship in silk/cellulose biocomposites
Blessing, Bailey; Trout, Cory; Morales, Abneris; Rybacki, Karleena; Love, Stacy A.; Lamoureux, Guillaume; O’Malley, Sean M.; Hu, Xiao; Cruz, David Salas-de la
The relationship between morphology and the ionic conductivity of polysaccharide–protein bio-electrolyte membranes is explored in this study. Structural proteins and polysaccharides form hydrophobic and electrostatic interactions, and the resulting matrices can exhibit novel and useful properties. However, transforming these natural biomacromolecules from their native state to a more usable form…