Possibilities for the " parasitic " collection of power from human walking motion are explored. The focus is on the walking action as a source of power because of the extensive range of motion and large dynamic forces associated with the heel strike and the bending of the sole. Two piezoelectric systems: a multilayer laminate made from PVDF foil and a unimorph piezoceramic composite (PZT); as w...

Natural polyelectrolyte multilayers of chitosan (CHI) and alginate (ALG) were alternately deposited on doxorubicin (DOX)-loaded poly (lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) nanoparticles (NPs) with layer by layer self-assembly to control drug release for antitumor activity. Numerous factors which influenced the multilayer growth on nano-colloidal particles were studied: polyelectrolyte concentration, ...

Polyelectrolyte-coated nanoparticles or microparticles interact with bioactive molecules (peptides, proteins or nucleic acids) and have been proposed as delivery systems for these molecules. However, the mechanism of adsorption of polyelectrolyte onto particles remains unsolved. In this study, cationic poly(lactide-co-glycolide) (PLGA) nanoparticles were fabricated by adsorption of various conc...

The capability of multilayered polyelectrolyte films (MPFs) to control the sequential expression of two genes encoding cell receptors involved in a common cell signalling activity is shown, while achieving a fully functional signal transduction. As a functional model system representative of a cell signalling process that proceeds in a top-down manner, cell collapse induced by semaphorin 3A (Se...

Biological materials with hierarchically laminated structures usually exhibit a good synergy between strength and fracture toughness. Here, we show that a bio-inspired (polyelectrolyte (PE)/TiO2)4 nanolayered composite with a thickness ratio of TiO2 and amorphous PE layers of about 1.1 has been prepared successfully on Si substrates by layer-by-layer self-assembly and chemical bath deposition m...

Polyelectrolyte multilayer film modification could be an effective method to reduce the immunological and inflammatory response of the xenogeneic scaffold in vivo, and may also be applied to tissue-engineered heart valve in contact with blood. The objectives of this study are to test heparin-chitosan multilayer film as an antithrombotic coating reagent for decellularized aortic heart valve and ...