The overall objective of this research is to enhance the bioactivity of cellulase enzymes as well as the stability of the enzymes to increase it reusability through immobilization of the enzymes in the microenvironment of porous inorganic-organic hybrid sol-gel polymers. Recently, we have discovered that the microenvironment of these sol-gel polymers markedly increases the bioactivity of immobi...

The sol-gel method is a simple and facile wet chemical process for fabricating advanced materials with high homogeneity, high purity, and excellent chemical reactivity at a relatively low temperature. By adjusting the processing parameters, the sol-gel technique can be used to prepare hollow sphere and 1D structural materials that exhibit a wide application in the fields of catalyst, drug or ge...

A water vapor sensor based on a combination of sol-gel processing and planar optical waveguide technologies has been developed. The indicator erythrosin B was entrapped in a thin sol-gel film (thickness ∼100 nm) prepared from methyltriethoxysilane, dimethyldiethoxysilane, and tetraethoxysilane. This dye exhibits an increase in absorbance in the presence of liquid or gaseous water. The sol-gel l...

Research in recent years has demonstrated that biological molecules such as enzymes, immunoglobulins, and other proteins can be immobilized in sol-gel derived matrices and retain their biological function. Development ofglasses with encapsulated biomolecules has opened the possibility of solid-state optical biosensors for the detection and measurement of desired analytes. In this work, we repor...

A study of PDMS (polydimethylsiloxane) sol-gel-coated channels fabricated using soft lithography and a laser direct writing technique is presented. PDMS is a biocompatible material that presents a high versatility to reproduce several structures. It is widely employed in the fabrication of preclinical devices due to its advantages but it presents a rapid chemical deterioration to organic solven...

Pure and modified silica materials were synthesised by a sol-gel process and used as carrier for the controlled release of ibuprofen, selected as model drug. A one-step synthesis was optimised for the preparation of various silica-drug composites by using tetraethoxysilane and 3-aminopropyltriethoxysilane as precursors at different molar ratios. The presence of aminopropyl groups on the silica ...

The cold gelation of preheated whey protein isolate (WPI) solutions at alkaline conditions (pH>10) has been studied to better understand the effect of NaOH in the formation and destruction of whey protein aggregates and gels. Oscillatory rheology has been used to follow the gelation process, resulting in novel and different gelation profiles with the gelation pH. At low alkaline pH, typical sol...

absorption spectra of the composite sol-gel (blue solid) and pure photochromic sol-gel (black solid). The open-form ∆OD for composite solgel (red dash). The inset is the chemical structure of the composite molecule with donor moiety (bottom red) and acceptor moiety (top blue). (d) The thermally reversing photokinetic measurement of the open-form ∆OD (460nm) of the composite sol-gel, recovering ...

The pyrolysis of transition metal carboxylates into organically modified silica glass-ZrO2 hybrid sol-gel films yields composite materials containing cobalt oxide nanoparticles in various proportions. The particles have sizes ranging from 5 to 10 nm, and they are homogeneously dispersed in the final materials. A reaction temperature near 250°C results in translucent films that have good mechani...

A microfluidic chip that integrates a sol-gel derived affinity column with a microheater is developed. This microchip includes five electric heaters covered with patterned PMMA for individual heat elution from five sol-gels with target molecules. This study is the first to demonstrate the detection of proteinaptamer interactions on the sol-gel microfluidic system and further describes possible ...