– X-ray reflectometry and GISAXS (grazing angle small angle scattering) are combined to investigate the morphology and structural parameters of a surfactant templated 2D hexagonal thin-film silica mesophase. It is shown that X-ray reflectivity measurements contain invaluable information about the radius of the cylindrical rods and the distance between their cores. The reflectivity data are anal...

The UV-induced polymerization of multifunctional monomers has found a large number of applications in various industrial fields, mainly in the production of films, inks and coatings on a variety of substrate, including paper, metal and wood. This polymerization process has been used for fabrication of nanostructured epoxy coatings characterized by outstanding properties, pursuing two different ...

The well-known key problem with concrete is that its compressive strength and the compression modulus are insufficient for a variety of applications. Our polymer concrete (PC) consists of an unsaturated polyester resin as the polymeric matrix, silica sand as the inorganic aggregate, plus atactic polypropylene (PP) fibers. A further property improvement can be achieved by gamma irradiation and w...

Polymer-supported bilayers (PSBs) are a recognized tool for drug discovery through function-interaction analysis of membrane proteins. While silica-supported bilayers (SSBs) spontaneously form from surface-adsorbed vesicles, successful PSB formation via a similar method has thus far been limited by an insufficient understanding of the underlying vesicle-remodelling processes. Here, we generated...

Introduction Layered-silicate based polymer nanocomposites have become an attractive set of organic-inorganic materials not only for their obvious potential as technological materials, but also for providing a convenient macroscopic system to study fundamental scientific issues concerning confined polymers [1]. Studying the formation, structure and dynamics of these nanocomposites can lead to a...

An aqueous-based microcompartmentalized model involving the integration of partially hydrophobic Fe(III)-rich montmorillonite (FeM) clay particles as structural and catalytic building blocks for colloidosome membrane assembly, self-directed membrane remodeling, and signal-induced protocell communication is described. The clay colloidosomes exhibit size- and charge-selective permeability, and sh...

Several hybrid sensing materials, which are organized by interaction of organic molecules onto inorganic supports, have been developed as a novel and hopeful class of hybrid sensing probes. The hybrid silica-magnetic based sensors provide perfect properties for production of various devices in sensing technology. The hybridization of silica and magnetic NPs as biocompatible, biodegradable and s...

Assembly and directed orientation of anisotropic particles with an external ac electric field in a range from 1 kHz to 2 MHz were studied for asymmetric composite dumbbells incorporating a silica, titania, or titania/silica (titania:silica = 75:25 vol %) sphere. The asymmetric composite dumbbells, which were composed of a polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA)-coated sphere (core-shell part) and a polys...

Surface functionalized nanoparticles have found their applications in several fields including biophotonics, nanobiomedicine, biosensing, drug delivery, and catalysis. Quite often, the nanoparticle surfaces must be post-coated with organic or inorganic layers during the synthesis before use. This work reports a generally one-pot synthesis method for the preparation of various inorganic-organic ...

Despite clear evidence that polymeric nitric oxide (NO) release coatings reduce the foreign body response (FBR) and may thus improve the analytical performance of in vivo continuous glucose monitoring devices when used as sensor membranes, the compatibility of the NO release chemistry with that required for enzymatic glucose sensing remains unclear. Herein, we describe the fabrication and chara...