Engineered nanomaterials may exert adverse effects on human health which, in turn, may be linked to their propensity to cross biological barriers in the body. Here, available evidence is discussed, based on in vivo studies for interactions of commercially relevant nanoparticles with critical internal barriers. The internal barriers in focus in this review are the blood-brain barrier, protecting...

Background: Environmental problems of the plastic materials used in food packaging and the demand for food quality improvements lead to the development of packaging in natural materials. Edible films such as calcium alginate extend the shelf life by acting as a selective barrier against moisture and oxygen. The main objective of this study was to explore a calcium alginate based edible film to ...

Some chaotic properties of a classical particle interacting with a time-modulated barrier are studied. The dynamics of this problem is obtained by use of a two-dimensional nonlinear area-preserving map. The chaotic low energy region is characterized in terms of Lyapunov exponents. The time that the particle stays trapped in the well is such that the distributions of successive reflections, and ...

W1.5N films grown by ALD from WF6, NH3, C2H4 and SiH4 as precursors were tested as Cu diffusion barriers in p/n diodes and capacitors with SiO2 as a dielectric. I-V and C-V, C-t characteristics were measured before and after anneal. The layers exhibit excellent barrier properties against both Cu and Al interaction with silicon. No changes of current and capacitance attributed to a barrier failu...