Previous work has shown that organosilica-based xerogels have the potential to control biofouling. In this study, modifications of chemistry were investigated with respect to their resistance to marine slimes and to settlement of barnacle cyprids. Adhesion force measurements of bovine serum albumin (BSA)-coated atomic force microscopy (AFM) tips to xerogel surfaces prepared from aminopropylsily...

Laser effects have been obtained with dye-doped hybrid xerogel samples prepared several years ago and stored in different "classical" conditions. Firstly, using the same configuration of the laser cavity as was used 4-5 years ago, we have obtained almost identical laser performances, and slope conversion efficiencies were measured up to 80% and operational lifetimes, with 1-mJ initial output en...

Various concentrations of copper were embedded into silica matrix to xerogel forms using copper source Cu(NO3)2∙3H2O. The xerogel samples were prepared by hydrolysis and condensation of Tetraethyl Ortho-Silicate (TEOS) with determination of new molar ratio of the components by the sol-gel method. After ambient drying, the xerogel samples were heated from 60 to 1000˚C at a slow heating rate (50°...

A systematic study of the structure-function relationships critical to understanding the sensing mechanism of 1st generation amperometric glucose biosensors with an embedded nanoparticle (NP) network is presented. Xerogel-based films featuring embedded glucose oxidase enzyme and doped with alkanethiolate-protected gold NPs, known as monolayer protected clusters (MPCs), exhibit significantly enh...

Background: Polysaccharides are renewable biodegradable natural materials and are accounted for to control the formation of hybrid silica nanocomposites by sol gel process. Methods: The synthesis of templated silica xerogel essentially includes two critical steps of hydrolysis and polycondensation reaction that are started by catalyst and silica precursor solution. Aside from this Saponificatio...

Sol–gel chemistry is an efficient tool to control the morphology and reactivity of solids. Drying is the crucial step due to the capillary forces exerted during the classic ambient drying process, which induces the collapse of the wet gel porosity. The use of N, N-dimethylformamide (DMF), a newly found DCCA were found to be effective in the sol–gel synthesis of crack-free silica gel monolith fr...

V2O5 xerogel films were fabricated by casting V2O5 sols onto fluorine-doped tin oxide glass substrates at room temperature. Five, ten and twenty atomic layers of Al2O3 were grown onto as-fabricated films respectively. The bare film and Al2O3-deposited films all exhibited hydrous V2O5 phase only. Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy study revealed increased surface charge-transfer resistance o...

Sol–gel chemistry is an efficient tool to control the morphology and reactivity of solids. Drying is the crucial step due to the capillary forces exerted during the classic ambient drying process, which induces the collapse of the wet gel porosity. The use of N, N-dimethylformamide (DMF), a newly found DCCA were found to be effective in the sol–gel synthesis of crack-free silica gel monolith fr...

Many polymers and composites have been used to prepare active wound dressings. These materials have typically exhibited potentially toxic burst release of the drugs within the first few hours followed by a much slower, potentially ineffective drug release rate thereafter. Many of these materials also degraded to produce inflammatory and cytotoxic products. To overcome these limitations, composi...