A facile method to coat carbon fibers with a silica shell is presented in this work. By immobilizing linear polyamines on the carbon fiber surface, the high catalytic activity of polyamines in the sol-gel-processing of silica precursors is used to deposit a silica coating directly on the fiber's surface. The surface localization of the catalyst is achieved either by attaching short-chain polyam...

Polarization plays a crucial role in light–matter interactions; hence its overall manipulation is an essential key to unlock the versatility of light manufacturing, especially femtosecond laser direct writing. Existing polarization-shaping techniques, however, only focus on their transverse plane beams, i.e., two-dimensional control. In this paper, we propose novel passive strategy that exploit...

The Photonics Crystal Fibers (PCFs) also know as “holey” or “micro-structured” fibers herald a new age for optical fibers. The astronomical applications could revolutionize instrument design through: broadband performance combined with excellent UV transmission, extremely large numerical aperture fibers, and aperture transforming fibers improving input coupling/sampling while maintaining a good...

The synergistic adsorption of heavy metal ions and humic acid can be very challenging. This is largely because of their competitive adsorption onto most adsorbent materials. Hierarchically structured composites containing polyethylenimine-modified magnetic mesoporous silica and graphene oxide (MMSP-GO) were here prepared to address this. Magnetic mesoporous silica microspheres were synthesized ...

Biomineralization processes are now fully recognized as inspiring systems for the design of new materials. In the case of silica, the formation of diatom shell or sponge spicule has attracted much attention in the last decade since it could provide key information to elaborate new hierarchically structured materials and nanodevices. In these two examples, the mineral phase is thought to be form...