Mesoporous silicon is a biocompatible, biodegradable material that is receiving increased attention for pharmaceutical applications due to its extensive specific surface. This feature enables to load a variety of drugs in mesoporous silicon devices by simple adsorption-based procedures. In this work, we have addressed the fabrication and characterization of two new mesoporous silicon devices pr...

Cefazolin is an antibiotic frequently used in preoperative prophylaxis of orthopedic surgery and to fight secondary infections post-operatively. Although its systemic delivery in a bulk or bolus dose is usually effective, the local and controlled release can increase its effectiveness by lowering dosages, minimizing total drug exposure, abating the development of antibiotic resistance and avoid...

This paper reports the cross-plane thermal conductivity of ordered mesoporous nanocrystalline silicon thin films between 25 and 315 K. The films were produced by evaporation-induced self-assembly of mesoporous silica followed by magnesium reduction. The periodic ordering of pores in mesoporous silicon was characterized by X-ray diffraction and direct SEM imaging. The average crystallite size, p...

Porous silicon is an excellent material for biosensing because of its large surface area and ability to filter out large contaminant species. In order to characterize the sensitivity of porous silicon based biosensors for biomolecules of different sizes, a mesoporous silicon waveguide with average pore diameter of 20 nm is used to detect single strand DNA oligos with different numbers of base p...

Unlike the trace minerals iron, copper and zinc, the semiconductor silicon has not had its organoleptic properties assessed. Nanostructured silicon provides the nutrient orthosilicic acid through hydrolysis in the gastrointestinal tract and is a candidate for oral silicon supplements. Mesoporous silicon, a nanostructured material, is being assessed for both oral drug and nutrient delivery. Here...

Highly-ordered, pore-modified with amine groups, and glass-like mesoporous silicon oxynitride thin films were prepared by heat treatment of as-synthesized mesoporous silica thin films in a flowing ammonia environment at high temperatures.

Transparent mesoporous silica films were prepared by sol-gel spin coating on silicon wafers at room temperature. An erbium complex, erbium tris 8-hydroxyquinoline (ErQ), was homogeneously impregnated into the pores of the mesoporous silica films, and its concentration was easily controlled by using a solution immersing technique. The ErQ-impregnated mesoporous silica films show a room-temperatu...

Owing to its simplicity and low temperature conditions, magnesiothermic reduction of silica is one of the most powerful methods for producing silicon nanostructures. However, incomplete reduction takes place in this process leaving unconverted silica under the silicon layer. This phenomenon limits the use of this method for the rational design of silicon structures. In this effort, a technique ...

The use of mesoporous silicon particles for drug delivery has been widely explored thanks to their biodegradability and biocompatibility. The ability to tailor the physicochemical properties of porous silicon at the micro- and nanoscale confers versatility to this material. A method for the fabrication of highly reproducible, monodisperse, mesoporous silicon particles with controlled physical c...

Eu ions-doped cubic mesoporous silica thin films with a thickness of about 205 nm were prepared on silicon and glass substrates using triblock copolymer as a structure-directing agent using sol–gel spin-coating and calcination processes. X-ray diffraction and transmission electron microscopy analysis show that the mesoporous silica thin films have a highly ordered body-centered cubic mesoporous...