Membrane technology is being researched intensively due to its potential for generating clean water. Surface modifications of nanoporous membranes could be an engineering solution to designing chlorine-tolerant membranes that would last longer in operation and thus reduce the high costs associated with membrane operations. The average pore diameter in a membrane strongly determines its selectiv...

New porous biomaterials based on hydroxyapatite (HAp) were designed as obturation materials for dental cavities. Synthetic HAp powder with a particle diameter of 150 m was agglutinated using three different polyurethane monocomponents (rigid, semi-rigid, and flexible), enabling the matching of their properties to those of real teeth. Alumina particles were also added in some cases. Our new hybr...

The use of NMR spin-lattice relaxation experiments on water, or other proton-containing fluids, in a porous solid as a pore structure/size measurement tool has been recently reported for porous solids with pore size greater than ~ 5 nm. This approach has numerous advantages, as compared to nitrogen sorption/ condensation and mercury porosimetry, including no network/percolation effects, no pore...

A technique of neutron in-plane scattering for studying the structures of peptide pores in membranes is described. Alamethicin in the inserted state was prepared and undeuterated and deuterated dilauroyl phosphatidylcholine (DLPC) hydrated with D2O or H2O. Neutron in-plane scattering showed a strong dependence on deuteration, clearly indicating that water is a part of the high-order structure o...

Self-supported particle-track-etched polycarbonate membranes with nearly perfect cylindrical pores are used for the preparation of similarly perfect cylindrical polypyrrole nanowires and nanotubes. A complete investigation of the structural properties that result at different stages of the preparation route of polypyrrole nanowires and nanotubes is based on a combination of real and reciprocal ...

Crystalline porous materials have many applications, including catalysis and separations. Identifying suitable materials for a given application can be achieved by screening material databases. Such a screening requires automated high-throughput analysis tools that characterize and represent pore landscapes with descriptors, which can be compared using similarity measures in order to select, gr...

Small-angle x-ray scattering, nitrogen adsorption, and scanning tunneling microscopy show that a series of activated carbons host an extended fractal network of channels with dimension D(p) = 2.8-3.0 (pore fractal), channel width 15-20 A (lower end of scaling), network diameter 3000-3400 A (upper end of scaling), and porosity of 0.3-0.6. We interpret the network as a stack of quasiplanar invasi...

c-Alumina-based materials with high porous volume, tunable pore size, were synthesized by the addition of both PEO/PPO/PEO triblock copolymers (Pluronics F127 and P123) and metal nitrates (Al, Mn, Cu) in a boehmite (AlOOH) nanoparticle hydrosol. During the subsequent thermal treatment, the surfactant was removed leaving a highly porous framework. The pore size distribution was strongly dependen...

We discuss pore dynamics in osmotically stressed vesicles. A set of equations which govern the liposomal size, internal solute concentration, and pore diameter is solved numerically. We find that dependent on the internal solute concentration and vesicle size, liposomes can stay pore free, nucleate a short-lived pore, or nucleate a long-lived pore. The phase diagram of pore stability is constru...

We present a novel quenched solid density functional theory (QSDFT) model of adsorption on heterogeneous surfaces and porous solids, which accounts for the effects of surface roughness and microporosity. Within QSDFT, solid atoms are considered as quenched component(s) of the solid-fluid system with given density distribution(s). Solid-fluid intermolecular interactions are split into hard-spher...