Osmosis is the key process in establishing versatile functions of cellular systems and enabling clean-water harvesting technologies. Membranes with single-atom thickness not only hold great promises in approaching the ultimate limit of these functions, but also offer an ideal test-bed to explore the underlying physical mechanisms. In this work, we explore diffusive and osmotic transport of wate...

Using two nano-porous pseudo carbon paste electrodes (Nano-PPCPEs) as the working electrodes, a saturated calomel electrode as the reference electrode, and a Pt electrode as the counter electrode to form a four-electrode system, a novel type of glutamate-acetylcholine electrochemical biosensor array was successfully fabricated. It was shown that the biosensor array displayed a high selectivity ...

Three-dimensional (3D) porous metal and metal oxide nanostructures have received considerable interest because organization of inorganic materials into 3D nanomaterials holds extraordinary properties such as low density, high porosity, and high surface area. Supramolecular self-assembled peptide nanostructures were exploited as an organic template for catalytic 3D Pt-TiO2 nano-network fabricati...

Porous titanium is a kind of promising material for bone substitution, while its bio-inert property results in demand of modifications to improve the osteointegration capacity. In this study, gelatin (Gel) and nano-hydroxyapatite (nHA) were used to construct 3D micro-scaffolds in the pores of porous titanium in the ratios of Gel:nHA = 1:0, Gel:nHA = 1:1, and Gel:nHA = 1:3, respectively. Cell at...

Based on a previously developed polyamide proton conductive macromolecule, the nano-scale structure of the self-assembled proton conductive channels (PCCs) is adjusted via enlarging the nano-scale pore size within the macromolecules. Hyperbranched polyamide macromolecules with different size are synthesized from different monomers to tune the nano-scale pore size within the macromolecules, and ...

Biodegradable porous biomaterial scaffolds play a critical role in bone regeneration. In this study, the porous nano-hydroxyapatite/collagen/poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid)/graphene oxide (nHAC/PLGA/GO) composite scaffolds containing different amount of GO were fabricated by freeze-drying method. The results show that the synthesized scaffolds possess a three-dimensional porous structure. GO slig...

We have developed a one-step, hydrofluoric acid-free hydrothermal etching method that not only produces bismuth nano/micrometer-sized spheres but also prepares porous silicon with vertical holes. By controlling the heating temperature and time, nanoscale vertical-channeled porous silicon can be received. Our result indicated that the Bi clusters were formed first on the wafer surface. Then the ...

Composite molten salt-ceramic membranes are promising devices for high-temperature CO2 separation. Intensive material properties impact on separation performance as do membrane geometry (thickness) and microstructure (pore volume fraction, size, connectivity, tortuosity factor). Although controlling pore size is considered somewhat routine, achieving alignment connectivity still challenging. He...

Reliable estimation of the porous membranes neck-pore size distribution (NPSD) is the key element in the design and operation of all membrane separation processes. In this paper, a new approach is presented for reliable of NPSD of porous membranes using wet flow-state bubble point test data. For this purpose, a robust method based on the linear regularization theory is developed to extract NPSD...

We demonstrate that microporous PVDF membranes sandwiched between multiple layers of nanomaterials can be used for continuous monitoring of glucose level in vivo. This is achieved by coating needle electrodes with Polyaniline nanofiber, Platinum nanoparticles, glucose oxidase enzyme and porous layers, successfully fabricated with layer-by-layer deposition. Nanoparticles incorporated into conduc...