’ INTRODUCTION Since the discovery of carbon nanotubes, hollow nanotubes have attracted considerable attention due to their functional significance and potential applications in nanoscale devices, sensors, and energy storage/conversion. In particular, silica nanotubes raise special interest because of their biocompatibility, confined environment as nanocontainers, and feasibility of chemical mo...

Microfluidic and optical sensing platforms are commonly fabricated in glass and fused silica (quartz) because of their optical transparency and chemical inertness. Hydrofluoric acid (HF) solutions are the etching media of choice for deep etching into silicon dioxide substrates, but processing schemes become complicated and expensive for etching times greater than 1 hour due to the aggressivenes...

The separation of small molecule gases by membrane technologies can help performance enhancement and process intensification for emerging advanced fossil energy systems with CO2 capture capacity. This paper reports the demonstration of controlled modification of zeolitic channel size for the MFI-type zeolite membranes to enhance the separation of small molecule gases such as O2 and N2. Pure-sil...

Novel photochromic hybrid nanomaterials were prepared through the immobilization of the lacunary Keggin-type phosphomolybdate (TBA4H3[PMo11O39]·xH2O, denoted as PMo11) and sandwich-type lanthano phosphomolybdates (K11[Ln(III)(PMo11O39)2]·xH2O, denoted as Ln(PMo11)2, where Ln(III) = Sm, Eu, Gd, Tb and Dy) onto positively-charged functionalized silica nanoparticles. The functionalized silica nano...

FMLs are considered by many industries, including the aerospace industry, due to their important advantages such as high strength, low weight, corrosion and moisture resistance, good fatigue properties, and so on. The purpose of the present study is to improve the mechanical properties of the panel through the addition of nanoscale by improving the structure of the FML. For this purpose, the pe...

An advanced SiO2–lignin hybrid material was obtained and tested as a novel poly(vinyl chloride) (PVC) filler. The processing of compounds of poly(vinyl chloride) in the form of a dry blend with silica–lignin hybrid material and, separately, with the two components from which that material was prepared, was performed in a Brabender mixing chamber. An analysis was made of processing (mass melt fl...

A novel method for flexibly implementing sample dialysis on microchips is introduced. Nanoporous polymer membranes (5-20 pm thickness) with up to 1OOO:l aspect ratio are fabricated in-situ on silica microchips via photopatterned phase-separation polymerization. These membranes enable selective diffusion of molecules smaller than a cutoff specified by the membrane pore size. Diffusion measuremen...

The recognition of the biologically and environmentally important ions is of great interest in the field of chemical sensors in recent years. The fluorescent sensors as a powerful optical analytical technique for the detection of low level of various analytes such as anions and metal cations have been progressively developed due to the simplicity, cost effective, and selectivity for monitoring ...

Integrally skinned asymmetric membranes based on nanocompositepolyethersulfone were prepared by the phase separation process using the supercritical CO2 as a nonsolvent for the polymer solution. In present study, the effects of temperature and nanoparticle on selectivity performance and permeability of gases has beeninvestigated. It is shown that the presence of silica nanoparticles not only di...