Halide-permeable xerogel films prepared from sols containing 50 mol% aminopropyltriethoxysilane (APTES)/50 mol% tetraethoxysilane (TEOS) or 10 mol% APTES/90 mol% TEOS and 0.015 M selenoxide or telluride catalyst in the sol gave reduced settlement of cypris larvae of the barnacle Balanus amphitrite and larvae of the tubeworm Hydroides elegans in the presence of artificial seawater (ASW) and hydr...

Nanofibrous membranes, consisting of a poly(L-lactic acid) (PLLA)-silica xerogel hybrid material, were successfully fabricated from a hybrid sol using the electrospinning technique for guided bone regeneration (GBR) application. These hybrid nanofibers exhibited a homogeneous and continuous morphology, with a nano-sized dispersed silica xerogel phase in the PLLA fiber matrix. The mechanical pro...

In the past few years, the sol-gel polycondensation technique has been increasingly employed with great success as an alternative approach to the preparation of molecularly imprinted materials (MIMs). The main aim of this study was to study, through a series of molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, the selectivity of an imprinted silica xerogel towards a new template-the (±)-2-(P-Isobutylphenyl)...

Porous materials in general have received great attention from the last century. The development of new porous materials and the preparation of new composites based on porous materials is a subject of interest. The development of porous silicon based optical composite materials opened up new ways of incorporating optically active sol-gel materials into porous silicon. High purity silica optical...

Classical xerogels are robust, inexpensive and nontoxic materials with low-ordered nanoporous structures. In water streams where the pH is higher than the Point of Zero Charge, the surface of classical xerogels such as tetraethoxy orthosilan (TEOS) xerogel is negatively charged. It was assumed that a xerogel can work as a strong adsorbent for metal ions without further modification. Therefore, ...

The photoluminescence features of Eu(3+)-, Tb(3+)-, Tb(3+)/Eu(3+)-alginate aerogel (hydrogel and alcogel) and Eu(3+)-alginate xerogel hybrids were investigated. The Eu(3+)-alginate aerogel and alcogel exhibit the highest (5)D0 quantum efficiencies (9.9 and 8.2%, respectively), while the hydrogel and xerogel have lower values (5.2 and 5.6%, respectively). The Tb(3+)/Eu(3+) hybrids are multiwavel...

Previous work has shown that organosilica-based xerogels have the potential to control biofouling. In this study, modifications of chemistry were investigated with respect to their resistance to marine slimes and to settlement of barnacle cyprids. Adhesion force measurements of bovine serum albumin (BSA)-coated atomic force microscopy (AFM) tips to xerogel surfaces prepared from aminopropylsily...

Laser effects have been obtained with dye-doped hybrid xerogel samples prepared several years ago and stored in different "classical" conditions. Firstly, using the same configuration of the laser cavity as was used 4-5 years ago, we have obtained almost identical laser performances, and slope conversion efficiencies were measured up to 80% and operational lifetimes, with 1-mJ initial output en...

Various concentrations of copper were embedded into silica matrix to xerogel forms using copper source Cu(NO3)2∙3H2O. The xerogel samples were prepared by hydrolysis and condensation of Tetraethyl Ortho-Silicate (TEOS) with determination of new molar ratio of the components by the sol-gel method. After ambient drying, the xerogel samples were heated from 60 to 1000˚C at a slow heating rate (50°...

A systematic study of the structure-function relationships critical to understanding the sensing mechanism of 1st generation amperometric glucose biosensors with an embedded nanoparticle (NP) network is presented. Xerogel-based films featuring embedded glucose oxidase enzyme and doped with alkanethiolate-protected gold NPs, known as monolayer protected clusters (MPCs), exhibit significantly enh...