Silica (SiO(2)) and the silicate-based biomaterials play an important role due to their in vitro and in vivo biological response. The present study synthesized a novel nano-structured amorphous silica doped hydroxyapatite (HA) via an aqueous precipitation route. HA was prepared with 0, 1, 3 and 5 wt% silica, which are comparable to the measured silicon content of natural bone. After spray dryin...

An exo-templating synthesis process using polymeric fibers and inorganic sol particles deposited onto structured one-dimensional objects is presented. In particular, CeO2/ZrO2@SiO2 composite tubes were synthesized in a two-step procedure by using electrospun polystyrene fibers as fiber template. First, a sol-gel approach based on an exo-templating technique was employed to obtain polystyrene(PS...

This paper presents a technique to expose and characterize nano-structured hole arrays in tapered photonic crystal fibers. Hole array structures are examined with taper outer diameters ranging from 12.9 microm to 1.6 microm. A combined focused ion beam milling and scanning electron microscope system was used to expose and characterize the arrayed air-silica structures. Results from this combine...

This paper presents a method for the fabrication of integrated porous silica layers in microfluidic channel networks by microfabrication techniques. Porous silica is obtained by anodization of silicon, followed by full conversion of the porous silicon network into porous silica by means of thermal oxidation. A series of experiments were performed with various channel layouts to determine the cr...

n-octyl-β-D-glucopyranoside (C8G1) has the potential to serve as a functional, nonionic template for mesoporous oxides, but its use has been limited due to its propensity to form lamellar mesostructures. Here, 2D hexagonal-structured mesoporous silicas with variable pore sizes are synthesized with C8G1 by the “nanocasting” technique (polycondensation of tetramethoxysilane in concentrated acidic...

A core-shell structured Fe3O4-MCM-41 nanocomposite was prepared by means of a surfactant-directed sol-gel process. Candida rugosa lipase was then bound to the magnetic core-shell material by using glutaraldehyde as a cross-linking reagent. The as-prepared Fe3O4-MCM-41 support and the immobilized lipase were characterized in detail using enzyme activity assays, TEM, XRD, FTIR, VSM and nitrogen a...

The SC-RTA process for fabricating silica-on-silicon PLCs from sol-gel glass is described. A wide range of glasses has been deposited, process temperatures have been reduced, and components fabricated by reactive ion etching, reflow and burial of channel guides have shown steadily decreasing loss. Propagation losses are ≈0.2 dB/cm at λ = 1.523μm in a high1n system. Passive components demonstrat...