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Topic Review
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Video Entry
Topic Review
Flavonoids as Visible Light Photoinitiators
The design of biosourced and/or bioinspired photoinitiators is an active research field as it offers a unique opportunity to develop photoinitiating systems exhibiting better biocompatibility as well as reduced toxicity. In this field, flavonoids can be found in numerous fruits and vegetables so these structures can be of interest for developing, in the future, polymerization processes, offering a reduced environmental impact but also better biocompatibility of the polymers.
458
29 Dec 2023
Topic Review
HPMCAS-Based Amorphous Solid Dispersions in Clinic
Therapeutic candidates with low solubility have become increasingly common in pharmaceutical research pipelines. Several techniques such as hot melt extrusion, spray drying, supercritical fluid technology, electrospinning, KinetiSol, etc., have been devised to improve either or both the solubility and dissolution to enhance the bioavailability of these active substances belonging to BCS Class II and IV.
458
19 Dec 2023
Topic Review
E-Polymers
E-polymers, also known as conducting polymers, are a class of materials that exhibit both electrical conductivity and the mechanical properties of polymers. The use of e-polymer materials in daily life is becoming increasingly widespread, especially in the field of biology. Since the manufacturing cost of e-polymer implants is relatively low and e-polymers also react, causing different chemical molecules to attach to the surface of the implant, they are more compatible with the surrounding environment of the body. Some e-polymers are biodegradable in the body. If used for temporary implants, the advantage of these polymers is that they can gradually degrade in the body after performing their functions, thereby reducing the possibility of any long-term complications. Polymers and their composite materials can be designed to have inherent tensile properties while maintaining their high performance, making them favorable candidates for the next generation of skin-inspired electronic materials.
456
16 Jan 2024
Topic Review
Benefits of Chemical Desalination
The ideal chemical desalination approach is undertaken (i) without specialist training, (ii) on a typical agricultural holding (1 to 100 ha−1), and (iii) using existing water tanks and/or impoundments. It reduces the overall feed water required to produce x m3 of water (relative to reverse osmosis). It produces minimal or no waste products that require disposal.
454
05 May 2023
Topic Review
Flexible Electrochromic Materials
The application potential of flexible electrochromic materials for wearable devices, smart textiles, flexible displays, electronic paper, and implantable biomedical devices is enormous. These materials offer the advantages of conformability and mechanical robustness, making them highly desirable for these applications.
453
07 Jul 2023
Topic Review
Influence of Plasticizer´s Polarity on Mechanical Stability
Compared with an styrene butadiene rubber (SBR) sample without plasticizer, the conductivity of mechanically unloaded oil-extended SBR samples decreases by an order of magnitude. The polarity of the plasticizer shows hardly any influence because the plasticizers only affect the distribution of the filler clusters. Under static load, the dielectric properties seem to be oil-dependent.
451
27 Jun 2022
Topic Review
Kappa-2 Carrageenans
Hybrid carrageenans, also called kappa-2 (K2) or weak kappa, are a class of sulfated polysaccharides with thermo-reversible gelling properties in water and are extracted from a specific family of red seaweeds. K2 are known in the industry for their texturizing properties which are intermediate between those of kappa-carrageenans (K) and iota-carrageenans (I). As such, K2 are gaining industrial interest, as they can replace blends of K and I (K + I) in some niche applications.
450
22 Sep 2023
Topic Review
Applications of Hydrogels as Wound Dressings
Hydrogels are polymeric materials that possess a set of characteristics meeting various requirements of an ideal wound dressing, making them promising for wound care. These features include, among others, the ability to absorb and retain large amounts of water and the capacity to closely mimic native structures, such as the extracellular matrix, facilitating various cellular processes like proliferation and differentiation. The polymers used in hydrogel formulations exhibit a broad spectrum of properties, allowing them to be classified into two main categories: natural polymers like collagen and chitosan, and synthetic polymers such as polyurethane and polyethylene glycol.
448
12 Mar 2024
Topic Review
Advances in Conducting Polymers for Healthcare Monitoring
Conducting polymers (CPs) are an innovative class of materials recognized for their high flexibility and biocompatibility, making them an ideal choice for health monitoring applications that require flexibility. They are active in their design. Advances in fabrication technology allow the incorporation of CPs at various levels, by combining diverse CPs monomers with metal particles, 2D materials, carbon nanomaterials, and copolymers through the process of polymerization and mixing. This method produces materials with unique physicochemical properties and is highly customizable. In particular, the development of CPs with expanded surface area and high conductivity has significantly improved the performance of the sensors, providing high sensitivity and flexibility and expanding the range of available options. However, due to the morphological diversity of new materials and thus the variety of characteristics that can be synthesized by combining CPs and other types of functionalities, choosing the right combination for a sensor application is difficult but becomes important.
440
07 Feb 2024
Topic Review
Excipients in Pharmaceutical Additive Manufacturing
Additive manufacturing (AM), popularly known as three-dimensional printing (3DP), has been widely applied to the fabrication of prototypes through to functional parts in various manufacturing areas, including the pharmaceutical industry. The term “3D printing” technically refers to a broad collection of additive technologies based on the deposition of materials, like creating objects from the bottom up or layer by layer. Despite the technical differentiation between the terms, “3D printing” has become the common term.
435
28 Feb 2024
Topic Review
Phosphonium-Based Polyelectrolytes
Phosphorous is an essential element for the life of organisms, and phosphorus-based compounds have many uses in industry, such as flame retardancy reagents, ingredients in fertilizers, pyrotechnics, etc. Ionic liquids are salts with melting points lower than the boiling point of water. The term “polymerized ionic liquids” (PILs) refers to a class of polyelectrolytes that contain an ionic liquid (IL) species in each monomer repeating unit and are connected by a polymeric backbone to form macromolecular structures. PILs provide a new class of polymeric materials by combining some of the distinctive qualities of ILs in the polymer chain. Ionic liquids have been identified as attractive prospects for a variety of applications due to the high stability (thermal, chemical, and electrochemical) and high mobility of their ions, but their practical applicability is constrained because they lack the benefits of both liquids and solids, suffering from both leakage issues and excessive viscosity. PILs are garnering for developing non-volatile and non-flammable solid electrolytes.
434
12 Jul 2023
Topic Review
Copper-Modified Polymeric Membranes
Copper has attractive characteristics: excellent antimicrobial activity, high natural abundance, low cost and the existence of multiple cost-effective synthesis routes for obtaining copper-based materials with tunable characteristics, which favor their incorporation into polymeric membranes.
433
12 Mar 2021
Topic Review
Polysaccharide Sequence Determination
NMR analysis combined with statistical modeling offers a useful approach to investigate the microstructures of biobased polymers. In particular, this approach may be used to study the microstructures of polysaccharides. If the polysaccharides are composed of two or three monosaccharide units, and the NMR spectral features are sensitive to the different sequence placements of these units, then a detailed analysis of a polysaccharide (or its fractions) can be made by NMR with the help of statistical modeling.
433
12 Mar 2024
Topic Review
Flame-Retardant Systems for Rigid Polyurethane Foam
The amplified employment of rigid polyurethane foam (RPUF) has accentuated the importance of its flame-retardant properties in stimulating demand. Thus, a compelling research report is essential to scrutinize the recent progression in the field of the flame retardancy and smoke toxicity reduction of RPUF.
432
19 Dec 2023
Topic Review
Bigels
Bigels have been mainly applied in the pharmaceutical sector for the controlled release of drugs or therapeutics. However, these systems, with their intricate structures, hold great promise for wider application in food products. Besides their classical role as carrier and target delivery vehicles for molecules of interest, bigels may also be valuable tools for building complex food structures. In the context of reducing or even eliminating undesirable (but often highly functional) food components, current strategies often critically affect food structure and palatability. The production of solid fat systems that are trans-fat-free and have high levels of unsaturated fatty acids is one of the challenges the food industry currently faces.
429
13 Nov 2023
Topic Review
Plasticizers on Alginate-Based Films
There has been a growing attempt to manipulate various properties of biodegradable materials to use them as alternatives to their synthetic plastic counterparts. Alginate is a polysaccharide extracted from seaweed or soil bacteria that is considered one of the most promising materials for numerous applications.
427
28 Sep 2023
Topic Review
Mucoadhesive and Mucopenetrating Polymer-Based Adjuvants
Mucus is a viscoelastic gel that acts as a protective barrier for epithelial surfaces. The mucosal vehicles and adjuvants need to pass through the mucus layer to make drugs and vaccine delivery by mucosal routes possible. The mucoadhesion of polymer particle adjuvants significantly increases the contact time between vaccine formulations and the mucosa; then, the particles can penetrate the mucus layer and epithelium to reach mucosa-associated lymphoid tissues.
426
23 May 2023
Topic Review
Pectin in Semi-Solid and Fluid Foods
Pectin is a versatile polysaccharide produced mainly from natural food sources and agro-industrial wastes, adding value to these by-products. For food applications, it is necessary that pectin first interacts with water for technical purposes. As a food additive, pectin acts as a solution thickener and gelling agent for food formulation, even in concentrations of less than 1 (g/100 mL or g/100 g), and it is sufficient to influence food products’ stability, rheology, texture, and sensory properties.
425
29 Aug 2023
Topic Review
Positronium as a Probe of Polymer Free Volume
Positron annihilation lifetime spectroscopy (PALS) is a valuable technique to investigate defects in solids, such as vacancy clusters and grain boundaries in metals and alloys, as well as lattice imperfections in semiconductors. In the case of polymers, PALS is able to give information on the holes forming the free volume; this quantity, is correlated to important mechanical, thermal, and transport properties of polymers. PALS supplies a quantitative measure of the free volume by probing the corresponding sub-nanometric holes. The system used is positronium (Ps), an unstable atom formed by a positron and an electron, whose lifetime can be related to the typical size of the holes.
423
18 Sep 2023
Topic Review
Multicomponent Shape-Memory Polymers
Shape-memory polymers (SMPs) are often combined with other functional materials. For example, polymers, metals, or other inorganic materials, in the shape of particles, fibers, and laminates, are combined to create multicomponent systems. Since these multicomponent systems are built up from discrete phases consisting of SMPs mixed with other polymers at the macroscopic or molecular level or reinforced with other domains (e.g., inorganic particle), they are particularly suited for the realization of multifunctionality.
422
09 Aug 2022
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