Topic Review
Contact Lens Materials - A Materials Science Perspective
Contact lens materials are typically based on polymer- or silicone-hydrogel, with additional manufacturing technologies employed to produce the final lens. These processes are simply not enough to meet the increasing demands from CLs and the ever-increasing number of contact lens (CL) users. New materials and engineering offer increasing functionality or improved properties over previous generations.
  • 3.8K
  • 27 Jan 2022
Topic Review
Graphene-Based Nanocomposites
Graphene is an allotrope of carbon consisting of a single layer of atoms arranged in a two-dimensional honeycomb lattice. Carbon atoms are bonded with a covalent sp2bond with a single free electron, which accounts for the conductivity of graphene. Graphene is attracting great interests from the physical, chemical, and biomedical fields as a novel nanomaterial with exceptional physical properties, including extremely high thermal conductivity, excellent electrical conductivity, high surface-to-volume ratio, remarkable mechanical strength, and biocompatibility.
  • 911
  • 27 Jan 2022
Topic Review
Polymeric Nanomaterials for Efficient Delivery of Antimicrobial Agents
Polymeric nanomaterials have been widely studied as carriers for constructing antimicrobial agent delivery systems and have shown advantages including high biocompatibility, sustained release, targeting and improved bioavailability. 
  • 467
  • 20 Jan 2022
Topic Review
Biodegradable Polymers
Biodegradable polymers are those which can degrade into water and carbon dioxide under normal environmental conditions through microbial action, providing compost as a simple and sustainable disposal option.
  • 919
  • 17 Jan 2022
Topic Review
Chromophoric Dendrimer-Based Materials
Dendrimers (from the Greek dendros → tree; meros → part) are macromolecules with well-defined three-dimensional and tree-like structures. Remarkably, this hyperbranched architecture is one of the most ubiquitous, prolific, and recognizable natural patterns observed in nature. 
  • 718
  • 16 Jan 2022
Topic Review
Antimicrobial Peptides and Proteins (AMPs)
Mycotoxins are toxic secondary metabolites produced by filamentous fungi in crops or during storage, transport and processing of food and feed commodities, which pose serious health risks for both humans and animals. The trend of mycotoxin contamination in food and feed has reached alarming levels. Antimicrobial peptides and proteins (AMPs) with antifungal activity are gaining much interest as natural antifungal compounds due to their properties such as structure diversity and function, antifungal spectrum, mechanism of action, high stability and the availability of biotechnological production methods. 
  • 588
  • 14 Jan 2022
Topic Review
Covalent and Non-Covalent Interactions in Chitosan-Based Biomaterials
Chitosan (CS) is a natural biopolymer that has gained great interest in many research fields due to its promising biocompatibility, biodegradability, and favorable mechanical properties. Through covalent and non-covalent chemical modifications, CS derivatives can reach optimal properties for the development of smart biomaterials in a wide range of biomedial applications.
  • 820
  • 12 Jan 2022
Topic Review
Li-ion Batteries
With the ever-growing energy storage notably due to the electric vehicle market expansion and stationary applications, one of the challenges of lithium batteries lies in the cost and environmental impacts of their manufacture. The main process employed is the solvent-casting method, based on a slurry casted onto a current collector. The disadvantages of this technique include the use of toxic and costly solvents as well as significant quantity of energy required for solvent evaporation and recycling. A solvent-free manufacturing method would represent significant progress in the development of cost-effective and environmentally friendly lithium-ion and lithium metal batteries.
  • 967
  • 11 Jan 2022
Topic Review
Lignin-Based Resins
By increasing the environmental concerns and depletion of petroleum resources, bio-based resins have gained interest. Recently, lignin-based resins have attracted attention due to their low cost, environmental benefits, good thermal stability, excellent mechanical properties, and suitability for high-performance natural fiber composite applications. This content highlights the recent use of lignin-based resins with natural fiber composites for high-performance applications. 
  • 1.9K
  • 31 Dec 2021
Topic Review
Design of Liquid-Crystalline Elastomeric Fluorescent Force Sensors
Liquid single crystal elastomers (LSCEs) containing carbazole fluorogenic components alter their luminescence when they are stretched along the director direction. The differential luminescent behavior arises from the distinct interaction between the carbazole fluorophores and their local environment before and after the application of the mechanical input. Indeed, the uniaxial deformation of the material, along its anisotropic direction, forces a closer mesogen–fluorophore interaction, which leads to the quenching of the carbazole luminescence. Importantly, this intermolecular interaction is intimately related to the intrinsic order present in the LSCE. As a result, the amount of light emitted by the material in the form of fluorescence diminishes upon deformation. Thus, the application of mechanical stimuli to liquid-crystalline elastomers furnishes to two interconvertible states for the system with distinct optical properties (with either different emission color or fluorescence intensity). The initial state of the material is completely restored once the applied force is removed. In this way, this kind of macromolecular system can transduce mechanical events into detectable and processable optical signals, thus, having great potential as optical force sensors. In this context, the realization of the distinct structural factors that govern the interactions established between the mesogenic and fluorogenic units at the supramolecular level upon deformation is essential for the development of efficient LSCE-based force sensors. In fact, not only the density of carbazole units and their connection to the main polymer backbone, but also the presence of long range molecular order in the system and the type of mesophase exhibited by the LSCE are key factors for the conception of efficient force sensors based on these self-organized polymer networks.
  • 615
  • 20 Dec 2021
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