Publications related to Aerogel

Localized Ionic Reinforcement of Double Network Granular Hydrogels

Nature produces soft materials with fascinating combinations of mechanical properties. For example, the mussel byssus embodies a combination of stiffness and toughness, a feature that is unmatched by synthetic hydrogels. Key to enabling these excellent mec ...

Wiley-V C H Verlag Gmbh2024

4D printing of Metal-Reinforced double network granular hydrogels

Esther Amstad, Josephine Anna Eleanor Hughes, Matteo Hirsch, Qinghua Guan, Livia D'Onofrio

Recent developments in soft actuation demand for resilient, responsive materials with locally varying compositions that are sufficiently stiff to exhibit significant actuation forces. Hydrogels are inherently responsive to certain stimuli. Yet, they typica ...

2023

Controlling the Microstructure and Composition of 3D Printed Soft Load-Bearing Hydrogels

Matteo Hirsch

Hydrogels are among the first materials expressly designed for their use in biomedicine. However, state-of-the-art applications of hydrogels are severely limited because they are typically either too soft or too brittle such that they cannot bear significa ...

EPFL2023

Silica aerogel as rear reflector in silicon heterojunction solar cells for improved infrared response

Deniz Türkay

Silicon (Si), with its indirect bandgap, is a non-ideal absorber. Thus, various strategies to boost silicon solar cells' efficiency, including advanced texturing, multilayer anti-reflecting coating, and rear reflectors are utilized. Dielectrics, deposited ...

ELSEVIER2023

Fractal Analysis of Four Xerogels Based on TEGylated Phenothiazine and Chitosan

Maria-Alexandra Paun

The present article describes novel massive materials (in the solid phase) based on TEGylated phenothiazine and chitosan that possess great capability to recover mercury ions from constituent aqueous solutions. These were produced by chitosan hydrogelation ...

MDPI2023

High-Density Immobilization of TCEP on Silica Beads for Efficient Disulfide Reduction and Thiol Alkylation in Peptides

Christian Heinis

Tris-(2-carboxyethyl)phosphine (TCEP) linked to agarose beads is widely used for reducing disulfide bridges in proteins and peptides. The immobilization of TCEP on beads allows efficient removal after reduction to prevent its reaction with alkylating reage ...

2023

Modulating the Surface Properties of Lithium Niobate Nanoparticles by Multifunctional Coatings Using Water-in-Oil Microemulsions

Sandrine Gerber, Alessandra Spada, Adrian Stefan Gheata, Manon Inès Noëlla Wittwer

Inorganic nanoparticles (NPs) have emerged as promising tools in biomedical applications, owing to their inherent physicochemical properties and their ease of functionalization. In all potential applications, the surface functionalization strategy is a key ...

2023

The role of cavitation in drying cementitious materials

Karen Scrivener, Mohsen Ben Haha, Monisha Rastogi

This study examines the role of cavitation in drying cementitious materials. Classical nucleation theory is used to understand and study the parameters that influence cavitation pressures. The water desorption isotherms indicate that both heterogeneous and ...

Pergamon-Elsevier Science Ltd2022

Role of Stress History on the Swelling-Shrinkage Behavior of Compacted Scaly Clay

Alessio Ferrari

Compacted scaly clays are complex geomaterials widely used for the realization of dam cores and waste dump liners. This research aims to investigate the swelling/shrinkage behavior of these geomaterials subjected in an oedometric cell to complex hydromecha ...

ASCE-AMER SOC CIVIL ENGINEERS2022

Abnormal temperature dependent elastic properties of fused silica irradiated by ultrafast lasers

Yves Bellouard, Pieter Vlugter

Materials with thermal-invariant elastic properties are of interest for resonant device frequency and dimensional stability of precision devices. Here, we demonstrate that the temperature coefficient of elasticity (TCE) of amorphous silica can be locally r ...

2022

Femtosecond laser-shockwave induced densification in fused silica

Yves Bellouard, Pieter Vlugter, Arunkrishnan Radhakrishnan, Julien Gilles Edgar Gateau

A tightly focused femtosecond laser-beam in the non-ablative regime can induce a shockwave sufficiently intense to reach local pressures in the giga-Pascal range or more. In a single beam configuration, the location of the highest-pressure zone is nested w ...

2022

Mechanical reinforcement of granular hydrogels

Esther Amstad, Francesca Bono, Alvaro Lino Boris Charlet

Granular hydrogels are composed of hydrogel-based microparticles, so-called microgels, that are densely packed to form an ink that can be 3D printed, injected or cast into macroscopic structures. They are frequently used as tissue engineering scaffolds bec ...

ROYAL SOC CHEMISTRY2022

Particle Size Effects in Ru/CNF Catalysts during Supercritical Water Gasification of Glycerol

Oliver Kröcher, Frédéric Vogel, David Baudouin, Ayush Agarwal

Ru/CNF catalysts of different Ru nanoparticle (NP) sizes (0.9-2.7 nm) were assessed for their performance in continuous supercritical water gasification (SCWG) of glycerol. A structure sensitivity of Ru was demonstrated, with high initial turnover frequenc ...

2022

Strong silicon oxide inclusions in iron

Andreas Mortensen, Léa Deillon, Alejandra Inés Slagter, Joris Pierre Everaerts

Oxide inclusions are ubiquitous in steel and are known to affect, generally in a negative sense, the mechanical performance of steel products. Micromechanical properties of those phases are therefore important, yet they have remained largely unexplored. We ...

2022

Computational micromechanics of porous brittle solids

Johan Alexandre Philippe Gaume, Henning Löwe, Lars Kristoffer Uhlen Blatny, Stephanie Wang

Porous brittle solids evidence complex mechanical behavior, where localized failure patterns originate from mechanical processes on the microstructural level. In order to investigate the failure mechanics of porous brittle solids, we outline a general stoc ...

2021

The effect of alkali hydroxides and equilibration time on Al uptake by calcium silicate hydrates (C-S-H)

Sonya Barzgar

Cement production accounts for approximately 8% of man-made CO2 emissions. Lowering these CO2 emissions is currently one of the most important and urgent research topics within the cement community. To reduce these emissions, the Portland cement (PC) is pa ...

EPFL2021

In-operando dynamic visualization of flow through porous preforms based on X-ray phase contrast imaging

Véronique Michaud, Baris Çaglar, Helena Luisa Teixido Pedarros

Direct visualization is often sought to elucidate flow patterns and validate models to predict the filling kinetics during processes whereby a liquid resin infiltrates a textile porous preform. Here, X-ray phase contrast interferometry is evaluated to imag ...

2021

Silica-copper catalyst interfaces enable carbon-carbon coupling towards ethylene electrosynthesis

Michael Graetzel, Dan Ren, Yelin Hu, Jun Li, Reza Zamani, Xiaoyan Wang, Ziyun Wang, Yi Xu

Membrane electrode assembly (MEA) electrolyzers offer a means to scale up CO2-to-ethylene electroconversion using renewable electricity and close the anthropogenic carbon cycle. To date, excessive CO2 coverage at the catalyst surface with limited active si ...

Nature Research2021

Design and Development of Injectable, Tough and Intrinsically-Adhesive Hydrogels for Biomedical Applications

Peyman Karami

Despite the development of hydrogels with a wide range of mechanical properties, insufficient adhesion between these materials and biological surfaces limits their use in the biomedical applications. Most recent advancements in highly adhesive hydrogel sys ...

EPFL2021

Microstructural controls of anticrack nucleation in highly porous brittle solids

Johan Alexandre Philippe Gaume, Henning Löwe, Jonas Ritter

Porous brittle solids have the ability to collapse and fail even under compressive stresses. In fracture mechanics, this singular behavior, often referred to as anticrack, demands for appropriate continuum models to predict the catastrophic failure. To ide ...

Nature Research2020