Our planet has been challenged for years by our reckless use of fossil fuels, which has led to the ongoing climate change and energy crisis. The transition to the use of renewable alternative sources has now became urgent and inevitable. The valorization o ...
Polymer brushes, which are polymers anchored to a solid substrate by one chainend, have the ability to modify the properties of an underlying substrate, offering
intriguing features such as enhanced lubrication, reduced friction, colloidal stability, and a ...
Strain is an inevitable phenomenon in two-dimensional (2D) material, regardless of whether the film is suspended or supported. Moreover, strain is known to alter the physical and chemical properties, such as the band gap, charge carrier effective masses, d ...
The current reliance on limited petrochemical resources and the resulting ecological outcomes have made the exploration of alternative chemical and energy feedstocks invaluable. As such, the development of sustainable processes with a less harmful total en ...
In this thesis several advances are made to the emerging field of 3D printed mechanical sensors. Techniques and processes were developed to enable the integration of highly conductive, and capacitive and piezoresistive sensing features embedded within 3D p ...
Capillarity plays a crucial role in many natural and engineered systems, ranging from nutrient delivery in plants to functional textiles for wear comfort or thermal heat pipes for heat dissipation. Unlike nano- or microfluidic systems with well-defined por ...
Polymer-derived ceramics (PDCs) exhibit excellent properties and are compatible with many shaping techniques due to the liquid character of the preceramic polymers (PCPs). Furthermore, their properties are adjustable by modifying the precursor composition ...
Elastomer composites are prepared by infiltrating polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) into a porous ceramic structure of nanoparticles. This method differs from the conventional approach, where particles are dispersed into the polymer matrix, since here, the polym ...
In this study, three novel thermoplastic impregnation processes were analyzed towards automotive applications. The first process is thermoplastic compression resin transfer molding in which a glass fiber mat is impregnated in through thickness by a thermop ...
Generating value, in the form of functional chemicals, from biomass is a critical need of today. It is expected that replacing petroleum with biomass as the source of many commodity and fine chemicals can lead the transition away from a fossil-fuel based e ...
Bridges are a critical component of national infrastructures and economies. A significant percentage of bridges built all around the world are made of reinforced concrete which according to building codes have a life span between 80-100 years. However, str ...
The lack of ductility is a major drawback of fibre reinforced polymer (FRP) materials. As it is known, these materials are stiff and strong, but brittle with little or no warning before final failure. In the last decades, some solutions have been proposed ...
