Article
Engineering, Environmental
Yinuo Li, Tingting Wei, Long Chen, Kaixiang Wang, Yulin Shi
Summary: In this study, a salt/water system is developed for efficient separation of zwitterionic polymer and dye from chemical sludge. It is found that at high salt concentration, the separation factor greatly increases and the regenerated polymer fluids exhibit good reusability.
JOURNAL OF HAZARDOUS MATERIALS
(2022)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Rasool Nasseri, Negin Bouzari, Junting Huang, Hossein Golzar, Sarah Jankhani, Xiaowu (Shirley) Tang, Tizazu H. Mekonnen, Amirreza Aghakhani, Hamed Shahsavan
Summary: This study reports the synthesis of pH-responsive hydrogel nanocomposites with predetermined microstructural anisotropy, shape-transformation, and self-healing. The nanocomposites, composed of zwitterionic monomers and cellulose nanocrystals, exhibit self-healing and cytocompatibility due to the zwitterionic nature of the network. The shear-induced alignment of cellulose nanocrystals results in anisotropic swelling and mechanical properties. The hydrogels can be programmed with reversible and complex deformation using a cut-and-paste approach, and used for transporting light cargo in soft robots.
NATURE COMMUNICATIONS
(2023)
Article
Chemistry, Multidisciplinary
Yuhang Huang, Shangyu Li, Logan W. C. Zettle, Yingshan Ma, Hani E. E. Naguib, Eugenia Kumacheva
Summary: Chronic wounds show high levels of cell-free deoxyribonucleic acid (cfDNA), leading to prolonged inflammation and non-healing wounds. Nanogels derived from chitosan and poly{2-[(acryloyloxy)ethyl]trimethylammonium chloride} were found to scavenge cfDNA efficiently due to their positive charge and network structure. The enhanced cfDNA scavenging ability and biocompatibility of the nanogels make them a promising component for chronic wound dressings.
Article
Nanoscience & Nanotechnology
Zhijuan Sun, Yuting Li, Si Yu Zheng, Shihua Mao, Xiaomin He, Xiaoyu Wang, Jintao Yang
Summary: Intelligent zwitterionic nanocapsules were synthesized using inverse reversible addition fragmentation transfer (RAFT) technique, allowing controlled release of encapsulated substances triggered by salt or temperature variations. The designed nanocapsules with defined core/shell structures and antifouling surfaces show promising applications in biomedical and saline related fields.
ACS APPLIED MATERIALS & INTERFACES
(2021)
Article
Physics, Fluids & Plasmas
Sarah N. Innes-Gold, David R. Jacobson, Philip A. Pincus, Mark J. Stevens, Omar A. Saleh
Summary: The study investigates the local stiffness of flexible biopolymers under varying salt conditions through high-precision single-molecule elasticity measurements. It reveals a power-law scaling relationship between the electrostatic persistence length and ionic strength in monovalent salt solutions, and a regime in mixed salt solutions where the stiffness of PEs is not affected by the addition of monovalent salt. This is attributed to a surrounding jacket of ions regulating the chain's effective charge density as ionic strength changes.
Article
Energy & Fuels
Hao Ma, Stephen Ranimol, Alexandre Cameron
Summary: In this work, a potential surfactant system consisting of a zwitterionic surfactant and an anionic surfactant was proposed to enhance heavy oil recovery in high salinity conditions. The mixed surfactant system exhibited low surface tension and interfacial tension, and could stabilize heavy oil emulsions and improve recovery efficiency.
Article
Polymer Science
Jian Tang, Takuya Katashima, Caidric Indaya Gupit, Xiang Li, Yoshiro Mitsukami, Yuki Yokoyama, Naoyuki Sakumichi, Ung -il Chung, Mitsuhiro Shibayama, Takamasa Sakai
Summary: The swelling behavior of polyelectrolyte gels is influenced by the ambient conditions, including the ionic pressure of the Gibbs-Donnan equilibrium and the conden-sation effect of counterions. This study investigated the swelling properties of polyelectrolyte gels in a divalent CaCl2 salt solution using model polyelectrolyte gels. The results showed that the swelling ratio increased with increasing pH, but the gel showed non-swellability independent of pH with increasing Ca2+ ion concentration.
Article
Biochemical Research Methods
Wouter C. Knol, Till Gruendling, Peter J. Schoenmakers, Bob W. J. Pirok, Ron A. H. Peters
Summary: The chain sequence of copolymers plays a crucial role in determining their physical properties. However, there are limited analytical methods available for monitoring the sequence of copolymers. In this study, the authors investigated the use of pyrolysis - gas chromatography (Py-GC) as an alternative method and successfully combined it with nuclear-magnetic-resonance spectroscopy (NMR) to obtain quantitative information on the chain sequence and composition of random and block copolymers.
JOURNAL OF CHROMATOGRAPHY A
(2022)
Article
Chemistry, Physical
Athena E. Metaxas, Vishal Panwar, Ruth L. Olson, Cari S. Dutcher
Summary: The study shows that increasing ionic strength in solution leads to a decrease in floc size, but the growth rate of flocs initially increases then decreases. Higher ionic strength results in denser bentonite aggregates that are more resistant to shear-induced breakage, but may reduce the ability of the polyelectrolyte to bridge multiple bentonite aggregates.
Article
Chemistry, Multidisciplinary
Juraj Nikolic, Ana Ivancic, Tin Klacic, Davor Kovacevic
Summary: Polyelectrolyte multilayers, a type of nanofilm, have various applications in medicine and food industry. They are attracting attention as potential food coatings for fruit decay prevention during transportation and storage, requiring biocompatibility. This study fabricates biocompatible thin films using chitosan, a positively charged polysaccharide, and carboxymethyl cellulose on a silica surface. By using chitosan as a precursor layer instead of poly-(ethyleneimine), the film thickness and roughness increase. The addition of a biocompatible background salt in the deposition solution can further tune these properties. This straightforward way of adjusting film properties combined with their biocompatibility makes chitosan a promising candidate for food coating applications.
Article
Chemistry, Physical
Illia Dobryden, Medeina Steponaviciute, Daniel Hedman, Vaidas Klimkevicius, Ricardas Makuska, Andra Dedinaite, Xiaoyan Liu, Robert W. Corkery, Per Martin Claesson
Summary: Polymers containing catechol groups have attracted attention for their mimicking of mussel adhesive proteins, allowing strong binding to surfaces underwater. This study evaluates the wear resistance of such polymers using an AFM-based method, comparing different anchoring groups and analyzing wear volume and nanomechanical properties. The study also explores the effect of layer thickness on stiffness and evaluates stick-slip characteristics.
JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY C
(2021)
Article
Nanoscience & Nanotechnology
Yan Liu, Lei Hou, Yucong Jiao, Peiyi Wu
Summary: A non-swelling, solvent-adaptive polymer gel was designed as a quasi-solid state electrolyte for lithium batteries, maintaining high ionic conductivity and mechanical strength. The gel electrolyte showed excellent performance in electrolyte salt dissociation and dendrite inhibition, cycling for over 500 hours under high current density and demonstrating a reversible specific capacity of 70 mAh g(-1) after 300 cycles when paired with LiFePO4 cathode. The rational design of solvophilic/solvophobic zwitterionic elastomers provides guidance for engineering quasi-solid state electrolytes with broad applications in flexible devices.
ACS APPLIED MATERIALS & INTERFACES
(2021)
Article
Nanoscience & Nanotechnology
Ting Zhao, Zhongrui Wang, Yang Yang, Kun Liu, Xu Wang
Summary: This study presents a novel strategy for achieving cyclic and waste-free nonequilibrium assembly and disassembly of macroscopic hydrogels, utilizing an ionic strength-mediated approach. The strategy involves using ammonium carbonate as a chemical fuel to temporally regulate the attractions between oppositely charged hydrogels. This concept holds promise for creating macroscopic and microscopic nonequilibrium systems and self-adaptive materials.
ACS APPLIED MATERIALS & INTERFACES
(2023)
Article
Engineering, Chemical
Daniel Christiansen, Gang Cheng, Shafigh Mehraeen
Summary: In this study, molecular dynamics simulations were used to examine the hydration and ion association properties of zwitterionic polymers with different polymerization and monomer carbon spacer length. The results showed that polymerization increased the residence time of water and ions, while changing the carbon spacer length affected the partial charge of functional groups and the distribution of water and ion interactions. Furthermore, it was found that KCl had higher ionic conductivity than LiCl, which could be explained by the shorter residence time of K+ ions within the polymers.
CHEMICAL ENGINEERING RESEARCH & DESIGN
(2022)
Article
Chemistry, Analytical
Valentina Biagioni, Alpha L. Sow, Alessandra Adrover, Stefano Cerbelli
Summary: Microcapillary hydrodynamic chromatography is a technique for size-based separation, utilizing hindrance effects and improved device design for performance enhancement, with potential for extension to multistage structures.
ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY
(2021)
Article
Engineering, Chemical
Anton B. Kornberg, Michael R. Thompson, Shiping Zhu
Summary: An approach using controlled crazing and post-polymerization was used to incorporate a nanoscaled conductive co-continuous network into commercial ENGAGE(TM) Polyolefin Elastomers (POEs). This approach involved stretching POE films in a reactive mixture of acrylic polymerization precursors to promote crazing and grow a rigid acrylic hydrogel phase. The hydrogel phase provided ion conductivity to the POE.
CANADIAN JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL ENGINEERING
(2023)
Editorial Material
Engineering, Chemical
Andrew Nick Hrymak, Robert Pelton, Shiping Zhu
CANADIAN JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL ENGINEERING
(2023)
Article
Engineering, Chemical
Yichen Wan, Wenlian Qiu, He Zhu, Qi Zhang, Shiping Zhu
Summary: Adhesive materials are extensively used in various industries, and the design principles for high-performance adhesives involve regulating adhesion and cohesion strengths. Compared to permanent covalent bonds, dynamic bonds, such as dynamic covalent and noncovalent bonds, are vulnerable to mechanical stimuli but rebuildable, making them promising for manipulating internal and interfacial energy. This review mainly focuses on discussing the application of dynamic bonds in adhesive materials to regulate adhesion and cohesion, and provides a perspective on future research directions for engineered construction of advanced adhesive materials.
CANADIAN JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL ENGINEERING
(2023)
Review
Engineering, Chemical
Kaka Zhang, Shuaishuai Huang, Qi Zhang, He Zhu, Shiping Zhu
Summary: POSS-based coatings have gained significant attention for their unique structure and desirable properties. The integration of the inorganic POSS cage with organic functional groups allows for different approaches to blend them with polymers. The resulting coatings exhibit excellent mechanical, anti-wetting, anti-corrosive, icephobic, and fire-retardant properties. This review focuses on the latest developments in POSS-based functional coatings and discusses their challenges and future research directions.
CANADIAN JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL ENGINEERING
(2023)
Article
Chemistry, Multidisciplinary
Xiwei Guo, Jiaheng Liang, Zhifen Wang, Jianliang Qin, Qi Zhang, Shiping Zhu, Kun Zhang, He Zhu
Summary: A polycaprolactone-based polyurethane elastomer is designed and prepared to meet the demand for tough, recyclable, and degradable elastomers. It exhibits high toughness and fracture energy, can be recycled multiple times without losing mechanical properties, and can be degraded by lipase. The elastomer also possesses good biocompatibility and promotes wound healing, making it suitable for applications in biomedicine, flexible electronics, and robotics.
ADVANCED MATERIALS
(2023)
Editorial Material
Engineering, Chemical
Joao B. P. Soares, Alexander Penlidis, Hidetaka Tobita, Shiping Zhu
CANADIAN JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL ENGINEERING
(2023)
Review
Engineering, Environmental
Jierui Wang, He Zhu, Shiping Zhu
Summary: Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have garnered much attention for their unique properties, but their powder form limits their industrial applications. This review explores the use of interfacial techniques to shape MOFs into ordered superstructures, such as 0D, 1D, 2D, and 3D structures. The advancements in gas-solid, gas-liquid, liquid-solid, and liquid-liquid interfaces are comprehensively summarized, and future research directions and challenges are discussed briefly.
CHEMICAL ENGINEERING JOURNAL
(2023)
Article
Engineering, Environmental
Xiaoqing Ming, Yifeng Sheng, Le Yao, Xiangrui Li, Yangyu Huang, He Zhu, Qi Zhang, Shiping Zhu
Summary: In this study, an anti-swelling conductive hydrogel was developed based on a polyampholyte copolymer. The hydrogel exhibited high transparency, remarkable mechanical properties, and good ionic conductivity. It was capable of sensing accurate and stable electro-mechanic responses, making it suitable for strain sensors in monitoring human motions both in air and underwater. Furthermore, the unique material allowed for dynamic information storage.
CHEMICAL ENGINEERING JOURNAL
(2023)
Article
Engineering, Environmental
Yang Xiang, Xiwei Guo, He Zhu, Qi Zhang, Shiping Zhu
Summary: Previous research has mainly focused on improving the Seebeck coefficient and electrical conductivity while neglecting thermal conductivity. In this study, an aqueous biphasic system is introduced as a solvent to fabricate electrolytes for liquid-state thermocells. The aqueous biphasic electrolytes can provide different solvation environments and suppress thermal convection, leading to an increase in the Seebeck coefficient and a decrease in thermal conductivity. Experimental results show that using the aqueous biphasic electrolyte leads to a doubling of the Seebeck coefficient and an over 5 times improvement in output power for the thermocell. Furthermore, using porous graphite felt as the electrode material can further improve the output power by over 7 times.
CHEMICAL ENGINEERING JOURNAL
(2023)
Article
Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence
Qinyao Chang, Shiping Zhu
Summary: Inspired by human vision attention mechanism, this study proposes a saliency detection model, TSFP-Net, which utilizes multilevel features and time information to improve accuracy. The model extracts multiscale temporal-spatial features from input video frames and generates a saliency map through hierarchical decoding. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms state-of-the-art methods on video saliency benchmarks.
COGNITIVE COMPUTATION
(2023)
Article
Materials Science, Multidisciplinary
Xiangyang Liu, Qi Zhang, He Zhu, Shiping Zhu
Summary: The increase in CO2 concentration in the atmosphere has led to global warming, and adsorption is considered an effective method for CO2 capture and stabilization. Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are promising materials for carbon capture, but using MOF powders directly may lead to practical issues. A phase inversion strategy is reported here to prepare SIFSIX-3-Ni@PAN composite beads with hierarchically porous structure and good mechanical stability. The obtained materials have high CO2 capture capacity even at low CO2 concentrations.
MACROMOLECULAR MATERIALS AND ENGINEERING
(2023)
Editorial Material
Polymer Science
Tian-Tian Wang, Yin-Ning Zhou, Zheng-Hong Luo, Shiping Zhu
Summary: This article introduces the importance of dispersity in the field of polymerization and traces the development of explicit equations for calculating dispersity. It highlights the application and mathematical manipulations of these equations in reversible-deactivation radical polymerization. Additionally, it showcases their role in emerging applications.
Article
Materials Science, Multidisciplinary
Yuanfeng Wang, Zilin Yu, Jinhao Xie, Lei Ding, Jiechang Liang, Wenqing He, Shiguo Chen, Shiping Zhu
Summary: By imitating the muscle-cartilage structure of Skate fin and using a twill cotton fabric as the supporting cartilage, the mechanical strength and environmental tolerance of SRP actuators are improved. With the unique twill pattern and micro-nano substructure of the fabric layer, the prepared SRP actuator exhibits anisotropic actuation and fast wet recovery, enhancing its versatility.
ADVANCED MATERIALS TECHNOLOGIES
(2023)
Article
Polymer Science
Wenlian Qiu, Yi Huang, He Zhu, Qi Zhang, Shiping Zhu
Summary: We report a biomimetic dry underwater adhesive that is free of catechol chemistry and can adhere well to various substrate surfaces underwater. The adhesive is prepared by ternary copolymerization of monomers with nonphenolic aromatic groups, cations, and polar side chains, and exhibits hydrophobicity, mechanical toughness, and good interfacial bonding in water.
Article
Chemistry, Multidisciplinary
Le Yao, Xiaoqing Ming, Chengjiang Lin, Xiaozheng Duan, He Zhu, Shiping Zhu, Qi Zhang
Summary: This article reports a humidity-responsive ionogel based on a poly(benzyl methacrylate) matrix, which shows an anomalous decrease in ionic conductivity upon increased humidity. The conductive pathway within the ionogel can be shut down spontaneously above a critical relative humidity but perfectly reverses when the ambient humidity drops.
