Bioinspired materials are designed and engineered to mimic the biological functions of nature; however fast actuation is an important but challenging task to recreate in the lab. In a recent study, Wenxin Fan and co-workers ...
Nacre, also known as mother of pearl is a composite, organic-inorganic material produced in nature in the inner shell layer of molluscs and the outer coating of pearls. The material is resilient and iridescent with high strength ...
Living organisms form biological minerals during biomineralization, where inorganic elements can selectively deposit on specific organic macromolecules under precise control. The process can be divided into biocalcification ...
Methane is a major component in natural gas and one of the most difficult molecules for controlled activation, since most of the product results in carbon dioxide. The industrial conversion of methane to alcohol derivatives ...
Hydrogels are three-dimensional (3-D) polymer networks that can retain large quantities of water in their swollen states for wide applications in bioengineering and materials sciences. Advanced hydrogel fabrication techniques ...
Spider silk is a self-assembling biopolymer with hydrogen bonds underlying its chemical structure, yet despite weak chemical bonding it outperforms most materials relative to mechanical performance. The biopolymer is produced ...
Hydrogels are commonly used as biomaterials for applications in biomedicine due to their biocompatibility. However, the relationship between biological cells and the hydrogel surface is still unclear and the existing parameters ...
Hydrogels are polymer networks infiltrated with water, widely used for tissue engineering vehicles of drug delivery and novel platforms for biomedical engineering. Emerging applications for new hydrogel materials call for ...
A team of researchers at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and Heidelberg University have recently introduced functional 3-D hetero-microstructures based on Poly (N-isopropylacrylamide) (pNIPAM) a polymer that responds ...
A key to materials synthesis is the ability to control the process of reduction kinetics and nucleation (phase transition) in materials. Understanding the reduction dynamics during the initial stage of material synthesis ...
