Dual-action silver functionalized nanostructured titanium against drug resistant bacterial and fungal species.

Hypothesis: Titanium and its alloys are commonly used implant materials. Once inserted into the body, the interface of the biomaterials is the most likely site for the development of implant-associated infections. Imparting the titanium substrate with high-aspect-ratio nanostructures, which can be uniformly achieved using hydrothermal etching, enables a mechanical contact-killing (mechanoresponsive) mechanism of bacterial and fungal cells.

TiO/porous adsorbents: Recent advances and novel applications.

This article reviews two interrelated areas of research: the first is the use of TiO-supported adsorbent materials as enhanced heterogeneous photocatalysts and their application to various reactions for organic pollutant removal from air and water; the second is the combination of adsorbent materials with TiO photocatalysts which aims to efficiently regenerate adsorbent materials using illumination. By reviewing both areas of research, the following topics are covered; (i) photocatalytic activation of TiO (ii) related properties of photocatalytic TiO (iii) shortcomings of photocatalytic processes; (iv) preparation methods of composite TiO/adsorbent materials and their photocatalytic performance; (v) properties of common adsorbents and their applications for pollutant removal from air and water; (vi) adsorbent regeneration methods and their economic and operational issues; (vii) conclusions and future outlooks. This topic has not been previously reviewed to such an extent, and considerable knowledge can be gained from assembling the large number of studies on adsorption-photocatalysis combinations.

A self-repairing, supramolecular polymer system: healability as a consequence of donor-acceptor pi-pi stacking interactions.

A novel supramolecular polymer system, in which the terminal pyrenyl groups of a polyamide intercalate into the chain-folds of a polyimide via electronically-complementary pi-pi stacking, shows both enhanced mechanical properties relative to those of its individual components and facile healing characteristics as a result of the thermoreversibility of non-covalent interactions.