Electroactive Thermo-Pneumatic Soft Actuator with Self-Healing Features: A Critical Evaluation.

Soft actuators that operate with overpressure have been successfully implemented as soft robotic grippers. Naturally, as these pneumatic devices are prone to cuts, self-healing properties are attractive. Here, we prepared a gripper that operates based on the liquid-gas phase transition of ethanol within its hollow structure.

Concentration Dependent Single Chain Properties of Poly(sodium 4-styrenesulfonate) Subjected to Aromatic Interactions with Chlorpheniramine Maleate Studied by Diafiltration and Synchrotron-SAXS.

The polyelectrolyte poly(sodium 4-styrenesulfonate) undergoes aromatic-aromatic interaction with the drug chlorpheniramine, which acts as an aromatic counterion. In this work, we show that an increase in the concentration in the dilute and semidilute regimes of a complex polyelectrolyte/drug 2:1 produces the increasing confinement of the drug in hydrophobic domains, with implications in single chain thermodynamic behavior. Diafiltration analysis at polymer concentrations between 0.

Maleimide Self-Reaction in Furan/Maleimide-Based Reversibly Crosslinked Polyketones: Processing Limitation or Potential Advantage?

Polymers crosslinked via furan/maleimide thermo-reversible chemistry have been extensively explored as reprocessable and self-healing thermosets and elastomers. For such applications, it is important that the thermo-reversible features are reproducible after many reprocessing and healing cycles. Therefore, side reactions are undesirable.

Thermally Switchable Electrically Conductive Thermoset rGO/PK Self-Healing Composites.

Among smart materials, self-healing is one of the most studied properties. A self-healing polymer can repair the cracks that occurred in the structure of the material. Polyketones, which are high-performance thermoplastic polymers, are a suitable material for a self-healing mechanism: a furanic pendant moiety can be introduced into the backbone and used as a diene for a temperature reversible Diels-Alder reaction with bismaleimide.

Dosimetric and Contrast Noise Ratio Comparison of Three Different Digital Imaging Technologies in Mammography.

Purpose: The purpose of the study was to compare the three most common technologies available in digital mammography based in the evaluation of average glandular dose and contrast noise ratio (CNR).

Method: The average glandular dose was estimated with a direct digital detector (aSe) with a pixel size of 0.85 μm, a photon counter with a pixel size of 50 μm and a computerized radiography (CR) system.

Electrically Self-Healing Thermoset MWCNTs Composites Based on Diels-Alder and Hydrogen Bonds.

In this work, we prepared electrically conductive self-healing nanocomposites. The material consists of multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT) that are dispersed into thermally reversible crosslinked polyketones. The reversible nature is based on both covalent (Diels-Alder) and non-covalent (hydrogen bonding) interactions.