Synthesis of microsphere-loaded porous polymers by combining emulsion and dispersion polymerisations in supercritical carbon dioxide.

Highly porous materials were produced by acrylamide polymerisation templated by supercritical CO(2)-in-water emulsions using new fluorinated glycosurfactants. Properties of the resulting polymer scaffolds were tuned by performing dispersion polymerisations within their cavities filled with supercritical CO(2).

Morphological models of complex ordered materials based on inhomogeneously clipped Gaussian fields.

Clipping a Gaussian random field at a level that is position-dependent yields statistically inhomogeneous morphologies, relevant to many ordered nanostructured materials. The one-point and two-point probability functions of the morphology are derived, as well as a general relation between the specific surface area and the gradient of the clipping function. The general results are particularized for the comprehensive analysis of small-angle x-ray scattering and nitrogen adsorption of SBA-15 ordered mesoporous silica.

Two methods of random seed generation to avoid over-segmentation with stochastic watershed: application to nuclear fuel micrographs.

A stochastic version of the watershed algorithm is obtained by choosing randomly in the image the seeds from which the watershed regions are grown. The output of the procedure is a probability density function corresponding to the probability that each pixel belongs to a boundary. In the present paper, two stochastic seed-generation processes are explored to avoid over-segmentation.

Multiscale image analysis of microcellular solids: application to hybrid silica xerogels.

A general methodology is proposed to characterize microcellular solids, the structure of which consists of a three-dimensional network of filamentary structures. The analysis is based on transmission electron microscopy observation of the filaments individually and of their spatial arrangement. The micrographs are analyzed with grey-tone digital image analysis techniques, such as opening granulometry and correlation analysis.

Non-destructive characterization of deer (Cervus Elaphus) antlers by X-ray microtomography coupled with image analysis.

X-ray microtomography coupled with image analysis was tested as a non-destructive alternative method for the textural characterization of the trabecular part of deer antlers (Cervus Elaphus). As gas adsorption and mercury intrusion cannot be applied on this soft and spongy material, its pore texture was, up to now, determined from histological sections that give only two-dimensional information. In this work, X-ray microtomography is used to scan entire or half pieces of antlers and three-dimensional image analysis is performed in order to assess the differences between samples collected at various antler locations.