Human long bones exhibit pore size gradients with small pores in the exterior cortical bone and large pores in the interior cancellous bone. However, most current bone tissue engineering (BTE) scaffolds only have homogeneous porous structures that do not resemble the graded architectures of natural bones. Pore-size graded (PSG) scaffolds are attractive for BTE since they can provide biomimicking porous structures that may lead to enhanced bone tissue regeneration.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCritical-sized segmental bone defects cannot heal spontaneously, leading to disability and significant increase in mortality. However, current treatments utilizing bone grafts face a variety of challenges from donor availability to poor osseointegration. Drugs such as growth factors increase cancer risk and are very costly.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFElectrolysis of water has emerged as a prominent area of research in recent years. As a promising catalyst support, copper foam is widely investigated for electrolytic water, yet the insufficient mechanical strength and corrosion resistance render it less suitable for harsh working conditions. To exploit high-performance catalyst supports, various metal supports are comprehensively evaluated, and TiAlV (Ti64) support exhibited outstanding compression and corrosion resistance.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFElectrochemical biosensors have emerged as one of the promising tools for tracking human body physiological dynamics via non-invasive perspiration analysis. However, it remains a key challenge to integrate multiplexed sensors in a highly controllable and reproducible manner to achieve long-term reliable biosensing, especially on flexible platforms. Herein, a fully inkjet printed and integrated multiplexed biosensing patch with remarkably high stability and sensitivity is reported for the first time.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF4D printing technology combines 3D printing and stimulus-responsive materials, enabling construction of complex 3D objects efficiently. However, unlike smart soft materials, 4D printing of ceramics is a great challenge due to the extremely weak deformability of ceramics. Here, we report a feasible and efficient manufacturing and design approach to realize direct 4D printing of ceramics.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFScaffolds are an essential component in bone tissue engineering (BTE). However, most of the current BTE scaffolds are homogeneous structures and do not resemble the graded architectures of native bone. In the current study, four types of biomimicking scaffold designs based on gyroid (G) and primitive (P) units with radially graded pore sizes were devised, and scaffolds of these designs with two porosity groups (65 vol% and 75 vol%) were fabricated digital light processing (DLP) 3D printing using biphasic calcium phosphate (BCP).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPorous metal foams (e.g., Ni/Cu/Ti) are applied as catalyst supports extensively for water splitting due to their large specific area and excellent conductivity, however, intrinsic bubble congestion is unavoidable because of the irregular three-dimensional (3D) networks, resulting in high polarization and degraded electrocatalytic performances.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWheat stem rust is one of the wheat diseases caused by Pers. f. sp.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFElectrically assisted water splitting is an endurable strategy for hydrogen production, but the sluggish kinetics of oxygen evolution reaction (OER) extremely restrict the large-scale production of hydrogen. Developing highly efficient and non-precious catalytic materials is essential to accelerate the sluggish kinetics of OER. However, currently used catalyst supports, such as copper foam, suffer from inferior corrosion resistance and structural stability, resulting in the disabled functionality of 3D conductive networks.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe advent of precision manufacturing has enabled the creation of pores in metallic scaffolds with feature size in the range of single microns. In orthopedic implants, pore geometries at the micron scale could regulate bone formation by stimulating osteogenic differentiation and the coupling of osteogenesis and angiogenesis. However, the biological response to pore geometry at the cellular level is not clear.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: To evaluate the manufacturing accuracy of zirconia four-unit fixed dental prostheses (FDPs) fabricated by three different additive manufacturing technologies compared with subtractive manufacturing.
Methods: A total of 79 zirconia FDPs were produced by three different manufacturing technologies, representing additive (one stereolithography [aSLA] and one material jetting [aMJ] device, two digital light processing [aDLP1/aDLP2] devices) and subtractive manufacturing (two devices [s1/s2]), the latter serving as references. After printing, additively manufactured FDPs were debound and finally sintered.
The morphologies and structures of the scaffold have a significant influence on their mechanical and biological properties. In this work, different types of porous structures: Triply periodic minimal surface-Schwarz primitive (P), body-centered cubic, and cubic pore-shaped (CPS) hydroxyapatite scaffolds with ~70% porosity were fabricated through digital light processing (DLP) 3D printing technology. The compressive properties and in vitro cell evaluations such as cell proliferation and attachment morphology of these scaffolds were systematically compared.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThriving oil palm agroindustry comes at a price of voluminous waste generation, with palm oil mill effluent (POME) as the most cumbersome waste due to its liquid state, high strength, and great discharge volume. In view of incompetent conventional ponding treatment, a voluminous number of publications on non-conventional POME treatments is filed in the Scopus database, mainly working on alternative or polishing POME treatments. In dearth of such comprehensive review, all the non-conventional POME treatments are rigorously reviewed in a conceptual and comparative manner.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF3D printing technology, which greatly simplifies the manufacturing of complex parts by a two-dimensional layer-upon-layer process, has flourished in recent years. As one of the most advanced technology, polymer powder 3D printing has many advantages such as high materials utilization rate, free of support structure, great design freedom, and large available materials, which has shown great potential and prospects in various industry applications. With the launch of the Multi jet Fusion system from HP, polymer powder 3D printing has been attracting more attention from industries and researchers.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCoherent modulation imaging (CMI) has been shown to be an effective lensless diffraction approach to imaging general extended samples with fast algorithmic convergence and high robustness to data imperfection. Being a single-shot technique, CMI holds a high potential for imaging dynamics with ultrafast pulses like the ones from free-electron lasers. In the reported work, strong modulators have been suggested for CMI to have the optimal performance, which may be an obstacle for the wide adoption of the method.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn this paper, the synthesis of porous manganese substituted hydroxyapatite (Mn-HAp) coating on zinc oxide (ZnO) coated stainless steel (316L SS) using the electrodeposition technique is reported. The structural, functional, morphological, and elemental analyses are characterized by various analytical techniques including X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). Results of electrochemical techniques such as cyclic polarization and impedance show that the Mn-HAp coating on ZnO coated 316L SS has the highest corrosion resistance in simulated body fluid (SBF) solution.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMater Sci Eng C Mater Biol Appl
March 2017
The Ti-15Zr-5Cr-2Al alloy has been developed and various heat treatments have been investigated to develop new biomedical materials. It is found that the heat treatment conditions strongly affect the phase constitutions and mechanical properties. The as-cast specimen is comprised of β phase and a small fraction of α phase, which is attributed to the suppression of ω phase caused by adding Al.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMulti-walled carbon nanotubes (CNTs) as nano-reinforcements were introduced to facilitate the laser sintering process and enhance the thermal and mechanical properties of polymeric composites. A dual experimental-theoretical method was proposed to evaluate the processability and predict the process parameters of newly developed CNT-coated polyamide 12 (CNTs/PA12) powders. The thermal conductivity, melt viscosity, phase transition and temperature-dependent density and heat capacity of PA12 and CNTs/PA12 powders were characterized for material evaluation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe thermal influence of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) on the PA12 in the laser sintering process was assessed by physical experiments and a three dimensional simulation model. It appears that, by adding the CNTs into the PA12 matrix, the thermal conductivity increased. A double ellipsoidal heat flux model was applied to input a three dimensional, continuous moving, volumetric laser heat source.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe purpose of the present study is to analyze the relationship between the telemetry electroencephalogram (EEG) changes of the prelimbic (PL) cortex and the drug-seeking behavior of morphine-induced conditioned place preference (CPP) rats by using the wavelet packet extraction and entropy measurement. The recording electrode was stereotactically implanted into the PL cortex of rats. The animals were then divided randomly into operation-only control and morphine-induced CPP groups, respectively.
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