Improvement of Heat Resistance of Fluorosilicone Rubber Employing Vinyl-Functionalized POSS as a Chemical Crosslinking Agent.

Fluorosilicone rubber (F-LSR) is a promising material that can be applied in various cutting-edge industries. However, the slightly lower thermal resistance of F-LSR compared with that of conventional PDMS is difficult to overcome by applying nonreactive conventional fillers that readily agglomerate owing to their incompatible structure. Polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxane with vinyl groups (POSS-V) is a suitable material that may satisfy this requirement.

Effect of the Particle Size and Layer Thickness of GNP Fillers on the Dielectric Properties and Actuated Strain of GNP-PDMS Composites.

Dielectric elastomer actuators (DEAs), a type of electroactive polymers (EAPs), are smart materials that are used in various fields such as artificial muscles and biomimetic robots. In this study, graphene nanoplatelets (GNPs), which are conductive carbon fillers, were added to a widely used DEA, namely, polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), to improve its low actuated strain. Four grades of GNPs were used: H5, H25, M5, and M25 (here, the number following the letter indicates the average particle size of the GNPs in μm).

Deciphering van der Waals interaction between polypropylene and carbonated fly ash from experimental and molecular simulation.

Pollution emitted from power plants, including a considerable amount of fly ash (FA) and carbon dioxide (CO), annually increases and is challenging from an environmentally friendly and sustainable point of view. To date, laboratory-scaled approaches cannot efficiently replace the FA-landfilling and mitigate the stress from CO emission. Here, a practically operatable fundamental work by combining carbonated FA (C-FA)-immobilizing CO in FA-and polypropylene (PP) matrix is reported and reveals abnormal mechanical and thermal features clarified by calculating van der Waals (vdW) interaction from an atomic scale.

Development and apoptosis of pre-implantation porcine nuclear transfer embryos activated with different combination of chemicals.

Artificial activation of oocytes is a pre-requisite for successful cloning by nuclear transfer (NT). This study investigated effect of different combination of activation chemicals such as electric pulse (E), thimerosal (Thi) + dithiothreitol (DTT), 6-dimethylaminopurine (6-DMAP), or cycloheximide (CH) on the developmental ability and the frequency of apoptosis of porcine NT embryos during the culture in vitro. NT embryos activated with chemicals showed significantly higher developmental rate to blastocyst stage compared to embryos activated with E alone (21.