Antimicrobial Activity and Degradation Ability Study on Nanoparticle-Enriched Formulations Specially Designed for the Neutralization of Real and Simulated Biological and Chemical Warfare Agents.

The present work reveals a comprehensive decontamination study on real and simulated biological and chemical warfare agents (BCWA). The emphasis was on evaluating the antimicrobial activity against real biological warfare agents, such as , and also the capacity of neutralizing real chemical warfare agents, such as mustard gas or soman, by employing three different types of organic solutions enriched with ZnO, TiO, and zeolite nanoparticles, specially designed for decontamination applications. The capacity of decontaminating BCWA was evaluated through specific investigation tools, including surface monitoring with the swabs method, minimum inhibitory (MIC) and minimum bactericidal concentration (MBC) evaluations, time-kill tests for microorganisms, and GC-MS for monitoring chemical agents on different types of surfaces (glass, painted metal, rubber, and cotton butyl rubber).

Reactive Organic Suspensions Comprising ZnO, TiO, and Zeolite Nanosized Adsorbents: Evaluation of Decontamination Efficiency on Soman and Sulfur Mustard.

This paper comprises an extensive study on the evaluation of decontamination efficiency of three types of reactive organic suspensions (based on nanosized adsorbents) on two real chemical warfare agents: soman (GD) and sulfur mustard (HD). Three types of nanoparticles (ZnO, TiO, and zeolite) were employed in the decontamination formulations, for enhancing the degradation of the toxic agents. The efficacy of each decontamination solution was investigated by means of GC-MS analysis, considering the initial concentration of toxic agent and the residual toxic concentration, measured at different time intervals, until the completion of the decontamination process.

Manufacture of a nothing on insulator nano-structure with two Cr/Au nanowires separated by 18 nm air gap.

Despite the huge number of previous studies of vacuum devices, nanoscale technologies open new paradigms. Vacuum nanodevices bring multiple advantages, such as air instead of a vacuum for the nanometric gap, strong non-linear characteristics, and a metal oxide semiconductor co-integration facility. This paper presents the manufacturing process and measured characteristics of a nano-device that uses a sub-36 nm gap between two Cr/Au nano-wires.