In this presentation we will give a short overview of the pathway of the associate laboratory LaPMET-Laboratory of Physics for Materiais and Emergent Technologies, from the initial idea to to the underway implementation.
This presentation will give a brief overview of the research being performed at IFIMUP in the "Advanced materials and processes for Energy" research area.
An overview of the activities made at C2TN in the thematic line of the Advanced Materials and Processes for Energy will be presented. Special emphasis will be given to the main activities made in this area at C2TN, in particular in the fields of thermoelectric materials and technology, as well as in intermetallics for hydrogen storage, biofuel production by organic materials irradiation and...
Energy considerations are essential in nowadays society and increasingly dependent on mobility and interconnectivity with the need to reduce the environmental impacts related to fossil fuels. The Centre of Physics at the University of Minho is undergoing competitive research in advanced materials for energy. Senen Lanceros is very active in the field of high energy density batteries,...
This keynote talk will briefly present the ongoing research in the Center of Physics and Engineering of Advanced Materials (CeFEMA) on the topic of Advanced Materials and Processes for Energy. The CeFEMA team members working in this topic come from the following groups: MemChem - Membranes, Chemical and Electrochemical Processes Group; LASYP - Laser-Assisted Synthesis and Processing Group;...
This talk aims at presenting the ongoing work in quantum materials, in progress at IFIMUP – LaPMET. After a short overview of the different ongoing research vectors, we will discuss two important examples involving static and dynamic excitations in order to stabilize hidden phases in non-equilibrium state, taking advantage of the strongly correlation between different excitations, the...
Materials and Technologies for Health and Environment @ CF-UM-UP
The research activities at C2TN´s Health and Environment areas are represented in 2 of the 3 Thematic Strands of the centre. In this seminar we will present the activities performed under the Radiopharmaceutical Sciences and Heath Physics (RSHP) thematic area as well as the research in the Earth Systems, Radioactivity and Cultural Heritage (ESRCH) area.
In the RSHP area the scientific...
Cancer is the second cause of death in Europe and is expected to increase due to the climate changes and population ageing. Early stage detection and effective treatments are keystones to reduce cancer mortality. Nanotechnological systems has been recently demonstrated that are able to perform localized treatment with improved efficiency and reduced side effects. Among the several types of...
This presentation will address the studies on Advanced Materials and Technologies for Health and Environment carried out by researchers at CeFEMA, namely for the efficient production of drinking water, the development of biosensors and medical devices which provide support for vital organs such as kidneys and lungs, the provision of disease diagnosis and targeted therapies, and the mitigation...
Thanks to the development of micro-electronics, sensors can be found everywhere in industry from food engineering to fashion computer design. These sensors can be operating at the complex nature-animal interface, process gigantic volumes of information in real time.
According to MarketandMarket, the Industrial Sensors market will grow from USD 18.2 billion in 2020 to USD 29.0 billion by...
Our group fabricates and develops radiation detectors based on emulsions of superheated liquid droplets in a compatible gel matrix. The operation at reduced superheat renders the devices insensitive to minimum ionising particles that plague a variety of experiments aiming at the detection rare events induced by heavy/ier particles. The superheated emulsion is therefore an excellent tool for...
New Principles and Technologies for Sensing @ FC-UM-UP
TBA
Significant efforts are being made to develop nanoscale electronic devices capable of emulating the dynamics of natural synapses to be integrated into neuromorphic circuits. Furthermore, to couple different neuronal populations via such artificial synapses bears great potential for therapeutic strategies focused on the monitoring and control of neuronal electrical activity. Such hybrid...
In order to substitute lead zirconate-titanate (PZT) based materials, due to its poisonous nature, some promising piezoelectric and friendly environment compounds are attracting growing attention, namely KxNa(1-x)NbO3 [1]. For the case of x=0.5, K0.5Na0.5NbO3 (KNN), the high-temperature cubic symmetry changes to a non-symmetric ferroelectric tetragonal structure at T3=700 K, becoming...
Hybrid materials based on ionic liquids (ILs) and polymers represent an emerging and interesting approach for an increasing number of applications, including sensors and actuators [1], as it represents a versatile way to produce particle free multifunctional materials with reduced environmental impact.
In this work, transparent piezoionic hybrid materials based on a thermoplastic elastomer...
Since the first demonstration of the possibility of manipulating the magnetization using femtosecond (fs) laser pulses performed by Beaurepaire et al. in 1996 [1], time-resolved pump-probe measurements based on the magneto-optical Kerr or Faraday effects have provided an invaluable tool for the study of ultrafast magnetic dynamics in many relevant systems [2]. Although rapid advances in...
As gluons, the force carriers of strong interactions, have color charge; the gluonic field is squeezed in space-time due to the self interaction and forms a flux tube in the vacuum; this is in contrast to the electromagnetic field spreading out in space. The dominant behavior of the flux tube is string-like, hence, it can be modeled with a thin relativistic string. The quantization of the...
Colour centers in diamond are in the focus of interest as single
photon emitters for quantum (Q) technologies. Q metrology has
already been demonstrated using the nitrogen-vacancy NV− center,
which has the crystal symmetry C3. However, defects with
D3d mirror symmetry, such as the group IV centers [1] SiV,
GeV, SnV and PbV, but also MgV, show optical properties superior
to...
The transfer of energy from semiconductor Quantum Dots (QDs) to Graphene in hybrid structures provides a rich environment to explore excitation dynamics in heterogeneous hybrid systems The photo-physical properties of QDs can be predictably fine-tuned by size selection, and Graphene can also be doped, with the aim of producing well-defined conditions for photoexcitation and energy transfer....
Spintronics has seen remarkable progress in the last decades. By combining well known concepts like Giant and Tunneling magnetoresistance with spin torques and control of domain walls, developments are foreseen in data storage [1] and logic, with new devices like the magnetoelectric spin-orbit MESO logic device [2]. New materials and nanostructures have also allowed several breakthroughs, from...
The dynamics of electrons in graphene can be described by a two-dimensional (2D) Dirac equation. Graphene is a two dimensional material embedded in three dimensions and is assumed to define a 2D flat surface. However, one expects deviations from flatland. Structural corrugations and ripples, have been observed in suspended graphene, and furthermore, atomistic simulations have shown that...
We present an ab-initio study performed by means of Density Functional Theory (DFT), group-subgroup symmetry analysis and lattice dynamics to probe the properties of the octahedral distortions, which occur during the structural phase transitions [1]. We mainly focus our study on the Sr3Hf2O7 (SHO) system, which is characterized by a high-temperature I4/mmm (S.G. 139) centrosymmetric structure...
It is shown that the presence of discrete symmetries in Floquet systems connected to metallic reservoirs imprints a definite parity on the charge and heat pumping as a function of the reservoir's chemical potential, $\mu$. In particular, when particle-hole symmetry (PHS) holds, the pumping of charge (heat) is an odd (even) function of $\mu$. Whereas, if only the product of PHS and parity...
Naturally layered perovskites have been studied in the designing of novel functional materials, ranging from superconductors to multiferroics, including the recently discovered hybrid improper ferroelectrics, to materials that exhibit negative thermal expansion [1,2]. Particularly, the Ruddlesden-Popper family with general formula CaO(CaMnO3)n has gained considerable interest, where the...
We studied the localization properties of electrons in incommensurate twisted bilayer graphene, for twist angles encompassing the narrow-band regime, by numerically exact means.
Incommensurability effects were found to induce states with sub-ballistic properties in the narrow-band regime. These states are delocalized in momentum-space and follow non-Poissonian level statistics, in contrast...
Spatial soliton is the wavepacket, which can propagate in nonlinear media without losing its shape due to the perfect balance between the dispersion and the nonlinearity. In this poster we consider solitons as special solutions of nonlinear Schrödinger equation. In its turn nonlinear Schrödinger equation describes various physical systems and objects like matter waves in Bose-Einstein...
In multiferroic systems, the coupling between electric and magnetic properties gives birth to new tactics to conceive novel technological architectures. The mechanism of ferroelectricity is crucial to materials with high magnetoelectric coupling. As a result, the discovery of hybrid improper ferroelectric (HIF) materials opened new routes for multiferroics design. The Ruddlesden-Popper (RP)...
Most of our knowledge on the quantum physics of electrons in crystalline matter is based on Bloch’s Theorem [1]. This important result states that electrons move like plane-waves across any spatially periodic potential and forms the basis of the electronic band theory of solids. Despite its success in explaining most properties observed in real-life conductors and semi- conductors, exceptional...
In this work, we study the semiclassical dynamics of non-Hermitian quantum systems in
phase space. The non-Hermitian semiclassical dynamics of Gaussian coherent states is
described by a system of equations for the motion of the center and of the metric associated
with the wave packet, which we call the intrinsic geometry of the state [1,2] . The inclusion of a
non-Hermitian part leads to...
A proposal to study topological models beyond the standard topological classification and that exhibit breakdown of Lorentz invariance is presented. The focus of the investigation relies on their anisotropic quantum critical behavior. We study anisotropic effects on three-dimensional ($3$D) topological models, computing their anisotropic correlation length critical exponent $\nu$ obtained from...
Abstract: The description of several light-matter interaction phenomena at the nanoscale requires a quantum description of the electromagnetic field. This task is complicated when the electromagnetic field does not exist in a vacuum, but permeates a dielectric medium. In this case, the photons of the electromagnetic field couple to the dielectric degrees of freedom, giving origin to hybrid...
Semiconductor quantum dots (QDs) are considered ideal building blocks to produce materials with specific photonic and spectroscopic properties. The possibility of controlling their properties such as size and doping during preparation facilitates the fine tuning of their optical properties such as absorption and emission spectra. The optical properties of QDs are affected by their environment...
Topological phases of matter have been used as a fertile realm of intensive discussions about fermionic fractionalization. In this work, we study the effects of anisotropic superconducting correlations in the fermionic fractionalization on the topological phases. We consider a hybrid version of the SSH and Kitaev models with an anisotropic superconducting order parameter to investigate the...
In this poster we address the problem of detecting phase transitions without prior knowledge of a suitable order parameter. To this end, we propose a notion of metric based on the distance between single-particle covariance matrices. Unlike the well-known fidelity susceptibility, this quantity is accessible to commonly employed numerical techniques and can potentially serve as a versatile...
In this poster, we will explore the principles of quantum digital simulation of the time evolution of quantum systems.
One of the greatest challenges of the 21st century is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, while keeping the standard of living, by using more clean and renewable energy sources. Sunlight is by far the most abundant renewable source of energy, exceeding the potential of all other energy sources, and capable of supplying the present and projected world’s energy demands. Photoelectrochemical...
Nowadays, mobility, convenience, and safety of electronic devices are concerns present in our day-to-day life. Considering that everyday life small devices have a low-power consumption (mW or nW), the search for simple alternative energy sources is rapidly increasing. Energy Harvesting (EH) technology emerges as an excellent solution for this type of application, replacing batteries and...
Multiferroic materials have been under the spotlight due to their fundamental scientific interest and for potential applications in technology. Among these interesting materials are the group of compounds belonging to the Pyroxene family with general chemical formula AM(Si,Ge)2O6. More specifically, SrMnGe2O6 [1] and CaMnGe2O6[2] are isostructural, crystallizing with monoclinic C2/c symmetry...
There is a great need to control the thermal expansion (TE) in the technology industry, where devices can be degraded due to differences in TE. Negative thermal expansion (NTE) arises as a key to customize the TE. [1] Recent advances at the nanoscale, more precisely nanomaterials with 1D architecture have revealed that TE is a size-dependent feature. [2] FeCo alloys thin films have been...
In Europe, buildings are responsible for over 40% of energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, so that improving their sustainability is a much-needed demand for the construction sector. To reduce energy use and CO2 emissions, it is necessary to contain as much as possible the energy requirements of a building [1]. Among the several solutions studied, the development of materials with...
Thermoelectric generators (TEG’s) are devices able of converting waste heat into usable electricity through the Seebeck effect, which makes them very attractive to fight against global warming. To develop novel TEG’s, made of more sustainable, cheap, and less toxic materials, many crucial aspects need to be considered. The nature and quality of the interface between the TE materials and the...
Population growth and improved lifestyle are responsible for the increase in energy demand. The commitment to renewable energies and batteries for energy storage represent one of the solutions to support continuous energy demands. Lithium-ion batteries (LIB) have the advantage over other batteries with respect to higher energy density by mass and volume, which allows smaller and lighter...
Recently, the demand for intelligent textiles and smart materials is growing in the world motivated by the market requests for innovative high-performance products [1]. Electrochemical energy storage systems like supercapacitors (SCs) are promising technologies to develop smart functionalities on textiles, particularly for the area of health and wellness [2]. Screen-printing has long been used...
Energy harvesting devices allowing to recover wasted energy from the environment are increasingly developed. Mechanical energy is the most interesting sources of power for energy harvesting and piezoelectric materials present excellent overall properties for the scavenging of wasted energy. Piezoelectric polymers and, in particular, polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF), show appropriate mechanical...
Ocean related activities are often supported by offshore equipment with particular power demands. These are usually deployed at remote locations and have limited space, thus small energy harvesting technologies, such as photovoltaic panels or wind turbines, are used to power their instruments. However, the inherent energy sources are intermittent and have lower density and predictability than...
The ion beam analytical (IBA) techniques capabilities are enhanced when coupled to a scanning nuclear microprobe due to the possibility of: i) focusing the beam to sub-micrometer spot sizes and, ii) rastering the area under analysis. In this way, it is possible to obtain elemental distribution maps and the elemental depth profile in a fully quantitative manner.
The type of materials...
The anaerobic digestion of macroalgae is known for being a possible process to obtain biogas. However, due to the high organization of the macroalgae molecular structure, a pre-treatment is usually needed to improve the biogas production. In this context, gamma irradiation can be used as an alternative pre-treatment aiming to improve the digestibility of polysaccharides and other carbohydrates...
An important challenge of this century is to focus on the production of renewable and sustainable energy, which thrives on research in the development of photovoltaic (PV) materials [1] (solar energy to electricity) and photoelectrochemical (PEC) water-splitting materials (solar energy into chemical energy) [2]. Among the various PV and PEC materials, perovskite structured oxides (ABO3 where...
Currently available commercial thermoelectric generators contain expensive and potentially hazardous elements, such as Bi, Pb or Te. To overcome this hindrance, the application of alternative materials, like the p-type semiconductor mineral tetrahedrite (Cu12Sb4S13), is being studied. Tetrahedrite is a naturally occurring and abundant mineral with low toxicity that displays good electrical and...
This work intends to develop a theoretical model for the membrane processes on direct liquid fuel cells, particularly the direct borohydride-peroxide fuel cell (DBPFC), as a first step to create a numerical model. The DBPFC is based on the anodic oxidation of sodium borohydride (NaBH4) in alkaline solution with the simultaneous cathodic reduction of hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) in acid media. As...
Naturally Layered Perovskite structures with improper ferroelectricity [1, 2], such as the Ruddlesden-Popper calcium manganite compound Ca3Mn2O7, offer an alternative route to achieve non-expensive and high-performance room temperature multiferroic magnetoelectricity for information storage, sensors, and actuators or low power energy-efficient electronics. They allow exploring oxygen octahedra...
We present an ab-initio study performed by means of Density Functional Theory (DFT) and lattice dynamics to probe the octahedral distortions, which occur during the structural phase transitions of the quasi-2D layered perovskite Sr$_3$Hf$_2$O$_7$ compound. Such a system is characterized by a high-temperature I4/mmm (space group n. 139) centro-symmetric structure and a ground-state Cmc2$_1$...
The growing concerns on environmental impact require a new generation of materials and processes for sustainable electronics and energy storage systems [1]. In this scope, additive manufacturing techniques arise as an effective process to improve the sustainability of device fabrication [2]. In this work, direct-ink-writing was used to produce poly (vinylidene fluoride-co-hexafluoropropylene)...
Zirconia and hafnia based thin films have attracted considerable attention in the last decade due to the existence of a ferroelectric behavior at the nanoscale, which can enable the downscaling of the next-generation of non-volatile memory and energy storage devices [1,2].
In this presentation an overview regarding the recent advances on these materials will be given [2]. Then, our most...
The design of a transparent thermoelectric material is a promising technology for touch–screen displays and solar cell applications, rendering a more sustainable powering of the device. In order to enhance the thermoelectric performance, the films must have a high Seebeck coefficient, high electrical but low thermal conductivity [1]. For this purpose, ZnO thin films were deposited by magnetron...
Strong efforts are being carried out looking for efficient, clean and renewable energy sources to meet the decarbonization goals. With respect to solar energy, thin film photovoltaic (PV) systems based on CuInxGa1-xSe2 (CIGS) deserve special attention, due to its outstanding opto-electronic properties. Despite the high-efficiency devices produced by vacuum deposition processes, non-vacuum ones...
Thin and flexible micro thermoelectric generators (𝜇 -TEGs) are being envisaged as alternative power sources in the last decade [1]. They constitute a new business opportunity for the packaging industry such self-powered wearable mobile electronics and/or to be used on remote places for low power consumption devices. One approach to achieve this goal are by producing thin films using composite...
The recently-observed[1] self-assembly of salphen-based metal-organic frameworks (MOF) into networks of interconnected microrings with nano-thin strings may suggests a new intriguing tool for nanoscale patterning. In particular, their ability to align very small amounts of carbon nanotubes into ultra-low density percolating network promises a breakthrough in creating highly transparent...
Thermoelectric materials are important for power-generation devices that can convert waste heat into electrical energy. This conversion may have an important role in the current challenge for the development of alternative energy technologies.
In the present work, the intermetallic thermoelectric materials with the formula RCu9Sn4 (R=Nd, Pr, La, Y) and their stoichiometric variations...
Multiferroic composite materials are of great interest for technological applications due to the magnetoelectric coupling effect, by which an electric (magnetic) field may be used to control the magnetization (polarization). Being insulators, these materials find application in low power energy efficient electronics, due to their low joule heating effect. In the form of thin films the...
The modern world is facing a growing number of interconnected electronic devices in the scope of the Industry 4.0 and Internet of things concepts. As the technology develops and the devices get smaller, lighter and portable, the need for more efficient storage systems capable of powering these devices arises as a critical challenge. Despite their widespread use and strong position as leader in...
Keeping devices operating at adequate temperatures is necessary for numerous technological areas. One innovative component that can contribute to this control is the thermal switch (TS). TSs rely on the switching of thermal resistance between two states: during the “on” (“off”) state, the thermal resistance is minimized (maximized), thus maximizing (minimizing) the heat transfer. In this...
Alkaline water electrolysis offers a possibility of producing hydrogen gas without consuming fossil fuels. Namely, the use of electricity from renewable energy sources makes the electrolysis process green and hydrogen gas a green energy carrier, enabling switching from carbon-based to green and sustainable energy sources. However, most of the global hydrogen is currently still produce by the...
Three different Pt-M (M = Ni,Fe,Cu) based electrocatalysts were synthetised via simultaneous supercritical carbon dioxide (scCO2) deposition technique of nanoparticles on graphene nanoplatelets (GNPs). These were tested as electrocatalysts for oxygen reduction (ORR) and oxygen evolution (OER) reaction in metal-air batteries and unitized regenerative fuel cells (URFCs). Primary metal (Pt) and...
The scope of this research line is to investigate a new class of ferroelectric (FE) oxides with tuned band-gap (Eg) to address multiple photovoltaic (PV) key-mechanisms that will enable to develop a groundbreaking approach to the design of solar cells (SC): i) Eg ≤1.5 eV optimized for solar radiance absorption; ii) Non-centrosymmetric structure upholding FE Polarization (P) >50 µC/cm2 and Tc...
Cancer remains a worldwide leading death cause, prompting the necessity to develop new therapeutic solutions [1]. Current cancer chemotherapeutic agents can induce toxicity, even at therapeutic doses, and become ineffective by multidrug resistance (MDR) development. Furthermore, traditional synthesis of treatment and imaging agents promote some undesirable toxicity.
Doxorubicin (DOX) is a...
Radiolabeled amino acids for assessment of increased rates of amino acid transport in cancer cells continue to gain importance in cancer imaging. Radiotracers targeting transporters of cationic amino acids (CAs), such as Cationic Amino acid Transporter-1 (CAT-1) and Amino acid Transporter B0,+ (ATB0,+), hold great potential as imaging biomarkers for predicting and...
Pre-targeting approaches based on the inverse-electron-demand Diels-Alder (iEDDA) reaction between strained trans-cyclooctenes (TCO) and electron-deficient tetrazines (Tz) have emerged in recent years as valid alternatives to classic targeted strategies to improve the diagnostic and therapeutic properties of radioactive probes. As reported in this communication, we have synthesized a small...
In the automotive industry hydrodynamic lubrication is a concern in most of the machinery where there are two contacting surfaces in relative motion. The optimization of these surfaces through micro-texturing represents a very promising way to reduce friction, in order to achieve enhanced lifetimes and reduced lubricant use. However, it is very difficult to predict these optimal texturing...
The continuous developments in radiofrequency electromagnetic (EM) radiation applications such as communication technologies, data transference, wireless internet, automatized electronics, etc., has been consistently increasing EM radiation exposition. For this reason, the scientific community is questioning the impact that EM radiation could cause in the human health or affect electronic...
Titanium dioxide (TiO2) is currently one of the most common photosensitive materials used in photocatalysis due to its exceptional properties such as low cost, lower toxicity and high chemical content stability, being very useful in water treatment when combined with other components such as cellulose acetate (CA) [1].
Several integrally skinned asymmetric monophasic hybrid CA-based membranes...
Among ceramics, zirconia is one of the most used material to repair/replace damaged/lost dental tissues, due to its high toughness [1]. Glass veneers are usually applied over zirconia frameworks to improve their optical properties [2], but they generally result into chipping [3], leading to extensive wear of the antagonist teeth. Leucite and lithium disilicate are alternative materials to be...
Patients with end stage renal disease (ESRD) are progressively increasing and the demand for renal replacement therapies is expanding [1]. Transplantation is the most effective option, but it is limited by the scarcity of organs thus making in-center hemodialysis (HD) the most reliable form of therapy. The crucial role of HD dosage in critically ill patients suffering from ESRD is well...
HIV stands as an increasing global burden and sexual transmission remains the leading cause of new infections, particularly in women in the Sub-Saharan region [1]. New prevention strategies are urgent and vaginal microbicides have proven to be promising alternatives to prematurely fight and control its dissemination. In this study, we developed TDF/FTC-loaded fibers and tested their...
According to the World Cancer Report, cancer is the second leading cause of death worldwide, having been responsible for one-sixth of the deaths globally in 2018 [1–3]. Currently, there exist various oncologic therapeutic approaches, the main ones being surgery, radiotherapy, and chemotherapy [4,5]. However, these are often associated with undesirable side effects, since they do not only kill...
Cancer is one of the main public health problems and the World Health Organization (WHO) points it as the second leading cause of death in the world [1]. Stimulus-responsive nanosystems have been a promising approach to control the release and delivery of therapeutic agents to target sites. In this work, manganese ferrite nanoparticles were decorated with gold nanoparticles or covered with a...
The combination of liposomes with superparamagnetic nanoparticles allies the advantages of the widely used liposomal systems and the possibility to magnetically guide, selectively accumulate, and control the release of drugs on target. The effectiveness of the resulting structures – magnetoliposomes – is intrinsically related to the individual characteristics of the lipid formulation, the...
In a rational drug design, the modulation of the chemical structure based on drug’s pharmacokinetic profile can be the solution to improve drug development efficiency. Significant correlations between lipophilicity and membrane permeation have been established [1]. Further, anisotropic membrane-like systems, such as membranes/water (M/W) partitioning systems, are described as a more accurate...
Bone tissue is naturally sensitive to mechano-electrical cues provided by its microenvironment. Tissue engineering relies on the development of scaffolds suitable to apply specific stimuli in order to recreate bone tissue microenvironments and trigger their natural recovery. The morphological clues of scaffolds can determine cell behavior and, therefore, the patterning of electroactive...
Cancer is the leading cause of death in Europe after cardiovascular disease, accounting for about 20% of deaths in the European Union [1]. One of the main strategies followed in oncology has been hyperthermia, which consists on raising the temperature of cancer cells to 40-45ºC to reach apoptosis i.e., programmed cell death [2]. One way to reach local and controlled hyperthermia is via...
Human health and well-being strongly depend on water quality available for consumption. Deterioration of water quality has become one of the most worrying and urgent problems since about 1.6 million people die annually from illness related to unsafe water consumption, being responsible for at least 3900 children deaths per day in developing countries. In this scope, one of the main concerns is...
The advances made on the field of nanotechnology have brought a variety of new possibilities into drug discovery and medical therapy [1]. In this context, nano-scaled carriers have revolutionized drug delivery systems, allowing for therapeutic agents to be selectively targeted to a specific tissue, thus decreasing exposure of healthy tissue to drugs. Nanostructured lipid carriers (NLCs) are...
As the main goal of tissue engineering (TE) is to mimic cellular microenvironments through scaffold systems, there has been growing interest in smart and functional materials, namely electroactive ones, to develop active scaffolds for TE applications since they are able to provide, apart from the structural support, the necessary biochemical and biophysical cues to cells in order to promote...
Chronic kidney disease (CKD) has a prevalence from 11 to 13% in the world’s population and the main treatment to replicate some of the kidney’s functions is hemodialysis (HD) [1]. One of the biggest challenges of HD is the removal of the protein bound uremic toxin’s (PBUT’s) which, in blood, bond to albumin forming very large structures which cannot cross the membranes which compose the...
The radiobiological effects induced by Auger electron (AE) emitters might include hardly repairable and severe DNA damage in the targeted tumor cells, if the AEs are emitted in close proximity to a radiosensitive cellular target, such as the nuclear DNA or the mitochondria. Towards this goal, we have designed organelle-targeted 99mTc-complexes with the ability to selectively recognize prostate...
Reinforced concrete can suffer a significant reduction in durability when used under unfavorable exposure conditions. One of the main degradation mechanisms is corrosion induced by carbonation. This phenomenon occurs when atmospheric carbon dioxide penetrates the porous structure of concrete. Due to the alkaline nature of concrete, the steel covered by this material is protected from...
Outdoor and indoor pollutants have been identified as the main cause for the rising deaths by cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, with around 3.3 million deaths per year related to low air quality and with 98% of the low to medium income cities over 100000 habitants failing to meet air quality standards according to the World Health Organization. [1]
Among these pollutants, volatile...
Recently, a considerable effort has been placed on the study of 1D nanostructures, such as nanowires, nanopillars and nanorods, owing to their biomedical applications [1]
Among several methods that can be employed in the synthesis of NWs, template-assisted electrodeposition in porous anodic aluminum oxide (AAO) has been considered a convenient technique, because of its simplicity and easiness...
Prostate cancer (PCa) is one of the most common cancer types in men, and, despite the advances that led to a decline in mortality, it is still considered incurable in advance stages. Thus, it is exceedingly important to ensure an early diagnosis and develop new approaches to overcome PCa chemoresistance. Radiopharmaceuticals emerge as possible solutions for this challenge, as they have the...
Ultrashort laser pulses deliver broadband sources for excitation of multiple fluorophores at the same time, therefore providing to medical imaging systems an advance tool for imaging deeper into samples. Furthermore, due to their short pulse duration, and smaller average power they also allow to extend the life time of in vivo samples. Ultrashort laser pulses can also be used in surgery for...
Peptide-based hydrogels provide many advantages for drug delivery, such as low critical gelation concentration, easy tailoring and modulation, and biocompatibility [1]. The self-assembly gelation potentiates novel fabrication strategies and the encapsulation of different composites, such as magnetic nanoparticles and liposomes [2]. The combination with magnetic and/or plasmonic nanoparticles...
Breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related deaths in women worldwide [1]. The limitations of the current therapeutic highlight the need for new treatment modalities [2]. In this work, multifunctional lipid nanoparticles were developed for dual chemotherapy-photothermal therapy of breast cancer. Nanoparticles were also functionalized with different targeting agents to improve...
Out-of-field doses are delivery to healthy tissues, which may allow the development of second tumours. Its evaluation with MC methods is essential since these doses are inaccurate when calculated by TPSs. The use of IMRT has been discussed, especially in paediatric patients, as it leads to a "bath" of low doses to large volumes of out-of-field tissue.
This study aims to evaluate out-of-field...
Radionuclide therapy is an anticancer therapeutic modality based on the use of radiopharmaceuticals, which are drugs containing radionuclides emitting ionizing radiation (β- and α particles or Auger-electrons). Many of these radionuclides are also gamma- or positron-emitters and then are suitable for imaging applications using single-photon emission computerized tomography (SPECT) or positron...
During a pandemic when a healthy immune system is more significant than ever, prebiotics gain extra importance. These non-digestible food ingredients that stimulate the growth and/or function of beneficial intestinal microorganisms, protect against cancer and prevent cardiovascular and metabolic issues, are also known to play an important role in the improvement of the immune system [1].
In...
Hemodialysis (HD) is a clinically well-established membrane-based treatment for blood purification under extracorporeal blood circulation. Most of the hemodialyzers/artificial kidneys on the market are composed of synthetic polymer membranes with large pore sizes that allow the removal of uremic toxins (UTs) of large molecular weight. Nevertheless, these membranes are hydrophobic by nature and...
To mitigate the carbon footprint of aerospace industry, light and high-performance materials are currently needed, however they are very difficult to cut and machine. Self-lubricating coatings represent a way to reduce the wear of machining and cutting tools, hence increasing their lifetimes with clear advantages in terms of environmental sustainability. In this sense, it has been recently...
Chronic kidney disease, a growing public health concern affecting 11-13% of the global population is defined by an irreversible worsening of renal function which can lead to end stage renal disease (ESRD) [1]. Hemodialysis (HD) is the most widely used renal replacement therapy to purify the blood of ESRD patients and the majority of hemodialyzers on the market are composed of synthetic polymer...
In this work, drug-delivery nanosystems with a combination of chemotherapy and magnetic hyperthermia using doxorubicin-loaded magnetic lipid carriers were investigated. The superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPIONs) and doxorubicin (DOX) were encapsulated in two types of nanostructured lipid carriers (NLC): gelucire-based NLCs (NLC(GEL-DOX-SPIONs)) and palmitate-based NLCs...
The urge for more efficient memory systems at low dimensions is a current requirement for the technological development of a wide range of applications, from industrial devices to daily life appliances. Among the possible candidates, cylindrical nanowires (NWs) have already shown their potential to increase storage density [1]; however, the device design still requires a magnetic tunnel...
Paper-based advanced functional materials have become the focus of intense research in recent years. Particularly, magnetic papers show strong potential for applications in a wide range of technologies including communication, magnetic sensing, electromagnetic filtering, magnetic-based health care tools, point-of-care microfluidic devices, and security, among others1,2.
In situ and...
Hydrogen (H2) fuel is emerging as one of the most viable green solutions in response to the rising global energy consumption. However, due to its high flammability, H2 can cause severe explosions in case of leakage [1]. Several H2 sensors have been developed, and palladium (Pd) based sensors have shown important optical and electrical properties, with the ability to dissociate catalytically...
The demand for advanced functionalities in electronic devices has been drawing growing attention in the scientific and industrial fields. Printed electronics present the advantages for low-cost and large-scale production, thus being subject of research in a wide range of applications across different sectors, including sensors, actuators, and electronic components. Graphene, a 2D material with...
When an optical beam interacts with matter its polarization state can change as a function of certain properties of the material (refractive index, surface roughness, …) and the beam characteristics. Therefore, small differences in such properties can cause the material to reflect or transmit the same polarized incident beam differently. Consequently, measurements of polarization can be used...
Localized Surface Plasmon Resonance (LSPR) phenomenon in materials with noble metal nanoparticles is a hot topic due to the unique optical properties of the nanoparticles. Their optical response can be tailored by changing the size, shape and distribution, as well as the refractive index of the surrounding dielectric matrix [1,2]. If the nanoparticles are embedded in a porous host matrix...
Gas sensing, based on bulk refractive index (RI) changes, has been a challenging task for localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) spectroscopy [1]. In this work, it is demonstrated that a plasmonic thin film composed of Au nanoparticles embedded in a CuO matrix can be used to detect small changes (as low as 6×10-5 RIU) in bulk RI of gases at room temperature, using a High-Resolution LSPR...
Two decades ago, the “polymer based magnetoelectric” idea changed thinking in magnetoelectric (ME) materials scientific community, which led to a new generation of high-performance materials and an increased focus on controlling structure, flexibility, and electrical output, as well as in the implementation into proof-of-concept applications1.
Nowadays, the successful implementation of those...
Graphene - a single atomic layer of carbon atoms - is a very promising material, mainly due to its extremely high and broadband nonlinear optical susceptibility [1] and the possibility of occurrence of interband transitions at all optical frequencies. Ultrafast third-harmonic generation (THG) of ultrashort laser pulses in graphene allows not only the temporal characterization of the ultrashort...
Alternative antimicrobial approaches capable of avoiding resistance mechanisms in bacteria are extremely needed due to the alarming emergence of antimicrobial resistance. The application of physical methods in alternative to the common chemical ones represents an important breakthrough for such purpose [1].
In this study, electroactive nanocomposites composed of poly(vinylidene...
Abstract submission for poster talk on behalf on Henrique Teixeira from IFIMUP.
Counterfeiting is a high-tech crime that increasingly menaces governments, companies, and consumers. This ever-growing phenomenon affects severely national and international security, has a major detrimental impact on commercial and industrial activities and in some cases, may also put people’s health and lives at risk [1]. Consequently, the development of anti-counterfeiting technological...
Biomaterial scaffolds are commonly used to heal bone defects. For Bone Tissue Engineering (BTE), an ideal scaffold must be biocompatible, progressively biodegradable and mimic the structural and biochemical properties of bone [1]. Calcium phosphates (CaP) bioceramics, and in particular hydroxyapatite (HA), adequately meet such requirements and are thus selected for numerous biomedical...
The Era of the IoT and the paradigm of Sustainable Energy boosted the search for self-powered devices that harvest and store energy to satisfy the electrical needs of the generation of autonomous wearable electronics.1,2 Thermally-chargeable supercapacitors are a clean energy technology that is able to convert the waste thermal energy into electrical energy (as a power source) and,...
During the past few decades, with rapid enlargement of human society, consumption of traditional energy has increased exponentially. Thermoelectric materials (TE) can generate electrical energy when they are exposed to a thermal gradient, considered one of the most important solutions for sustainable energy harvesting.[1,2] These materials present lightweight, small size, pollution free and...
