New and cost effective solar light photocatalysis of MOCVD nanostructured titania films for ecological applications Titania (TiO2) nanostructured thin films have been synthesized in our institute by the MOCVD technique. This technique has offered the relevant peculiarity of depositing titania in the anatase phase with a calibrated oxygen deficiency; the films were so characterized by intermediate states in the band gap allowing the interaction with the visible light. Our recent results ...

Bacteria and biological systems respond to external perturbations through several different mechanisms. The origins of external stress are diverse: chemical, biological and physical. The sensing mechanisms of external forces by cells have recently been identified. Membrane proteins forming pores across the membrane are the basis of these response mechanisms: they can open and close in correspondence to external stimuli such as touch, sound, gravity, osmolarity variations etc. ...

Enzymes are proteins that catalyze all the chemical reactions that allow Life on Earth. Additionally, they possess interesting properties that can be exploited for the synthesis of chemical compounds of interest for the pharmaceutical, agrochemical and food industries. Till the early eighties it was generally accepted that enzymes could work just in water - a solvent in which most of the organic compounds are not soluble - and that the organic solvents were poisons for their catalytic ...

The Italian textile and apparel manufacturing industry produces more than 30% of the EU garment production and engages nearly 700000. Besides sheep's wool, the raw fibres used by the fashion textile industry are the fine, noble hairs (speciality fibres) from domestic goats (mohair, cashmere, cashgora), camel and camelids (alpaca, lama, vicuna, guanaco), bovines (yak, musk ox), rabbit (angora). Price differences between the different kind of fibres are considerable and subjected to strong ...

There is an increasing need for environment friendly materials with advanced and improved properties. Polyolefins produced by means of transition metal catalysed polymerisations, as pure hydrocarbons meet the requirements for sustainable development. Advances in novel soluble catalytic systems, with well defined structure, allow the synthesis of novel polymeric materials non accessible with traditional heterogeneous Ziegler-Natta catalysts: cycloolefin copolymers (COC) represent a new class of ...

Atomistic and non atomistic simulations have become in the last years more reliable; for this reason, computational chemistry can give to investigations an important and above all effective contribution. Atomistic and non atomistic simulations can give a large number of information in relatively short times, particularly : a) Evaluation of different materials and process properties b) Interpretation of ambiguous experimental results c) Materials design and process. On these considerations, ...

The growing interest for appropriate formulations of final products in various industrial areas, from pharmaceutical to cosmetics, agro-foods, biotechnology, fuels, etc., attracted attention to the possibility of producing stable monodispersed emulsions using microporous membranes, realising the so-called membrane emulsifier. Advantages of this methodology are: lower energy cost; no mechanical stress for the treated solutions; mild operating conditions, better control of droplets size, etc. This ...

Those research activities consist of an innovating experimental work on the so called "Smart Materials". These materials act in particular ways and times when some specific kind of thermo-mechanical conditions are applied. When removing those conditions the entire system will recover its original status. Particular active materials are shape memory alloys (SMA) made by Aluminium Copper and Nickel, or by Nickel and Titanium, whose commercial name is Nitinol. SMA are commonly used as ...

In spite of the tragic conclusion of the scientific mission STS-107 of the shuttle Columbia, the results of some experiments have been saved, perhaps making less vain the Astronauts' sacrifice. One of the experiments is FAST (Facility for Adsorption and Surface Tension), conceived by the Department of Genoa of IENI and aimed at the investigation of the adsorption process of surfactants at liquid interfaces, which had a complete success. FAST houses two Capillary Pressure tensiometers to ...

Innovative properties of CeO2 - ZrO2 nanostructures in energy production processes. In recent years, a great effort has been put into the development of materials for energy production (SOFCs) and the conversion of automotive emissions into non toxic compounds. In this context, CeO2-based materials are widely employed thanks to their Oxygen Storage Capacity (OSC) and valuable redox properties, ascribed to the facile Ce(III) « Ce(IV) switching and to the capability of the fluorite-type ceria ...

Oggi le leghe a memoria di forma stanno conquistando nuovi spazi di mercato. Il settore dei dispositivi medicali di NiTi è attualmente uno dei più dinamici e quello con il più alto tasso di crescita. Il gruppo di ricerca che opera presso l'Unita' staccata di Lecco da anni e' impegnato nella sintesi e caratterizzazione di materiali metallici a memoria di forma, con particolare attenzione al sistema NiTi e fornisce semilavorati di materiali a memoria di forma per applicazioni nel settore ...

At the Pisa station, a new efficient route to the preparation of very active and specific nanostructured catalysts has been developed and optimized. The method consists in using metal vapour as reagent and allows one to obtain catalysts that are remarkably more active and selective than analogous commercial counterparts. These new catalysts can be already obtained on a kilogram scale, which forecasts an industrial application (Figure 1). It has been also developed the preparation of ...