Synthesis of monodisperse hollow silica nanospheres, especially using a hard template route, has been shown to be successful, but a high yield is needed for this strategy to be used on an industrial scale. On the other hand, there is a research gap in the synthesis of hollow silica microspheres due to the popularity and easiness of the synthesis of silica nanospheres despite the larger spheres being beneficial in some fields. In this review, current trends in producing hollow silica nanospheres using hard templates, especially polystyrene, are briefly presented. Soft templates have also been used to make highly polydisperse hollow silica spheres, and complex designs have improved polydispersity. The effect of the main parameters on the coating is presented here to provide a basic understanding of the interactions between the silica and template surface in the absence or presence of surfactants. Surface charge, surface modification, parameters in the sol–gel method and interaction between the silica and templates need to be further improved to have a uniform coating and better control over the size, dispersity, wall thickness and porosity. As larger organic templates will have lower surface energy, the efficiency of the micro sphere synthesis needs to be improved. Control over the physical structure of hollow silica spheres will open up many opportunities for them to be extensively used in fields ranging from waste removal to energy storage.

In this work, a blend of PEO, polysulfone (PSF), and lithium bis(trifluoromethanesulfonyl)imide (LiTFSi) was prepared at different PEO–PSf weight ratios (70-30, 80-20, and 90-10) and ethylene oxide to lithium (EO/Li) ratios (16/1, 20/1, 30/1, and 50/1). The samples were characterised using FT-IR, DSC, and XRD. Young’s modulus and tensile strength were evaluated at room temperature with micro-tensile testing. The ionic conductivity was measured between 5 °C and 45 °C through electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS). The samples with a ratio of PEO and PSf equal to 70-30 and EO/Li ratio equal to 16/1 have the highest conductivity (1.91 × 10⁻⁴ S/cm) at 25 °C, while the PEO–PSf 80-20 EO/Li = 50/1 have the highest averaged Young’s modulus of about 1.5 GPa at 25 °C. The configuration with a good balance between electrical and mechanical properties is the PEO–PSf 70-30 EO/Li = 30/1, which has a conductivity of 1.17 × 10⁻⁴ S/cm and a Young’s modulus of 800 MPa, both measured at 25 °C. It was also found that increasing the EO/Li ratio to 16/1 dramatically affects the mechanical properties of the samples with them showing extreme embrittlement.

Despite the lifesaving medical discoveries of the last century, there is still an urgent need to improve the curative rate and reduce mortality in many fatal diseases such as cancer. One of the main requirements is to find new ways to deliver therapeutics/drugs more efficiently and only to affected tissues/organs. An exciting new technology is nanomaterials which are being widely investigated as potential nanocarriers to achieve localized drug delivery that would improve therapy and reduce adverse drug side effects. Among all the nanocarriers, iron oxide nanoparticles (IONPs) are one of the most promising as, thanks to their paramagnetic/superparamagnetic properties, they can be easily modified with chemical and biological functions and can be visualized inside the body by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), while delivering the targeted therapy. Therefore, iron oxide nanoparticles were produced here with a novel method and their properties for potential applications in both diagnostics and therapeutics were investigated. The novel method involves production of free standing IONPs by inert gas condensation via the Mantis NanoGen Trio physical vapor deposition system. The IONPs were first sputtered and deposited on plasma cleaned, polyethylene glycol (PEG) coated silicon wafers. Surface modification of the cleaned wafer with PEG enabled deposition of free-standing IONPs, as once produced, the soft-landed IONPs were suspended by dissolution of the PEG layer in water. Transmission electron microscopic (TEM) characterization revealed free standing, iron oxide nanoparticles with size < 20 nm within a polymer matrix. The nanoparticles were analyzed also by Atomic Force Microscope (AFM), Dynamic Light Scattering (DLS) and NanoSight Nanoparticle Tacking Analysis (NTA). Therefore, our work confirms that inert gas condensation by the Mantis NanoGen Trio physical vapor deposition sputtering at room temperature can be successfully used as a scalable, reproducible process to prepare free-standing IONPs. The PEG- IONPs produced in this work do not require further purification and thanks to their tunable narrow size distribution have potential to be a powerful tool for biomedical applications.

High mechanical strength and ionic conductivity of solid-state electrolyte (SSE) are currently conflicting targets that are very difficult to achieve. Polyethylene oxide (PEO) is one of the most common polymers adopted for SSE because of its very high ionic conductivity, but its mechanical strength is very low. This work discusses the manufacturing and testing of PEO blends using polysulfone (PSf) and Lithium bis(trifluoromethanesulfonyl)imide (LiTFSI) to assess the mechanical response under microtensile testing and the ionic conductivity with electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS). Mechanical tests demonstrated a beneficial effect of LiTFSI with significant increase in maximum stress and ductility measured as strain at failure. The blending of PEO and PSf showed promising conductivity values at room temperature with the 90–10 PEO-PSf composition achieving the highest value (1.06 × 10⁻⁶ S/cm) and for the 70–30 composition achieving the highest maximum stress (3.5 MPa) with a conductivity of 3.12 × 10⁻⁷ S/cm.

Overview: The Internet of Things (IoT) allows for remote management and monitoring of many aspects of everyday life at the individual and industrial levels. However, designing these systems within constraints of cost and operational context can be a real challenge. The sensor network must be strategically designed, which means selecting the most appropriate sensors to collect a specific measurement in a specific environment and then optimizing their deployment and utilization. To facilitate sensor selection, we propose a straightforward, color-coded, three-sieve selection tool and demonstrate the efficacy of this method through real-life exemplars. The selection tool could be applied to other kinds of technologies as well.

This paper deals with the actuation of in-plane and out-of-plane motions of silicon cantilevers, using a single thin film of lead zirconate titanate with a divided electrode configuration. In-plane actuation is demonstrated practically, and excellent agreement is obtained between theoretically predicted and experimentally measured resonant amplitudes, for the fundamental out-of-plane and in-plane modes of vibration of the fabricated test cantilevers.