Novel materials with wide application potential

Novel Materials with Wide Application Potential... 

Membranes and composites from cellulose and cellulose esters are important domains in the development and application of these polymer materials. The most important segment by volume in the chemical processing of cellulose contains regenerated cellulose fibers, films, and membranes, hi the case of the cellulose esters mainly cellulose nitrate and cellulose acetate as well as novel high-performance materials created therefrom are widely used as laminates, composites, optical/photographic films and membranes, or other separation media, as reviewed in [1], The previously specified nanocelluloses from bacteria and wood tie in with these important potentials and open novel fields of application. 

Of particular note to date are developments using ESI-based materials in foam applications. Novel foam structures offer attractive properties and characteristics including softness, esthetics and drape for a wide range of thermoplastic and crosslinked foam applications. Other product technologies of interest are as injection molded structural foams, as foamed layers in multilayer structures and as foamed blends of interpolymers with styrenic and olefinic polymers [77-79], Interpolymers also have potential for co-extruded film and sheet applications. 

In conclusion, all of these observations indicate that there is still much room to improve ADAFC performance by developing novel materials and, on the other hand, by optimizing the operational conditions of the fuel cell. Future work should look into a wider range of potential low-cost materials and composites with novel structures and properties, presenting catalytic activity comparable to that of noble metals. The development of new catalyst systems is more likely in alkaline media because of the wide range of options for the materials support and catalyst, as compared to acidic media which offer more limited materials choice. Moreover, efforts have to be addressed to meet the durability targets required for commercial application. More work is needed to optimize the operational fuel cell conditions, by achieving suitable chemical (OH concentration, hydroxyl/alcohol ratio in the fuel stream) and physical (temperature, pressure, flow rate) parameters. 

MOFs have emerged as a novel class of porous solid-state materials with hybrid chemical composition of organic molecules bearing a wide array of functional groups capable of metal coordination and/or chelation and metal ions/clusters. Several attributes of such materials have captured the interest of scientists in academia and industry because of the wide potential applications in current demanding technologies. MOF attributes are directly correlated to the tunable hybrid chemical composition, crystallinity, and modular nature. 

The first commercial epoxy resins produced from a common reaction between epichlorohydrin and bisphenol A (DGEBA) were pioneered, almost simultaneously, by the Swiss inventor P. Castan (under the Ciba Company license) and by S. O. Greenlee (woiking with Devoe Reynolds Company) back in the 1940s (Pascault and Williams 2010). Since then, the versatility of epoxies and the innovation in formulation has resulted in plenty of epoxy resin-based materials, with uses across an enormously wide variety of industries (Petrie 2005). Nowadays, engineered nano-structured epoxy-based materials can be manufactured and potentially used as novel functional materials for a number of new applications in... 

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