INMA Junior: Alexandre Lancelot & Silvia del Moral
INMA Junior Seminar: Alexandre Lancelot and Silvia del Moral Peñas
Next Wednesday, May 8, at 12:00, in the Hall of Degrees of Ed. A of the Faculty of Sciences of the San Francisco Campus, will be held the next INMA Junior Seminar.
Speaker: Alexandre Lancelot
Title: Biomimetic linear-dendritic hybrids: dendritic effect and bioadhesion.
Summary of the talk: Catechol moieties are found in several adhesive proteins secreted by mussels and other bivalves thanks to their potential to foster strong adhesive interactions by means of H-bonding, π-π stacking, metal chelation and covalent bonding. Hence, mimicking mussel adhesive proteins, a library of catechol-containing copolymers has been synthesized. These polymers usually showed good adhesive properties when used in dry conditions and impressive adhesive properties when used underwater. In the present work, we designed and synthesized two series of Hybrid Dendritic-Linear-Dendritic Block Copolymers (HDLDBCs) based on: (i) either poly(ethylene glycol) or poly(ethylene glycol)-poly(propylene glycol)-poly(ethylene glycol), aka Pluronic® F-127, (ii) 2,2-bis(hydroxymethyl)propionic acid and (iii) terminal catechols. These HDLDBCs showed good adhesive properties on aluminum substrates when applied in dry conditions, with values up to 7 MPa. Interestingly, a clear dendritic effect was observed with adhesion strength values increasing with dendron generation for both series. Additionally, these HDLDBCs were applied onto porcine skin to study their abilities to be used as biomedical adhesives. Pluronic® derivatives displayed adhesion on skin, with values up to 2 kPa. These values were similar to those of Tisseel, a commercial FDA-approved tissue sealant, paving the way for a possible future application of this HDLDBCs in biomedicine
Speaker: Silvia del Moral Peñas
Title: Chiral Nanoporous Materials: Towards Enantiomeric Separation Through Liquid Crystals
Summary of the talk: Nanoporous Materials represent an important field in Materials Science, offering large applications, ranging from catalysis to drug delivery. Among different strategies for their obtention, the incorporation of Liquid Crystals (LCs) emerges as a powerful methodology, revolutionizing the ability to engineer tailored nanoporous architectures with meticulous control over their properties. Particularly, Columnar Liquid Crystals (CLCs) have been widely used to obtain 1D nanopores with an accurate control of their size, charge, or acid/basic nature. In this work, chirality is added as a new parameter. Incorporation of chiral centers into these materials paves the way to a new application: distinction among enantiomers. There are different approaches to get these materials, one based on a central template and another on hexameric structures. Some of them will be presented to give an overview of the work done so far
VWe will proceed to send certificates of attendance to the INMA Junior Seminar series for attending at least two of the sessions of the series. We ask those interested to send an email to any of the organisers:
Beatriz Zornoza (bzornoza@unizar.es)
Zsuzsa Baranyai (zsuzsabaranyai@unizar.es)
Cristina Momblona (cristinamomblona@unizar.es)
Alberto Concellón (aconcellon@unizar.es)
Jorge Pérez (jorgepb@unizar.es)
Isabel Ciria (isabelciriaramos@unizar.es)
