This thesis summarizes the current knowledge of reinforcement of concrete with nanofibers and conducted research on the issue of the use of inorganic nanofibers in ultrahighperformance concrete. Up to now, most researches focuses on the reinforcement using carbon nanotubes and nanofibers and inorganic nanofibers remained in the background of interest. Due to their different chemical properties, is not only a question of their influence on the microstructure and mechanical properties of concrete, but also the preparation of nanofiber suspension which is not explored such as in the case of carbon nanotubes and nanofibres.

In this study we investigate the synergistic effect of low frequency ultrasonication (14, 22, and 47 kHz) on antimicrobial activity of Cecropin P1 against Escherichia coli. The hypothesis was tested by comparing three different treatments (1) ultrasonication only (2) Cecropin P1 only (3) combination of both. The results showed that the combined treatment deactivate E. coli more efficiently by six order of magnitude. The mechanism of membrane permeabilization due to Cecropin P1 is also investigated using dye leakage experiment. The result indicated pore formation and carpet mechanism. Finally, a mathematical modeling is proposed to explain the synergistic effect, allowing us to make better prediction for cell deactivation.

The chemical resistance of glass is an important property for many applications. This property has been extensively studied for many types of glass under static conditions (no liquid is removed during the experiment). There has been little research conducted on the effects of additional stimuli on the dissolution of glass. For this research lithium disilicate was leached in deionized water at multiple temperatures while microwave radiation, ultrasonication or flow conditions were also applied to the system. These results were then compared to static baseline to determine if these stimuli would cause any change to the mechanisms and kinetics of the reaction. It was determined that for the experimental conditions used there was little to no change in dissolution when 2.45 GHz microwave radiation instead of conventional methods was used to heat the reaction. Results from ultrasonication found that samples that experienced erosion showed an increase in dissolution with an increase in dissolution following heavier erosion. This was thought to be due to both an increase in the surface area of the sample to volume of solution (SA/V) ratio (erosion would modify the surface area and release small particulates) and the accelerated removal of the depleted layer due to erosion. Stereoscopic reconstruction was used to semi-quantitatively measure the change in surface area. Regions that experienced minor erosion showed a 3-6% increase in surface area while those that experienced heavy erosion showed a 29-35% increase in surface area. Due to inconsistencies in the size of the eroded area it was not possible to determine the effects of power intensity with this research. Flow dissolution showed similar trends in concentration and different trends for the total normalized mass loss (TNL) to previously published research on more complex glasses. The elemental concentration initially increased before reaching a peak and decreasing to steady state. This peak was thought to be caused by the combination of flow, increasing thickness in the depleted layer, and an initial fluctuation in the forward reaction rate due to changes in pH. For the lithium disilicate glass used in this research both the elemental concentration and the TNL increased with increasing temperature and decreasing flow rate (silica dissolution was an exception as it did not show any change in TNL due to flow). All experimental conditions were shown to achieve steady state (dC/dt~0) by the seventh day of leaching. The contrast in the observed TNL trends between lithium disilicate and more complex glasses was thought to be due to differences in reaction rates and the presence of an additional surface layer in the complex glasses due to precipitation. Microscopy of the leached glass showed that surface features introduced during grinding (scratch lines and microcracks) were preferentially leached and grew in size and number visible during dissolution. A semi-quantitative model was created using stereoscopic reconstruction to describe the preferential leaching of the microcracks as there was little available discussion found in literature outside of associating the growth of these features with localized network dissolution. In this model the microcracks experience preferential dissolution leading to a change in size and shape. The SA/V ratio inside the crack would be much larger than the bulk system (calculated to initially be ~768,000cm-1 compared to the bulk's 0.1cm-1). This would cause massive acceleration in the initial ion exchange, raising the pH of the solution which would in turn cause network dissolution to occur much faster inside the crack. Based on static experiments on lithium disilicate frit (SA/V of 1,010cm-1) the pH inside the crack would jump to above 11 in minutes. As the crack grows, the SA/V ratio inside it would decrease (largest cracks were found to have a ratio ~100,000cm-1). The accelerated leaching caused by these features could have a noticeable effect on the dissolution results. In addition to the accelerated leaching inside a crack, the size of the depleted layer under the crack would be different from the bulk glass. / Doctor of Philosophy / The chemical resistance of glass is an important property for many applications. This property has been extensively studied for many types of glass under static conditions where no liquid was removed and temperature was the major variable. For this research lithium disilicate was leached in deionized water at multiple temperatures while the additional stimuli of microwave radiation, ultrasonication or flow conditions were also applied to the system. The question that this research addressed was how does the aqueous dissolution of glass change when a system is exposed to these additional stimuli? Although glasses are subjected to these stimuli in many everyday applications, their influence on dissolution has not been studied extensively. Lithium disilicate glass was selected because it contains components used in many commercial glasses, has sufficient reactivity in water to allow experiments to be completed in a reasonable time, and because its mechanisms for dissolution under static conditions were well known. Glass is frequently selected to be the container when microwaves are used to heat food or materials. Flow is an important part of many applications involving glass including the storage of nuclear waste glass, glass-lined tanks used in the chemical industries, in the use of glass in the human body (bioglass and dental crowns), and in typical window and laboratory glasses where intermittent aqueous contact and runoff may occur. Examining how cavitation via ultrasonication can be controlled to either minimize or maximize element extraction is important, with the removal of rare earth elements from fly ash being one example.

Ultrasonic sludge disintegration &ndash / the most commonly used mechanical pretreatment method- enables the occurrence of cavitation bubbles to extract intracellular material from the cell into aqueous phase. However, there is a lack of information on the volatile solids loading on the anaerobic digestion process performance of ultrasonically treated sludge. In this thesis work, the effect of sonication on disintegration of waste activated sludge (WAS) and an important parameter digester F/M (food to microorganism) ratio on ultrasonically treated WAS were investigated. First, preliminary studies were conducted. It was obtained that when the sonication power and time increased, soluble COD in the supernatant increased as well. Then, batch anaerobic digestion tests were conducted. Effect of F/M ratio in the digesters by using sonicated sludges at different powers was analyzed. For the sludge sonicated at high power, the methane content increased up to 55.1 % at F/M ratio of 10 compared to untreated sludge. On the other hand, methane generation rate slowed down with the increase in F/M ratio. Moreover, 10 % and 15 % increase in the destruction of MLVSS and total COD content was observed for sonicated sludges compared to the untreated sludges, respectively. In summary, both the sonication as a pretreatment method and the increase in digester F/M ratio increased the biogas production and the solids reduction during anaerobic digestion prosess. These results may have important implications for the operation of full scale systems in terms of system efficiency and operation.

Conjugated polymers and oligomers are great materials for use in the next generation devices namely organic field effect transistors, light emitting diodes and polymeric solar cells. Apart from having the potential for developing power-efficient, flexible, robust and inexpensive devices, conjugated polymers can also be tuned by molecular design to optimize device characteristics. One key problem for the full commercial exploitation of conjugated polymers is that the charge carrier mobility of the state-of-the-art polymer semiconductors is much lower than required for many applications. The performance of the devices is strongly dependent on the molecular structure and supermolecular assembly of the conjugated polymer chains. This thesis covers our attempts to design molecular structure to control and improve the solid state properties of conjugated polymers. The relative placement of side chains along the backbone has a great influence on the solid state ordering of conjugated polymers. Poly(2,5-disubstituted-1,4-phenylene ethynylene)s (PPE)s, an important class of conjugated polymers, are generally synthesized by Pd-catalyzed coupling polymerizations of appropriately substituted diiodo and diethynyl benzenes (i.e., A-A and B-B type monomers). In asymmetrically substituted PPEs, this results in an irregular substitution pattern of the side chains along the polymer backbone. We report a new synthetic approach to prepare regioregular unsymmetrically substituted PPEs by polymerization of 4-iodophenylacetylenes (i.e., A-B type monomer). We provide a detailed discussion of various approaches to the synthesis of PPEs with different regioregularities and provide a description of the differences between regioregular and regiorandom analogs. The effect of regioregularity becomes even more important when the two side chains are very dissimilar or amphiphilic. We explore the effect of relative placement hydrophobic (dodecyloxy) / hydrophilic (tri(ethylene glycol) and hydrophobic (dodecyloxy)/fluorophilic (fluoroalkyl) side chains along the poly(1,4-phenylene ethynylene) backbone. We found that the regioregular substitution of the polymer backbone provides a structure in which the side chains segregate to afford a Janus-type structure. The regioregular polymer chains pack more densely in a monolayer at the air-water interface, and pack into a bilayer in the solid state to form a highly crystalline material. Pentacenes are very important organic molecules for use as semiconductor in oFETs due to their low band gap and high field effect mobility. One approach to reduce the bandgap of a polymeric system and improve performance is to include low bandgap small molecules into the conjugated backbone. A new copolymer system consisting of pentacene and terthiophene was developed and its optical and electronic properties along with its stability were evaluated. We report the use of ultrasonication of P3HT as a novel operationally-simple process to significantly improve the field effect mobility of P3HT-based FETs, thereby potentially eliminating the need for dielectric surface modifications or further processing of the device. Investigation of the sonicated polymer samples by number of characterization techniques indicates that ultrasonication leads to aggregation and ordering of the P3HT chains resulting in increase in the mobility.

Submitted by MARCIA ROVADOSCHI (marciar@unifra.br) on 2018-08-16T19:52:36Z No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) Dissertacao_MauberEduardoSchultzMoreira.pdf: 14104089 bytes, checksum: cdd198bace6b9a1b1e4ce9262baded58 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-16T19:52:36Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) Dissertacao_MauberEduardoSchultzMoreira.pdf: 14104089 bytes, checksum: cdd198bace6b9a1b1e4ce9262baded58 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-03-23 / Cancer is a public health problem of great impact. Relapses require higher doses of drugs or new approaches to minimizing toxicity. The use of liposome-based carrier systems pharmaceuticals may be an alternative by the use of the enhanced permeability and retention effect present in the tumor area. The aim of this project was to develop and characterize liposomes containing arsenic trioxide (ATO). They were prepared according reverse phase evaporation method using ethyl acetate (EA) as solvent followed by ultrasonication with probe to reduce the size and homogenization. In determining the arsenic, titanium and residual EA we used Atomic Absorption Spectrometry with Graphite Furnace (GF- AAS), Mass Spectrometry Inductively Coupled Plasma (ICP -MS) and Gas Chromatography coupled to mass detector (GC-MS), respectively. We also carried out stability studies with formulations being subjected to room temperature (25° C), cooling (4 to 8° C) and climate chamber (40° C and 60% humidity) for a period of 90 days. Cytotoxicity assays were performed by the method of reduction of 3- (4,5) dimetiltialzoil 2,5 - diphenyltetrazolium bromide (MTT). Data of physical-chemical characterization showed that the best condition was sonication with a power of 750 W, 40% amplitude and cycles of 8 seconds on and 2 seconds off, to avoid overheating. The average particle size was 87.5±1.07 nm and polydispersity index (IPD) 0.28±0.03 for liposomes blank (BL) and 71.17±0.06 nm and 0.29±0.04 for liposomes containing TOA (LAs / LAS). TOA content of LAs was 1.0 mg ml-1 and the encapsulation efficiency (%EE) of 7,43±0.72%. ICP-MS showed the presence of titanium in the formulation and the determination of the residual solvent was below the tolerable limit. The stability study showed that formulations remained stable over a period of 30 days, regardless of storage condition wherein the stored under refrigeration remained stable for 60 days. Cytotoxicity assays with MTT revealed that in 72 hours the LB, AE and the buffer did not exercise death activity. The reverse phase evaporation method followed by ultrasonication appears to be suitable for obtaining liposomal vesicles containing arsenic trioxide . / Câncer é um problema de saúde pública de grande impacto. As recidivas necessitam de doses maiores de fármacos ou de novas abordagens para minimizar a toxicidade. O uso de sistemas carreadores de fármacos baseados em lipossomas pode ser uma alternativa por fazer uso do efeito permeabilidade e retenção aumentada presente na área do tumor. O objetivo desta dissertação foi desenvolver e caracterizar lipossomas contendo trióxido de arsênio (TOA). Foi utilizado o método de evaporação em fase reversa com solvente acetato de etila (AE) seguido de ultrassonicação com sonda para reduzir o tamanho e homogeinização. Na determinação do arsênio, titânio e acetato de etila residual utilizaram-se as técnicas de Espectrometria de Absorção Atômica com Forno de Grafite (GF- AAS), Espectrometria de Massa com Plasma Indutivamente Acoplado (ICP-MS) e Cromatografia a Gás acoplado a detector de massa (GCMS), respectivamente. Foi realizado também estudo de estabilidade com as formulações sendo submetidas a temperatura ambiente (25°C), refrigeração (4 a 8°C) e câmara climática (40°C e umidade de 60%), por um período de 90 dias. Os ensaios de citotoxicidade foram realizados pelo método de redução do 3-(4,5) dimetiltialzoil-2,5 difeniltetrazolium (MTT). Os dados da caracterização físico-química mostraram que a melhor condição de sonicação foi com potência de 750 W, amplitude de 40% e ciclos de 8 segundos ligado e 2 segundos desligado, para evitar o aquecimento. O tamanho médio foi de 87,5 ± 1,07 nm e índice de polidispersão (IPD) 0,28 ± 0,03 para os lipossomas branco (LB) e 71,17 ± 0,06 nm e 0,29 ± 0,04 para os lipossomas contendo TOA (LAs/LAS), respectivamente. O teor de TOA nos LAs foi de 1,0 mg mL-1 e a eficiência de encapsulação (%EE) de 7,43 ± 0,72%. O ICP-MS revelou a presença de titânio nas formulações e a determinação do solvente residual ficou abaixo do limite tolerável. O estudo de estabilidade mostrou que as formulações permaneceram estáveis por um período de 30 dias, independente da condição de armazenamento, sendo que as armazenadas sob refrigeração permaneceram estáveis por 60 dias. Os ensaios de citotoxicidade com MTT revelaram que em 72 horas os LB, AE e a solução tampão não exerceram atividade de morte. O método de evaporação em fase reversa seguido de ultrassonicação parece ser adequado para a obtenção de vesículas lipossomais contendo trióxido de arsênio.

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Syftet med den här studien var att undersöka en alternativ slamningsreducerande teknik till spolning, som effektivt kan ta bort biologisk påväxt. Ultraljud undersöktes som en möjlig metod för att ta bort igenslamningen från omvänd osmos med ett spirallindat membran. Tidigare forskning har föreslagit att ultraljud skulle kunna vara effektivt på platta membran men inte på spirallindade membran, på grund av packningsdensiteten som spirallindan medför. Därför genomfördes inom denna studie försök med spirallindade membran och ultraljud, för att få en förståelse av dess effekter inom det spirallindade membranet. För det första undersöktes tidsberoendet av ultraljud, vilket visade liknande resultat som tidigare forskning, att ultraljudet uppnådde effekt inom några minuter. För det andra behandlades två membran en gång om dagen under 12 dagar, med undantag för dag 6 och 7. Ett behandlades med ultraljud och ett med spolning, och den mikrobiologiska kontamineringen i permeatet analyserades sedan. Det ultraljudsbehandlade membranet producerade mindre kontaminering under de 12 dagarna. Det krävs dock fler experiment och analyser för att bekräfta detta, eftersom tidsbegränsningar inte möjliggjorde repetitioner. En ekonomisk utvärdering genomfördes också för att undersöka möjligheten att implementera ultraljud i kommersiell skala. Den ekonomiska aspekten är en avvägning mellan vattenkostnad och energikostnad, som är beroende av geografiskt läge. Överlag indikerar resultaten att det sparade vattnet kostar mer än den energi som krävs, vilket är fördelaktigt för implementering av ultraljudsbehandling. Sammanfattningsvis visade ultraljudsbehandlingen bättre resultat än spolning inom några minuter, och hade även en ekonomisk fördel, men kostnaden för energi till vatten är beroende av geografisk plats. / The purpose of this study was to investigate an alternative fouling mitigation technique to flushing, that can efficiently remove biological fouling. Ultrasound was investigated as a possible method of removing fouling from a reverse osmosis spiral wound membrane. Previous research had suggested ultrasound to be efficient on flat sheet membranes but not on spiral wound membranes, due to the packing density. Therefore, this study conducted experiments on spiral wound membranes with ultrasound, as to get an understanding of its effects within the spiral wound membrane. Firstly, the time dependency of ultrasound was investigated, and showed similar results to that of previous research, that the ultrasound was efficient within a matter of minutes. Secondly, two membranes were subject to treatment once a day over the span of 12 days, with an exception for days 6 and 7. One was treated with ultrasound and one with flushing, and the microbiological contamination in the permeate was then analysed. The ultrasonically treated membrane produced less contamination throughout the 12 days. However, more experiments and analysis would be required to confirm this, as time constraints did not allow for repetitions. An economic assessment was also performed, as to evaluate the feasibility implementing ultrasound on a commercial scale. This is a weigh-off between water cost and energy cost, which is dependent on geographical location. Overall, the results indicate that the water saved costs more than the energy required though, which is favourable for the implementation of ultrasonic treatment. To conclude, the ultrasonic treatment showed better results than flushing within a matter of minutes, and also economically had an advantage but the cost of energy to water is relative to geographical location.

Silicon-based electric DNA chip arrays were utilized to fast identify pathogenic microorganisms with respect to the capacity to produce toxins involved in foodborne poisoning and infections. Bacteria of the B. cereus and the enterohemorrhagic E. coli (EHEC) groups contain different set-ups of various virulence factors that are encoded by the corresponding genes. The purpose of this work was to develop a fast and simple method for determination of the presence of these virulence genes in a colony from primary enrichment cultures. A target gene is detected through hybridization to a surface-immobilized specific capture probe and biotin-labeled detection probe. Following binding of an enzyme conjugate to this sandwich hybrid complex, a current signal is generated by electronic redox recycling of the enzymatic product paminophenol (pAP). Two versions of the assay were developed. In the first version the capture probes were immobilized on magnetic beads, which carried out all reactions until the pAP generation, while the final electric signal was created by transferring pAP to a single-electrode chip surface. In the second version a silicon chip array with 16 parallel sensing electrode positions each of them functionalized by capture probes, carried out all assay steps on the chip surface. This instrument can realize automatic and multiplexed gene detection. The kinetics of bacterial cell disruption and impact of DNA fragmentation by ultrasound were determined. The experimental data suggested that the increased signal after first minutes of ultrasonication were due to the accumulation of released DNA amount, while the further signal increase resulted from the improved hybridization with the shortened target DNA strands. Studies on probe localization on the 16-electrode chip assays indicated that the probe-targeting site, which was located at the 5’-end of strands, gave rise to the highest signal level due to the efficient targetprobes hybridization and the following enzyme binding. When these functionalized chip arrays were exposed to the cell homogenates, the sensing electrodes were fouled by cellular proteins and therefore led to dramatically decreased redox-recycling current. To circumvent this, samples were treated by DNA extraction after the 1st sonication and then DNA fragmentation by a 2nd time sonication. The DNA extract removed most of the interfering components from bacterial cell. This sample treatment was applied to characterize one “diarrheal” and one “emetic” strain of B. cereus with the chip arrays functionalized by eight DNA probes. The signal patterns of eight virulence genes from chip assays agreed well with PCR control analyses for both strains. By simply adding the SDS detergent to cell homogenates, chip surface blocking effect can be significantly reduced even without DNA extraction treatment. After optimization of some critical factors, the 16-electrode DNA chips with the improved sensing performance can directly detect multiple virulence genes from a single E. coli colony in 25 min after the introduction of supernatant of ultrasonicated cell lysate. / QC 20100824

Cotton stalk lignin extractions were performed via alkaline methods at different conditions. Crude and post treated cotton stalk lignins, olive mill wastewater and garlic stalk juice were examined in terms of antimicrobial activity. Antimicrobial lignin was isolated depending on alkaline extraction conditions. Lignin extracted at 60&deg / C exhibited significant antimicrobial effect towards both Escherichia coli and Bacillus pumilus. However different post treatments such as ultrasonication and TiO2-assisted photocatalytic oxidation did not result in antimicrobial compounds. Olive mill wastewater and garlic stalk juice exerted substantial antimicrobial effects towards tested microorganisms. Xylan-based biodegradable films containing lignin, garlic stalk juice, tannic acid and olive mill wastewater were characterized against both B. pumilus and E. coli by means of their antimicrobial activities. E. coli exhibited lesser sensitivity to all tested antimicrobial xylan films except tannic acid-integrated xylan film than B. pumilus. Antimicrobial lignin integrated-xylan film exhibited stronger effect towards tested microorganisms than tannic acid-integrated film. In the case of both antimicrobial lignin and tannic acid integrated xylan films, 4% was found to be the maximum antimicrobial compound percentage in film forming solutions to observe continuous film formation. Lignin samples with/without antimicrobial activity were characterized by means of their chemical structure via FTIR and LC-MS. FTIR results revealed that cotton stalk lignins were significantly broken down via alkaline treatment and this breakdown resulted in the formation of new fractions and also ester &amp / ether bonds between antimicrobial hydroxycinnamic acids and lignin were cleaved during the alkaline treatments of cotton stalk lignins. By FTIR results, C=C bonds were found to be characteristic for antimicrobial lignin sample and it was suggested that these bonds might be the reason of the antimicrobial activity. By LC-MS qualitative mass analysis, antibacterial lignin fractions were found to be quite different from non-antibacterial lignin fractions. LC-MS results indicated that the antimicrobial lignin fractions might be lignin-derived oligomers and/or might be flavonoids. Cotton stalk lignin fractions demonstrated different antimicrobial activities depending on the method of isolation and chemical treatment.