Personal Information and Interests
Education:
Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich, 2003
Laurea in Ingegneria Chimica
Politecnico di Milano, 1998
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Research Description
Smart gels are polymeric materials that respond to a change in external conditions, such as pH, temperature or to the application of an electrical field with a change in their volume. This phenomenon can be explained as a consequence of a phase transition, governed by the balance between the elastic, the solvent-polymer affinity and ionic components of the total osmotic pressure acting on the gel. Thanks to this peculiar behavior, smart gels find numerous applications which range from triggered drug delivery, sensors, bioseparations, tissue engineering etc.
A further extension of responsive gels leads to the creation of so called composite gel-nanomaterials, which are formed by incorporating nanoparticles inside the gel matrix. In general, the combination of nanoparticles and the polymeric gel matrix produces materials with properties that differ from the simple combination of the individual properties of its components, and their exploration can provide new advances in the design of materials with specific properties. As an example, by incorporating paramagnetic nanoparticles in the gel, the phase transition in the gel matrix can be induced by the heat generated through the application of an alternating magnetic field, due to a combination of friction losses, hysteresis losses and eddy currents losses in the nanoparticles. Due to the capability of such materials to perform mechanical work, they can fund interesting applications in the construction of mechanical actuators.
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