Mechanical resistant bioactive materials are of high interest for biomedical applications. In this work, we address the improvement in mechanical properties of HA coatings by the addition of a cheap and widely available secondary phase material, the talc from soapstone. The composites hydroxyapatite/talc (HA/talc) were successfully obtained by pulsed electrodeposition and characterized by scanning electron microscopy, energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy, corrosion and wear resistance and biocompatibility tests. We found that the addition of talc greatly improves the mechanical properties of coatings (i. e., wear track and friction coefficient in wear tests were significantly diminished) without diminishing corrosion resistance and biocompatibility. Alamar Blue® tests, alkaline phosphatase activity, and collagen production indicate that the biocomposites are biocompatible and talc itself induce bone maturation.

We employed PBE and BLYP semi-local functionals and the van der Waals density functional of Dion et al. (2004) (vdW-DF) to investigate structural properties of liquid acetonitrile and methanol. Among those functionals the vdW-DF is the only one that correctly predicts energy minima in inter-molecular interactions between acetonitrile molecules. We found that van der Waals interactions have a negligible effect on H-bonds in methanol chains. However, it significantly increases chain packing resulting in a more dense liquid in comparison to the other two functionals. The overall trend is that the vdW-DF tends to overestimate density and bulk modulus, meanwhile the semi-local functionals tend to underestimate density. Thus, van der Waals interactions play an important role in the properties of liquids in which much stronger dipole-dipole interactions are present.

The combined use of the microcapillary cell (MEC) and scanning vibrating electrode technique (SVET) and low-angle cross sections was employed to elucidate the role of each coating region on the protection of the cut-edge corrosion of galvanized steels. Different compounds are involved in the blocking action of the corrosion products: Zincite (ZnO) on the steel substrate, hydrozincite (Zn5(OH)6(CO3)2) at the coating/steel interface, and Simonkolleite (Zn5(OH)8Cl2) and ZnO on the different coating regions in different proportions. The coating surface is also active at the initial stage and during long-term protection and thus, must be considered in experimental simulation of the cut-edge corrosion.

Abstract We propose an effective model for solute separation from fluids through reverse osmosis based on core-softened potentials. Such potentials have been used to investigate anomalous fluids in several situations under a great variety of approaches. Due to their simplicity, computational simulations become faster and mathematical treatments are possible. Our model aims to mimic water desalination through nano-membranes through reverse osmosis, for which we have found reasonable qualitative results when confronted against all-atoms simulations found in the literature. The purpose of this work is not to replace any fully atomistic simulation at this stage, but instead to pave the first steps towards coarse-grained models for water desalination processes. This may help to approach problems in larger scales, in size and time, and perhaps make analytical theories more viable.