Responsive Membranes and Materials

Membranes have emerged over the last 30 years as a viable water treatment technology. Earth's population is growing and the need for alternative ways to generate potable water is rising. The recent advent of nanotechnology opens the door to improving processes in membrane technology, which is a promising step on the way to solving the earth's potable water problem. Current performance is enhanced and new concepts are possible by engineering on the nanoscale. This book presents key areas of nanotechnology such as fouling tolerant and robust membranes, enhanced destruction of pollutants and faster monitoring of water quality. 'Functional Nanostructured Materials and Membranes for Water Treatment' is part of the series on Materials for Sustainable Energy and Development edited by Prof. G.Q. Max Lu. The series covers advances in materials science and innovation for renewable energy, clean use of fossil energy, and greenhouse gas mitigation and associated environmental technologies.

This book reviews the cutting-edge significant research in the field of smart light-responsive materials based on azobenzene polymers and liquid crystals. Emphasis is placed on the discovery of new phenomena from the past 5 years, their underlying mechanisms, new functionalities, and properties achieved through rational design. Edited by leading authorities in the field, Zhao and Ikeda, the chapters are authored by an internationally-recognized team of experts from North America, Europe, and Asia. Smart Light-Responsive Materials will serve to catalyze new research that will lead this field over the next 5-10 years.

Materials Science of Membranes for Gas and Vapor Separation is a one-stop reference for the latest advances in membrane-based separation and technology. Put together by an international team of contributors and academia, the book focuses on the advances in both theoretical and experimental materials science and engineering, as well as progress in membrane technology. Special attention is given to comparing polymer and inorganic/organic separation and other emerging applications such as sensors. This book aims to give a balanced treatment of the subject area, allowing the reader an excellent overall perspective of new theoretical results that can be applied to advanced materials, as well as the separation of polymers. The contributions will provide a compact source of relevant and timely information and will be of interest to government, industrial and academic polymer chemists, chemical engineers and materials scientists, as well as an ideal introduction to students.

Adopting a broad approach, this volume provides the scientific community with a much-needed overview of developments and scientific findings in stimuli-responsive materials. Its primary focus is on the designing, synthesizing, formulating, and processing of materials that lead to an understanding of the scientific principles governing response driven functions leading to future technologies. The highly experienced and internationally renowned editor has assembled a team of leading scientists from the interdisciplinary areas of: * polymers * biopolymers * biochemistry * biophysics * biomaterials * bioengineering * materials engineering * biotechnology * chemistry * physics * ceramics * metals * and materials science. A combination that guarantees a unique and high-quality handbook.

Offers a comprehensive review of the research and development of mechanically responsive materials and their applications in soft robots Mechanically Responsive Materials for Soft Robotics offers an authoritative guide to the current state of mechanically responsive materials for the development of soft robotics. With contributions from an international panel of experts, the book examines existing mechanically responsive materials such as crystals, polymers, gels, and composites that are stimulated by light and heat. The book also explores the application of mechanical materials to soft robotics. The authors describe the many excellent mechanical crystals developed in recent years that show the ability to bend, twist, rotate, jump, self-heal, and shape memory. Mechanical polymer materials are described for evolution into artificial muscles, photomobile materials, bioinspired soft actuators, inorganic-organic hybrid materials, multi-responsive composite materials, and strain sensor materials. The application of mechanical materials to soft robots is just the beginning. This book reviews the many challenging and versatile applications, such as soft microrobots made from photoresponsive elastomers, four-dimensional printing for assembling soft robots, self-growing of soft robots like plants, and biohybrid robots using muscle tissue. This important book: -Explores recent developments in the use of soft smart materials in robotic systems -Covers the full scope of mechanically responsive materials: polymers, crystals, gels, and nanocomposites -Deals with an interdisciplinary topic of advanced smart materials research -Contains extensive descriptions of current and future applications in soft robotics Written for materials scientists, polymer chemists, photochemists, physical chemists, solid state chemists, inorganic chemists, and robotics engineers, Mechanically Responsive Materials for Soft Robotics offers a comprehensive and timely review of the most recent research on mechanically responsive materials and the manufacture of soft robotics.

This book facilitates the access to the various disciplines, highlighting their many points of contacts and making the clear the message that membrane-based sensors represent the future of the research in every field, including chemistry, biology, biomedicine, textiles, and electronics.

There has been concerted effort across scientific disciplines to develop artificial materials and systems that can help researchers understand natural stimuli-responsive activities. With its up-to-date coverage on intelligent stimuli-responsive materials, Intelligent Stimuli-Responsive Materials provides research, industry, and academia professionals with the fundamentals and principles of intelligent stimuli-responsive materials, with a focus on methods and applications. Emphasizing nanostructures and applications for a broad range of fields, each chapter comprehensively covers a different stimuli-responsive material and discusses its developments, advances, challenges, analytical techniques, and applications.

A collection of Papers Presented at the 105th Annual Meeting of The American Ceramic Society and the Whitewares and Materials Division Fall Meeting, held in conjunction with ACerS Canton-Alliance Section and the Ceramic Manufacturer's Association.

A thermodynamic system is defined according to its environment and its compliance. This book promotes the classification of materials from generalized thermodynamics outside the equilibrium state and not solely according to their chemical origin. The author goes beyond standard classification of materials and extends it to take into account the living, ecological, economic and financial systems in which they exist: all these systems can be classified according to their deviation from an ideal situation of thermodynamic equilibrium. The concepts of dynamic complexity and hierarchy, emphasizing the crucial role played by cycles and rhythms, then become fundamental. Finally, the limitations of the uniqueness of this description that depend on thermodynamic foundations based on the concepts of energy and entropy are discussed in relation to the cognitive sciences.