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Porous inorganic nanostructured materials are widely used nowadays as drug delivery carriers due to their adventurous features: suitable architecture, large surface area and stability in the biological fluids. Among the different types of inorganic porous materials, silica, calcium carbonate, and calcium phosphate have received significant attention in the last decade. The use of porous inorganic materials as drug carriers for cancer therapy, gene delivery etc. has the potential to improve the life expectancy of the patients affected by the disease. The main goal of this review is to provide general information on the current state of the art of synthesis of the inorganic porous particles based on silica, calcium carbonate and calcium phosphate. Special focus is dedicated to the loading capacity, controllable release of drugs under internal biological stimuli (e.g., pH, redox, enzymes) and external noninvasive stimuli (e.g., light, magnetic field, and ultrasound). Moreover, the diverse compounds to deliver with silica, calcium carbonate and calcium phosphate particles, ranging from the commercial drugs to genetic materials are also discussed.

This article reports on a study of the mineralisation behaviour of CaCO3 deposited on electrospun poly(ε-caprolactone) (PCL) scaffolds preliminarily treated with low-temperature plasma.

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This study was dedicated to the investigation of poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF) micropillar arrays obtained by soft lithography followed by phase inversion at a low temperature. Reduced graphene oxide (rGO) was incorporated into the PVDF as a nucleating filler. The piezoelectric properties of the PVDF-rGO composite micropillars were explored via piezo-response force microscopy (PFM). Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) showed that α, β, and γ phases co-existed in all studied samples, with a predominance of the γ phase. The piezoresponse force microscopy (PFM) data provided the local piezoelectric response of the PVDF micropillars, which exhibited a temperature-induced downward dipole orientation in the pristine PVDF micropillars. The addition of rGO into the PVDF matrix resulted in a change in the preferred polarization direction, and the piezo-response phase angle changed from −120° to 20°–40°. The pristine PVDF and PVDF loaded with 0.1 wt % of rGO after low-temperature quenching were found to possess a piezoelectric response of 86 and 87 pm/V respectively, which are significantly higher than the |d33eff| in the case of imprinted PVDF 64 pm/V. Thus, the addition of rGO significantly affected the domain orientation (polarization) while quenching increased the piezoelectric response.

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On the basis of time-dependent density functional theory (TD-DFT) we performed first-principle calculations to predict optical properties and transition states of pristine, N- and S-doped, and N+S-codoped anatase TiO2 nanotubes of 1 nm-diameter. The host O atoms of the pristine TiO2 nanotube were substituted by N and S atoms to evaluate the influence of dopants on the photocatalytic properties of hollow titania nanostructures. The charge transition mechanism promoted by dopants positioned in the nanotube wall clearly demonstrates the constructive and destructive contributions to photoabsorption by means of calculated transition contribution maps. Based on the results of our calculations, we predict an increased visible-light-driven photoresponse in N- and S-doped and the N+S-codoped TiO2 nanotubes, enhancing the efficiency of hydrogen production in water-splitting applications.