Commercially available polyurethane open cell foams are readily coated with mussel-inspired polydopamine. The polydopamine film allows robust immobilisation of TiO2 nanoparticles at the surface of the three-dimensional material. The resulting catalyst is efficient for the photo-degradation of an azo dye, reusable and highly resistant to mechanical stress. A novel type of robust structured catalytic support, easily accessible via an inexpensive and green process, is thus described.
The origin and time evolution of heterogeneities in drying colloidal films is still a matter of debate. In this work, we studied the behaviour of horizontal drying fronts in a 1D configuration. The effects of hydrostatic pressure and collective diffusion of charged particles, neglected so far, were introduced. We made use of the new simulation tool based on cellular automata we recently presented (Langmuir 2015 & 2017). To check the simulation results, measurements of film profiles in the wet state and drying front velocities were performed with silica colloids. It was shown that taking hydrostatic pressure into account much improves agreement between theory and experiment. On the other hand, the simulation showed that collective diffusion slows down the drying fronts, even more when the Debye length is increased. This latter effect remains to be checked experimentally. This work opens the way to further improvements of theory and simulation, notably 2D and 3D simulations.
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