Polyoxazolines are a new promising class of polymers for biomedical applications. Antibiofouling polyoxazoline coatings can suppress bacterial colonization of medical devices, which can cause infections to patients. However, the creation of oxazoline-based films using conventional methods is difficult. This study presents a new way to produce plasma polymerized oxazoline-based films with antibiofouling properties and good biocompatibility. The films were created via plasma deposition from 2-methyl-2-oxazoline vapors in nitrogen atmospheric pressure dielectric barrier discharge. Diverse film properties were achieved by increasing the substrate temperature at the deposition. The physical and chemical properties of plasma polymerized polyoxazoline films were studied by SEM, EDX, FTIR, AFM, depth-sensing indentation technique, and surface energy measurement. After tuning of the deposition parameters, films with a capacity to resist bacterial biofilm formation were achieved. Deposited films also promote cell viability.

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Many objects of culture heritage, comprised of leather, need to receive the right treatment to be restored and to elongate their lifespan. Determination of the degradation degree and even better the type of the degradation is a crucial knowledge for the way of subsequent conservation, exhibition and long-term storage. Collagen based materials are very sensitive to the deterioration and undergo, mainly hydrolysis and oxidation. Namely acid hydrolysis and photooxidation are the most often causes of the disintegration of leather. Contrary to the leather investigation, a few studies dedicated to parchment described some typical features of hydrolysis, oxidation and gelatinization observed applying Attenuated Total Reflection Fourier-Transform Infrared spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR) which is widely used in collagen degradation type research. Except of the collagen secondary structure, followed by IR spectroscopy, we determined the shrinkage temperature of the collagen substrate by Micro Hot Table method (MHT) to reach the degradation level. In this paper, artificially degraded leather samples as a theoretical representative of cultural heritage objects were examined. We discuss the use of both techniques (IR and MHT) as potential methods for fast assessment of oxidation and hydrolysis of vegetable tanned leathers and degradation level. New samples of leather tanned by various vegetable tannins were artificially degraded under controlled conditions. We simulated the photooxidation by means of the Xenon arc lamp exposure, oxidation using the soaking in hydrogen peroxide, acid hydrolysis by the soaking in hydrochloric acid and alkaline hydrolysis using the soaking in natrium hydroxide. ATR-FTIR spectra of reference and tested samples were compared. Oxidation causes increase of the distance between amide I (A I ) and amide II (A II ) wavenumbers (Δν) above 100 cm −1 and the intensity ratio between A I and A II bands (A I /A II ) above 1.6. The A I / A II ratio depends on the type of hydrolysis. The increase above 1.8 proves acid hydrolysis while the decrease under 1 demonstrate alkaline hydrolysis. MHT results are not so obvious. Generally, mainly the hydrolysis causes the decrease of the temperatures. We have found out that knowledge of the whole shrinkage interval is important and provides more appropriate information about the leather disintegration.

LDI of nanogold-Te conjugate is a suitable procedure for the generation of new gold telluride clusters. Treatment of borosilicate glass with a diffuse coplanar surface barrier discharge strongly enhances the deposition of gold tellurides on glass while limited adsorption on a silicon surface was observed.

Abstract. Precise calibration in TOF MS requires suitable and reliable standards, which are not always available for high masses. We evaluated inorganic clusters of the monoisotopic elements gold and phosphorus (Au n + /Au n -and P n + /P n -) as an alternative to peptides or proteins for the external and internal calibration of mass spectra in various experimental and instrumental scenarios. Monoisotopic gold or phosphorus clusters can be easily generated in situ from suitable precursors by laser desorption/ionization (LDI) or matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry (MALDI-MS). Their use offers numerous advantages, including simplicity of preparation, biological inertness, and exact mass determination even at lower mass resolution. We used citrate-stabilized gold nanoparticles to generate gold calibration clusters, and red phosphorus powder to generate phosphorus clusters. Both elements can be added to samples to perform internal calibration up to mass-to-charge (m/z) 10-15,000 without significantly interfering with the analyte. We demonstrated the use of the gold and phosphorous clusters in the MS analysis of complex biological samples, including microbial standards and total extracts of mouse embryonic fibroblasts. We believe that clusters of monoisotopic elements could be used as generally applicable calibrants for complex biological samples.

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