| Novel templates have been developed to prepare nanostructured porous materials through nonsurfactant templated pathway. And new applications of these materials, such as drug delivery and molecular imprinting, have been explored. The relationship between template content and pore structure has been investigated. The composition and pore structures were studied in detail using IR, TGA, SEM, TEM, BET and XRD. The obtained mesoporous materials have tunable diameters in the range of 2--12 nm. Due to the many advantages of this nonsurfactant templated pathway, such as environment friendly and biocompatibility, controlled release of antibiotics in the nanoporous materials were studied. The in vitro release properties were found to depend on the silica structures which were well tuned by varying the template content. A controlled long-term release pattern of vancomycin was achieved when the template content was 30 wt% or lower.; Nanoscale electrochemical probes with dimensions as small as 50 nm in diameter and 1--2 mum in length were fabricated using electron beam deposition on the apex of conventional micron size electrodes. The electroactive region was limited to the extreme tip of the nanoprobe by coating with an insulating polymer and re-opening of the coating at the extreme tip. The novel nanoelectrodes thus prepared were employed to probe neurons in mouse brain slice and the results suggest that the nanoprobes were capable of recording neuronal excitatory postsynaptic potential signals.; Interesting solid state chemistry was found in oxygenated iron phthalocyanine. Their Mossbauer spectra show the formation of four oxygenated species apart from the unoxygenated parent compound. The oxygen-bridged compounds formed in the solid matrix bear no resemblance to the one formed by solution chemistry. Tentative assignment of species has been made with the help of Mossbauer and IR spectroscopy.; An effort to modify aniline trimer for potential nanoelectronics applications and to investigate the formation of "nano-pancake" shape aggregation was also reported. |
