Dit is het eerste deel van een blogreeks over groene chemie. Hier introduceer ik dit paradoxale begrip. Hoe kan iets smerigs als chemie nou groen zijn of worden?
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Natural Deep Eutectic Solvents (NADES) represent a green chemistry alternative to utilization of common hazardous organic solvents. They were introduced by Abbott et al. [1], and were found to have a wide range of compositions and favorable properties. NADES are typically obtained by mixing hydrogen-bond acceptors (HBA), with hydrogen bond donors (HBD), leading to a significant depression of the melting point. The availability of components, simple preparation, biodegradability, safety, re usability and low cost are the significant advantages that call for research on their analytical applications. Three methods are most commonly used for preparing NADES: a) heating and stirring: the mixture until a clear liquid is formed; b) evaporating solvent from components solution with a rotatory evaporator; c) freeze drying of aqueous solutions.The common solvents for the extraction of anthocyanins are acidified mixtures of water with ethanol, methanol, or acetone. The anthocyanins extracts are susceptible to degradation due to high temperature, and the solvent properties (e.g. high pH) and the whole process can often be time-consuming. Extraction of anthocyanins from red cabbage by four NADES was investigated. It was demonstrated that NADES have comparable extraction efficiencies with conventional method with 0.1 M water solution of HCl. This indicates a possibility of utilization the Green chemistry extraction processes as a promising new green-extraction technology with low cost efficiency and environment friendly technology for production of safe food additives.
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Renewing agricultural grasslands for improved yields and forage quality generally involves eliminating standing vegetation with herbicides, ploughing and reseeding. However, grassland renewal may negatively affect soil quality and related ecosystem services. On clay soil in the north of the Netherlands, we measured grass productivity and soil chemical parameters of ‘young’ (5–15 years since last grassland renewal) and ‘old’ (>20 years since last grassland renewal) permanent grasslands, located as pairs at 10 different dairy farms. We found no significant difference with old permanent grassland in herbage dry matter yield and fertilizer nitrogen (N) response, whereas herbage N yield was lower in young permanent grassland. Moreover, the young grassland soil contained less soil organic matter (SOM), soil organic carbon (C) and soil organic N compared to the old grassland soil. Grass productivity was positively correlated with SOM and related parameters such as soil organic C, soil organic N and potentially mineralizable N. We conclude that on clay soils with 70% desirable grasses (i.e., Lolium perenne and Phleum pratense) or more, the presumed yield benefit of grassland renewal is offset by a loss of soil quality (SOM and N-total). The current practice of renewing grassland after 10 years without considering the botanical composition, is counter-productive and not sustainable.
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Inhibition of the sodium−glucose cotransporter 2 (SGLT2) by canagliflozin in type 2 diabetes mellitus results in large between-patient variability in clinical response. To better understand this variability, the positron emission tomography (PET) tracer [18F]canagliflozin was developed via a Cu-mediated 18F-fluorination of its boronic ester precursor with a radiochemical yield of 2.0 ± 1.9% and a purity of >95%. The GMP automated synthesis originated [18F]canagliflozin with a yield of 0.5−3% (n = 4) and a purity of >95%. Autoradiography showed [18F]canagliflozin binding in human kidney sections containing SGLT2. Since [18F]canagliflozin is the isotopologue of the extensively characterized drug canagliflozin and thus shares its toxicological and pharmacological characteristics, it enables its immediate use in patients.
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Tweede meting van merk TopDutch nu het door de Noordelijke provincies weer wordt ingezet.
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Inkjet printing is a rapidly growing technology for depositing functional materials in the production of organic electronics. Challenges lie among others in the printing of high resolution patterns with high aspect ratio of functional materials to obtain the needed functionality like e.g. conductivity. μPlasma printing is a technology which combines atmospheric plasma treatment with the versatility of digital on demand printing technology to selectively change the wetting behaviour of materials. In earlier research it was shown that with μPlasma printing it is possible to selectively improve the wetting behaviour of functional inks on polymer substrates using atmospheric air plasma. In this investigation we show it is possible to selectively change the substrate wetting behaviour using combinations of different plasmas and patterned printing. For air and nitrogen plasmas, increased wetting of printed materials could be achieved on both polycarbonate and glass substrates. A minimal track width of 320 μm for a 200 μm wide plasma needle was achieved. A combination of N2 with HMDSO plasma increases the contact angle for water up from <100 to 1050 and from 320 to 460 for DEGDMA making the substrate more hydrophobic. Furthermore using N2-plasma in combination with a N2/HMDSO plasma, hydrophobic tracks could be printed with similar minimal track width. Combining both N2 -plasma and N2/HMDSO plasma treatments show promising results to further decrease the track width to even smaller values.
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With a market demand for low cost, easy to produce, flexible and portable applications in healthcare, energy, biomedical or electronics markets, large research programs are initiated to develop new technologies to provide this demand with new innovative ideas. One of these fast developing technologies is organic printed electronics. As the term printed electronics implies, functional materials are printed via, e.g. inkjet, flexo or gravure printing techniques, on to a substrate material. Applications are, among others, organic light emitting diodes (OLED), sensors and Lab-on-a-chip devices. For all these applications, in some way, the interaction of fluids with the substrate is of great importance. The most used substrate materials for these low-cost devices are (coated) paper or plastic. Plastic substrates have a relatively low surface energy which frequently leads to poor wetting and/or poor adhesion of the fluids on the substrates during printing and/ or post-processing. Plasma technology has had a long history in treating materials in order to improve wetting or promote adhesion. The µPlasma patterning tool described in this thesis combines a digital inkjet printing platform with an atmospheric dielectric barrier discharge plasma tool. Thus enabling selective and local plasma treatment, at atmospheric pressure, of substrates without the use of any masking materials. In this thesis, we show that dependent on the gas composition the substrate surface can either be functionalized, thus increasing its surface energy, or material can be deposited on the surface, lowering its surface energy. Through XPS and ATR-FTIR analysis of the treated (polymer) substrate surfaces, chemical modification of the surface structure was confirmed. The chemical modification and wetting properties of the treated substrates remained present for at least one month after storage. Localized changes in wettability through µPlasma patterning were obtained with a resolution of 300µm. Next to the control of wettability of an ink on a substrate in printed electronics is the interaction of ink droplets with themselves of importance. In printing applications, coalescence of droplets is standard practice as consecutive droplets are printed onto, or close to each other. Understanding the behaviour of these droplets upon coalescence is therefore important, especially when the ink droplets are of different composition and/or volume. For droplets of equal volume, it was found that dye transport across the coalescence bridge could be fully described by diffusion only. This is as expected, as due to the droplet symmetry on either side of the bridge, the convective flows towards the bridge are of equal size but opposite in direction. For droplets of unequal volume, the symmetry across the bridge is no longer present. Experimental analysis of these merging droplets show that in the early stages of coalescence a convective flow from the small to large droplet is present. Also, a smaller convective flow of shorter duration from the large into the small droplet was identified. The origin of this flow might be due to the presence of vortices along the interface of the bridge, due to the strong transverse flow to open the bridge. To conclude, three potential applications were showcased. In the first application we used µPlasma patterning to create hydrophilic patterns on hydrophobic dodecyl-trichlorosilane (DTS) covered glass. Capillaries for a Lab-on-a-chip device were successfully created by placing two µPlasma patterned glass slides on top of each other separated by scotch tape. In the second application we showcased the production of a RFID tag via inkjet printing. Functional RFID-tags on paper were created via inkjet printing of silver nanoparticle ink connected to an integrated circuit. The optimal operating frequency of the produced tags is in the range of 860-865 MHz, making them usable for the European market, although the small working range of 1 m needs further improvement. Lastly, we showed the production of a chemresistor based gas sensor. In house synthesised polyemeraldine salt (PANi) was coated by hand on top of inkjet printed silver electrodes. The sensor proved to be equally sensitive to ethanol and water vapour, reducing its selectivity in detecting changes in gas composition.
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