The Centre for Nanomaterials Applications in Construction

Efficient encapsulation of different compounds is an important research area for many industrial sectors such as food, cosmetic, medical and pharmaceutical industries. Usually organic materials are used to obtain the capsules. However, in the last years there has been an increase in the synthesis of inorganic capsules, in particular silica capsules by sol-gel process due to their great chemical resistance, thermal stability, biocompatibility and their non-toxic quality for the environment.

As part of an ongoing research project at Nanoc, several technologically interesting organic compounds have been encapsulated based on the synthesis reported by Ahn et al. (B.Y. Ahn, S.I. Seok, I.C. Baek, S.I: Hong, Chem. Commun., 2, 189 (2006)) and their morphology, size and shell characteristics have been characterized (Fig.1). Part of the study was presented as a poster in the conference Trends in Nanotechnology 2009 and has been accepted to be published in the journal Physica Status Solidi. The microcapsules are made of silica and the synthesis is based in a sol-gel reaction followed by an emulsion process. The characteristics of the microcapsules vary depending on the parameters of the reaction such as the pH, stirring speed and even the material to be encapsulated. The synthesized capsules can have a wide size range that could go from 100 nm to 100 µm.

The capsules shown above were synthesised by Idurre Kaltzakorta, who is doing her PhD studies under the supervision of Dr. Edurne Erkizia (eerkizia@labein.es). If you are interested in knowing more about this issue, please contact them !!!

The work “Doctor, I think that my house has osteoporosis” of Juan J. Gaitero from NANOC was the winner of the 2009 edition of the Thesis Prize organised by Elhuyar Foundation. In opinion of The Judging Panel, such work explained in a very entertaining manner the main aspects of cement chemistry and its degradation by calcium leaching. They valued particularly the easy language used by the author and the comparison between calcium leaching and osteoporosis.

The Thesis Prize awards the best thesis resume, having to be written in an attractive and communicative manner with an extension of less than 3000 characters. A total of 62 researchers from 6 different universities took part in this year’s competition. The Judging Panel stressed the high quality of most works, being possible read all of them on the website of Basque Research in the Thesis Prize section.

The 1st CODICE Workshop on Multi-scale Modelling and Experiments for cementitious materials

will  be held in Bergamo (Italy) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bergamo) from he 28th to the 30th of September,2009.

The brochure, the programme and other useful information can be downloaded from www.codice-project.eu

We have finally launched the new NANOC web page (blog) .  This blog aims to collect our daily thoughs on subjects as different as cements, polymers, areogels, capsules, etc. . The subjects will certainly revolve around the nanoworld and the ways we look at it. Having an informal purpose, the blog will post news of different nature. Both profound subjects and trivial or banal matters will be found depending on the mood of our bloggers. In any case, this blog is born with  the firm intention of exchange information and make us be a bit more visible in this ever more changing world. We hope that you like it.