Clemson University – TechConnect Briefs

Competitive Binding of Natural Amphiphiles to Graphene derivatives

Radic S., Geitner N., Podila R., Ke P.C., Ding F., Clemson University, US

Understanding the interaction between graphene derivatives and natural amphiphiles in biological and environmental milieu is important for the biosustainability and biocompatibility of graphene nanotechonology. Using rapid discrete molecular dynamics simulations, we systematically studied the binding [...]

Direct observation of silver nanoparticle-ubiquitin corona formation

Ding F., Clemson University, US

The advancement of nanomedicine and the increasing applications of nanoparticles in consumer products have led to administered biological exposure and unintentional environmental accumulation of nanoparticles, causing concerns over the biocompatibility and sustainability of nanotechnology. Upon [...]

Enabling renewable-energy driven reverse osmosis desalination using integrated compressed gas energy storage—bench-scale experiments and modeling

Mahajan P., Sun Y., Ladner D.A., Clemson University, US

Growing fresh water needs have led to increasing interest in desalination using reverse osmosis (RO) membranes, but energy requirements are extreme so renewable sources are sought. Unfortunately, many renewable sources are intermittent and low-intensity while [...]

Enabling renewable-energy driven reverse osmosis desalination using integrated compressed gas energy storage—bench-scale experiments and modeling

Mahajan P., Sun Y., Ladner D.A., Clemson University, US

Growing fresh water needs have led to increasing interest in desalination using reverse osmosis (RO) membranes, but energy requirements are extreme so renewable sources are sought. Unfortunately, many renewable sources are intermittent and low-intensity while [...]

Gold nanoparticles as a tool to detect UTI and their cytotoxic effects in DU-145 cells

Vedantam P., Tzeng J., Brown A., Podia R., Staley K., Rao A., Clemson University, US

The abstract includes a brief description of how two different kinds of E.coli can have different binding specificities and detection of such organisms with sugar functionalized nanoparticles can be used as a biodiagnostic technique.

Preparation and characterization of highly porous PVDF nanofibers and yarns

Andrukh T., Few C., Burtovyy O., Burtovyy R., Burtovyy O., Burtovyy R., Luzinov I., Kornev K., Clemson University, US

Unique highly porous Polyvinylidene difluoride (PVDF) nanofibers (Figure 1) of about 50-500 nm in diameter were prepared by electrospinning. Electrospinning setup (Figure 2) allows us to control the nanofiber placement on the gap-type electrodes. In [...]

Preparation and characterization of ultrasharp tungsten wires

Kulakov M., Luzinov I., Kornev K., Clemson University, US

The ultrasharp tungsten wires were produced by electrochemical method for electroexplosion of polymers. The effects of electropolishing control parameters, tungsten wire diameter, applied voltage and depth of the wire immersion into electrolyte, on the tip [...]

Fluorescence of Water-Soluble Fullerenes in Biological Systems

Lin S., Jones D.X., Mount A.S., Ke P.C., Clemson University, US

The chemical and photophysical properties of fullerenes have been studied over the past two decades yet the biological applications of these nanoparticles remain limited. The major hurdle of integrating fullerenes with biological systems is their [...]

Single-Molecule Study of Dendrimer-Hydrocarbon Interaction

Pasupathy K., Jones A.T., Ke P.C., Clemson University, US

Dendrimers are star-branched polymers which have broad applications from energy harvesting, catalysis, drug delivery, to gas-hydrate prevention in the petroleum industry. However the underlining mechanisms of these applications are not well understood. Here we present [...]

Structural Study of Amorphous Carbon using Adaptive Interatomic Reactive Empirical Bond-order Potential Model

Knippenberg M.T., Kum O., Stuart S.J., Clemson University, US

We studied the structural properties of amorphous carbon covering a wide range of densities from low-density to high-density regime using classical molecular dynamics with reactive empirical bond-order potential model. We calculated the pair-correlation functions, relative [...]