Scientific Papers in SCI

The rapid increase in the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide is one of the most pressing problems facing our planet. This challenge has motivated the development of different strategies not only in the reduction of CO2 concentrations via green energy alternatives but also in the capture and conversion of CO2 into value-added products. Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are a relatively new class of porous materials with unique structural characteristics such as high surface areas, chemical tunability and stability, and have been extensively studied as promising materials to address this challenge. This comprehensive review identifies the specific structural and chemical properties of MOFs that result in advanced CO2 capture capacities and fairly encouraging catalytic CO2 conversion behaviour. More importantly, we describe an interconnection among the unique properties of MOFs and the engineering aspects of these intriguing materials towards CO2 capture and conversion processes.

The increasing use of high magnetic fields in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners demands new contrast agents, since those used in low field instruments are not effective at high fields. In this paper, we report the synthesis of a negative MRI contrast agent consisting of HoPO4 nanoparticles (NPs). Three different sizes (27 nm, 48 nm and 80 nm) of cube-shaped NPs were obtained by homogeneous precipitation in polyol medium and then coated with poly(acrylic) acid (PAA) to obtain stable colloidal suspensions of HoPO4@PAA NPs in physiological medium (PBS). The transverse relaxivity (r2) of aqueous suspensions of the resulting NPs was evaluated at both 1.44 T and 9.4 T. A positive correlation between r2 values and field strength as well as between r2 values and particle size at both magnetic field strengths was found although this correlation failed for the biggest NPs at 9.4 T, likely due to certain particles aggregation inside the magnet. The highest r2 value (489.91 mM-1s−1) was found for the 48 nm NPs at 9.4 T. Toxicity studies demonstrated that the latter NPs exhibited low toxicity to living systems. Finally, in vivo studies demonstrated that HoPO4@PAA NPs could be a great platform for next-generation T2-weighted MRI contrast agents at high magnetic field.