SURFI

At KBC

We celebrated Patrick’s PhD degree at KBC – local brewery. It is always great to take a short break from regular duties and enjoy company of talented young people.

Ambassador Restaurant

We had a memorable good-bye party for Dilek and Adam in the Ambassador restaurant last Friday. Dilek Arslon has completed has one-year visiting program entitled Experimental and theoretical analysis of molecular interactions in different originated colemanite suspensions at Michigan Tech. We are grateful to Dilek for her input to our program on mineral processing and surface chemistry of minerals. We wish her successful completion of her PhD program in Turkey, and hope to host her again.

Adam took a leadership in two projects this summer. He investigated the effect of zinc oxide film thickness and structure on biodegradation of zinc wires. He also prepared and characterized antimicrobial stones. We are thankful to Adam for his dedication to his two projects and large number of valuable data that he generated in such short period. We wish him success in his pharmacy program at the University of Michigan.

Jarek Drelich

Prof. Drelich has been invited by the Gokaraju Rangaraju Institute of Engineering and Technology in Hyderabad (India) to serve as the Advisory Board Member to the 5th International Conference on Materials Processing and Characterization that will take place in Hyderabad on March 12-13, 2016. Prof. Drelich gave a keynote talk during one of the previous meetings, in 2012.

Surface Innovations, the journal

The 3rd issue of 2015 of the Surface Innovations journal is available. This issue contains two papers on superhydrophobic surfaces, our paper on the effect of hydrophobic nano-asperities on particle – surface colloidal interactions, contribution on adsorption of proteins on gradient surfaces, and paper on AFM impedance microscopy.

MSE C Journal

We reported in 2013 in the article published in Advanced Materials that metallic zinc exhibited an ideal biocorrosion rate within murine aortas, thus raising the possibility that zinc might be the ideal material for endovascular stenting applications. In the new article entitled “Metallic zinc exhibits optimal biocompatibility for bioabsorbable endovascular stents” just published in Materials Science and Engineering C we further assessed the arterial biocompatibility of metallic zinc. Metallic zinc wires were punctured and advanced into the rat abdominal aorta lumen for up to 6.5 months. This study demonstrates that metallic zinc does not provoke responses that often contribute to restenosis. Low cell densities and neointimal tissue thickness, along with tissue regeneration within the corroding implant, point to optimal biocompatibility of zinc and its corrosion products. Furthermore, the lack of progression in neointimal tissue thickness over 6.5 months or the presence of smooth muscle cells near the zinc implant suggest that the products of zinc corrosion may suppress the activities of inflammatory and smooth muscle cells. This new contribution is the interdisciplinary effort that was led by Prof. Goldman and involves our collaborator from the University of Michigan.