Nicola Scuor

To overcome the complications connected to the treatment of coronary atherosclerosis by means of percutaneous transluminal angioplasty followed by stent implantation, the in situ release of antiproliferative nucleic acid based drugs (NABD) seems a promising approach. For their fragile nature, NABD cannot be released from drug eluting stents but they need to be embedded in a soft gel coating the coronary wall (endoluminal gel paving). This article deals with the thermal fate, once in the catheter, of a polymer blend composed by pluronic, giving rise to a soft gel in water upon temperature rise, and alginate, a natural polysaccharide giving origin to a strong gel in the presence of divalent cations. Simulations reveal that while the formation of a pregel is rapidly achieved, the formation of a mature gel takes a much longer time with respect to the residence time of the polymer blend inside the catheter. © 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2020, 137, 48539.

Dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) plasma is usually referred in literature as a form of cold plasma. Many applications of DBD plasma rely on this characteristic, which allow to treat also sensitive materials, including biological tissues, to exploit a range of different effects. Atmospheric pressure plasma treatment is regularly used on polymers to enhance surface properties such as wettability and adhesion. However, in the present work, we show that DBD plasma can also be used as an alternative for heating polymeric based materials, as an initial step for further industrial processing such as thermo-forming. In particular, the efficiency of the heating process has been measured, and a novel heating mechanism has been proposed based on the experimental results.

This paper presets three degrees of freedom (DOF) piezoelectric micropositioning stage. The stage is composed of a stack of piezodisk bender actuators actuated in such a way to prevent the end-effector from rotating; this way the end-effector can only translate along the x, y, and z axes. Thanks to its snake-like configuration, the system is capable of large displacements (of the order of 50 μm) with low driving voltages (of the order of 100 V). Several lumped-mass static and dynamic models of the device have been implemented. Static experimental results, which are in agreement with simulation data, confirmed the performances of the device. A dynamic model showed the natural frequencies of the mechanism. Also dynamic tests have been conducted in order to validate the dynamic model.

Micromechanical systems are increasingly being used as tools in biological applications, since their characteristic dimensions permit to operate at the same length scale of the structures under investigation. Here, we present a methodology for the design, fabrication and operation of a tool for the assessment of mechanical properties of single cells. In particular, we describe a microsystems platform to study bio-mechanical response of single living cells to in-plane biaxial stretching. The proposed device employs a new linkage design in order to obtain the displacement of the quadrants of a sliced circular plate in mutually-orthogonal directions using just one linear actuator. With this linkage geometry, the whole device has only one degree of freedom. This results in a very predictable and reliable mechanical behaviour, thereby allowing use a simple and easily available control electronics. Results of this study have relevance for the design of a powerful yet simple BioMEMS platform for the characterization of living cells as in-plane bi-axial loading simulated the conditions experienced by cells in vivo more realistically than a uniaxial stretching.