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A novel multiscale porous architecture where an individual particle is nested inside a hollow chamber of inverse-opal (IO) frame is created using a large scale self-assembly of core-shell structured colloidal particles and subsequent selective removal of the outer shells of the colloids. Since the nested particle is smaller than the size of individual IO chamber, the interconnected nanochannels are spontaneously formed within the structured frame. The size of internal nanochannels is readily tuned to have high permeability and size-selective separation capability, which is successfully tested for nanoparticle separation.

The use of forward osmosis (FO) process for seawater desalination has attracted tremendous interest in recent years. Besides the manufacture of suitable membranes, the major technical challenge in the efficient deployment of the FO technology lies in the development of a suitable "draw solute". Owing to its inherent advantages, poly(aspartic acid) has arisen to be an attractive candidate for this purpose. However, an investigation of its molecular level properties has not been studied in detail. In this paper, the dynamics of poly(aspartic acid) and its sodium salt in the dilute concentration regime have been reported. The quantification of the polymer conformational properties, its solvation behavior, and the counterion dynamics are studied. The neutral polymer shows a preferentially coiled structure whereas the fully ionized polymer has an extended structure. Upon comparing with poly(acrylic acid) polymer, another polymer which has been used as a draw solute, poly(aspartic acid) forms more number of hydrogen bonds as well as fewer ion pairs.

We present a photopolymeric multifunctional dendrimer for holographic applications. In this study, we described a synthesis of multiphotoreactive dendrimer and phase compatible polymer matrix as well as a numerical simulation of the dendrimer. This holographic photopolymer containing a nanosized photoreactive organic dendrimer could address the aggregation issue of conventional inorganic nanoparticle additives and allowed writing-induced shrinkage to be successfully reduced to the extent of acceptable values for 130 μm thick film. In this report, holographic performance including diffraction efficiency (DE), transmission, photosensitivity, modulation of refractive index, polarization sensitivity, and volume shrinkage has been discussed. The page-wise recording by using an amplitude spatial light modulator (SLM) was also demonstrated.