Ricerc@Sapienza

Traditional anti-icing/de-icing systems, i.e., thermal and pneumatic, in most cases require a power consumption not always allowable in small aircraft. Therefore, the use of passive systems, able to delay the ice formation, or reduce the ice adhesion strength once formed, with no additional energy consumption, can be considered as the most promising solution to solve the problem of the ice formation, most of all, for small aircraft.

Aim: Fabrication of graphene oxide (GO)-based medical devices coatings that limit adhesion of Candida albicans, a main issue of healthcare-associated infections. Methods: The GO composites noncovalently functionalized with curcumin (CU), a hydrophobic molecule with active antimicrobial action, polyethylene glycol (PEG) that hinders the absorption of biomolecules or a combination of CU and PEG (GO-CU-PEG) were drop-casted on surfaces and antifungal efficacy was assessed. Results: We demonstrate that GO-CU-PEG coatings can reduce fungal adhesion, proliferation and biofilm formation.

The Future Circular Collider study, which aims at designing post-LHC particle accelerator options, is entering in the final stage, which foresees a conceptual design report containing the basic requirements for a hadron and a lepton collider, as well as options for an electron-proton machine. Due to the high beam intensities of these accelerators, collective effects have to be carefully analyzed. Among them, the finite conductivity of the beam vacuum chamber represents a major source of impedance for the electron-positron collider.

The feasibility of Polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF)-graphene nanocomposite coatings for radar absorption is investigated. To this purpose, a production process of PVDF coatings filled with graphene nanoplatelets has been developed. All the produced samples were characterized in terms of morphological, electrical and electromagnetic properties. The effective complex dielectric permittivity was measured in Ku-band and the results were used to predict by simulations the reflection coefficient of radar absorbing panels consisting of PVDF-graphene coatings over dielectric substrates.

In the design of innovative nanomaterials for electromagnetic (EM) field absorption and shielding a crucial issue is the experimental characterization of the complex effective permittivity of non-uniform layered materials or electrically thin lossy layers. This paper proposes a technique to retrieve the complex relative permittivity of a thin lossy coating supported by a dielectric substrate through transmission/reflection measurements in a rectangular waveguide.