Polyethylene Glycol Diacrylate (PEGDA) tissue scaffolds having a thickness higher than 1 mm and without the presence of nutrient conduit networks were shown to have limited applications in tissue engineering due to the inability of cells to adhere and migrate within the scaffold. The PEGDA scaffold has been coated with polycaprolactone (PCL) electrospun nanofiber (ENF) membrane on both sides to overcome these limitations, thereby creating a functional PEGDA-PCL scaffold. This study examined the physical, mechanical, and biological properties of the PEGDA and PEGDA-PCL scaffolds to determine the effect of PCL coating on PEGDA. The physical characterization of PEGDA-PCL samples demonstrated the effectiveness of combining PCL with a PEGDA scaffold to expand its applications in tissue engineering. This study also found a significant improvement of elasticity of PEGDA due to the addition of PCL layers. This study shows that PEGDA-PCL scaffolds absorb nutrients with time and can provide an ideal environment for the survival of cells. Furthermore, cell viability tests indicate that the cell adhered, proliferated, and migrated in the PEGDA-PCL scaffold. Therefore, PCL ENF coating has a positive influence on PEGDA scaffold.

Abstract-The performance of capacitive interdigital sensors involved with anisotropic and inhomogeneous nematic liquid crystal (LC) film is investigated. These sensors have potential applications in chemical and biological systems. The theory for modeling the permittivity tensor of the LC film as a function of the molecular orientation is presented. The LC film is handled as inhomogeneous material where molecules are assumed to have different orientations with respect to the frame axes. Under these conditions, fringing field capacitances as functions of the molecular deformations are calculated. Examples of modeled capacitive interdigital sensors in the present of different inhomogeneous distributions of LC films will be studied and discussed.

Abstract-In this paper, we propose tunable optical interleaver filters based on the combined Michelson interferometer (MI) and the Gires-Tournois interferometer (GTI) with polarization diversity. The tuning capability is achieved by integrating liquid crystals into the interleaver. In addition to the tunability, it is also shown that the response for this proposed interleaver has a flat-top. Various GTI-MI LC-based interleaver structures are discussed in this paper and their performance, in terms of the flat-top and the pass band ripple, are judged. These structures have the advantages of low operation voltage requirements and design simplicity. A GTI-MI interleaver has been fabricated and tested. The experimental results show that the interleaver has tunable response.

In this paper, the theory for tracking the average molecular orientation of a liquid crystal material via capacitive sensing of anisotropic media is presented. Tracking the director axis of a nematic liquid crystal material can be achieved by two capacitance measurements. The sensitivity for the sensor at different alignments is studied. Both the experimental and calculated values for fringing capacitances of a selected interdigitated fingers sensor are presented.

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