Hydrophilic and adherent polypyrrole coatings were prepared by a two-step electrochemical method. First, α-pyrrole, ω-acrylate polyethylene oxide (Py-PEO-A) dual macromonomer was synthesized by anionic polymerization and electrografted onto (semi)conducting substrates by cathodic polymerization of the acrylic end-group. The obtained adherent coating is hydrophilic and thus swells in water and bears a pyrrole ring, a precursor of the conducting polymer. In a second step, the coating is anodically polarized in a mixture of Py and Py-PEO to give the hydrophilic and adherent polypyrrole. Properties such as morphology, adherence, electroactivity, and hydrophilicity of these coatings were investigated by conventional methods and compared to those of pure polypyrrole coatings. These novel coatings exhibit efficient protein adsorption repellency and are thus good candidates for applications in biomaterials and biosensors.

The Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) onboard Solar Orbiter consists of a suite of two high-resolution imagers (HRI) and one dual-band full Sun imager (FSI) that will provide EUV and Lyman-α images of the solar atmospheric layers above the photosphere.The EUI instrument is based on a set of challenging new technologies allowing to reach the scientific objectives and to cope with the hard space environment of the Solar Orbiter mission.The mechanical concept of the EUI instrument is based on a common structure supporting the HRI and FSI channels, and a separated electronic box. A heat rejection baffle system is used to reduce the Sun heat load and provide a first protection level against the solar disk straylight. The spectral bands are selected by thin filters and multilayer mirror coatings. The detectors are 10µm pitch back illuminated CMOS Active Pixel Sensors (APS), best suited for the EUI science requirements and radiation hardness. This paper presents the EUI instrument concept and its major sub-systems. The current developments of the instrument technologies are also summarized.

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Local polarization of magnetic materials has become a well-known and widely used method for storing binary information. Numerous applications in our daily life such as credit cards, computer hard drives, and the popular magnetic drawing board toy, rely on this principle. In this work, we review the recent advances on the magnetic recording of inhomogeneous magnetic landscapes produced by superconducting films. We summarize the current compelling experimental evidence showing that magnetic recording can be applied for imprinting in a soft magnetic layer the flux trajectory taking place in a superconducting layer at cryogenic temperatures. This approach enables the ex situ observation at room temperature of the imprinted magnetic flux landscape obtained below the critical temperature of the superconducting state. The undeniable appeal of the proposed technique lies in its simplicity and the potential to improve the spatial resolution, possibly down to the scale of a few vortices.