The coming years are expected to bring rapid changes in the nanotechnology regulatory landscape, with the establishment of a new framework for nano-risk governance, in silico approaches for characterisation and risk assessment of nanomaterials, and novel procedures for the early identification and management of nanomaterial risks. In this context, Safe(r)-by-Design (SbD) emerges as a powerful preventive approach to support the development of safe and sustainable (SSbD) nanotechnology-based products and processes throughout the life cycle. This paper summarises the work undertaken to develop a blueprint for the deployment and operation of a permanent European Centre of collaborating laboratories and research organisations supporting safe innovation in nanotechnologies. The proposed entity, referred to as “the Centre”, will establish a ‘one-stop shop’ for nanosafety-related services and a central contact point for addressing stakeholder questions about nanosafety. Its operation will rely on significant business, legal and market knowledge, as well as other tools developed and acquired through the EU-funded EC4SafeNano project and subsequent ongoing activities. The proposed blueprint adopts a demand-driven service update scheme to allow the necessary vigilance and flexibility to identify opportunities and adjust its activities and services in the rapidly evolving regulatory and nano risk governance landscape. The proposed Centre will play a major role as a conduit to transfer scientific knowledge between the research and commercial laboratories or consultants able to provide high quality nanosafety services, and the end-users of such services (e.g., industry, SMEs, consultancy firms, and regulatory authorities). The Centre will harmonise service provision, and bring novel risk assessment and management approaches, e.g. in silico methodologies, closer to practice, notably through SbD/SSbD, and decisively support safe and sustainable innovation of industrial production in the nanotechnology industry according to the European Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability.

Propofol is an amphiphilic small molecule that strongly influences the function of cell membranes, yet data regarding interfacial properties of propofol remain scarce. Here we consider propofol adsorption at the air/water interface as elucidated by means of vibrational sum frequency spectroscopy (VSFS), neutron reflectometry (NR), and surface tensiometry. VSFS data show that propofol adsorbed at the air/water interface interacts with water strongly in terms of hydrogen bonding and weakly in the proximity of the hydrocarbon parts of the molecule. In the concentration range studied there is almost no change in the orientation adopted at the interface. Data from NR show that propofol forms a dense monolayer with a thickness of 8.4 Å and a limiting area per molecule of 40 Å2, close to the value extracted from surface tensiometry. The possibility that islands or multilayers of propofol form at the air/water interface is therefore excluded as long as the solubility limit is not exceeded. Additionally, measurements of the 1H NMR chemical shifts demonstrate that propofol does not form dimers or multimers in bulk water up to the solubility limit.

phospholipid, NR data reveal that propofol is located exclusively in the head group region, which is rationalized in the context of previous studies. The results imply a non-homogeneous distribution of propofol in the plane of real cell membranes, which is an inference that requires urgent testing and may help to explain why such low concentration of the drug are required to induce general anaesthesia.

We investigate theoretically and experimentally the spontaneous imbibition of water based inkjet formulations utilizing paper capillary rise and imbibition of inkjet drops. We approximate the paper structure to a two dimensional anisotropic porous material, and using Darcy's law as a base, we derive dimensionless groups that scale drop imbibition. This derivation is based on a previous dimensional scaling of drop imbibition on thick isotropic porous material. We apply this scaling to a paper substrate by measuring the average drop imbibition rate, and perform paper capillary rise experiments to obtain the average system parameters required for the scaling. The results suggest that this approach is a valuable tool to predict drop imbibition rates on paper. We then continue and perform the same sets of experiments on a different paper with similar structure that is surface treated (surface sized) with CaCl2 salt, an additive that is known to improve print quality. We find that due to rapid aggregation of the colorant ink by the CaCl2, the imbibition rate is slowed down in the capillary rise experiments, i.e., on much larger scales compared to a single inkjet drop. However, the presence of CaCl2 has only minor effect over the average imbibition rates of single drops. Imbibition rates on the CaCl2 surface sized paper did not give adequate scaling as a result of the fact that the aggregation was not included the theoretical assumptions behind the scaling.