Scientific Papers in SCI

Mechanical treatment of porous ceramics, such as porous clay minerals, is a crucial step in ceramic processing. Among clay minerals, design swelling brittle micas have shown exceptional properties for further applications, although they exhibit low surface area and porosity. But, their mechanical activation could improve their textural properties and deserves to be investigated. Thus, the aim of this work was to evaluate the effects of gradual grinding in their surface and framework. At short grinding times, the surface area increases and mesoporous and microporous are generated. Long grinding time provokes particle agglomeration with the consequent change in their colloidal stability. At bulk level, framework defects are observed in both tetrahedral and octahedral sheets and increase with the total layer charge.

Numerous works have demonstrated that cold plasma treatments constitute an effective procedure to accelerate seed germination under nonstress conditions. Evidence also exists about a positive effect of plasmas for germination under environmental stress conditions. For barley seeds, this work studies the influence of cold plasma treatments on the germination rate and initial stages of plant growth in common stress environments, such as drought, salinity, and low-temperature conditions. As a general result, it has been found that the germination rate was higher for plasma-treated than for untreated seeds. Plasma also induced favorable changes in plant and radicle dimensions, which depended on the environment. The obtained results demonstrate that plasma affects the biochemical metabolic chains of seeds and plants, resulting in changes in the concentration of biochemical growing factors, a faster germination, and an initially more robust plant growth, even under stress conditions. These changes in phenotype are accompanied by differences in the concentration of biomarkers such as photosynthetic pigments (chlorophylls a and b and carotenoids), reactive oxygen species, and, particularly, the amino acid proline in the leaves of young plants, with changes that depend on environmental conditions and the application of a plasma treatment. This supports the idea that, rather than an increase in seed water imbibition capacity, there are clear beneficial effects on seedling of plasma treatments.