In this investigation the surface of an aluminized sample of plain carbon steel was melted and alloyed using a tingsten inert gas (TIG) welding process to produce iron-aluminide intermetallic phases on the surface. The produced coating was then characterized by SEM and EDS and its high-temperature properties in O2 + 1%SO2 gas were examined. The results showed that the Fe3Al coating produced could protect the substrate as it was subjected to the corroding gases at 700oC due to the formation of an alumina layer between the substrate and an outer layer of Fe2O3. At 900oC, the coating could only protect the substrate for 64 h. The lack of further protection at this temperature is attributed to the decrease in the protective properties of alumina with an increase in its temperature and the lack of presence of enough Al atoms in the coating for the repair of the defects formed in the alumina layer.
Alginate – chitosan – alginate multilayer hydrogel encapsulation systems were investigated for
encapsulation of chondrocytes. Hydrogel is crosslinked due to ionic interaction between cationic
chitosan and anionic alginate, and additionally by calcium ions. Two types of chitosan with
molecular weight were investigated. Cells were encapsulated in two shape microcapsules, microbeads with diameter size 300 – 400 and 500 - 600 µm and fibres with diameter 500 - 600 µm. The
work provides a detailed examination of the impact of the microencapsulation process on the growth
of cells. The viability of chondrocytes can be influenced by the size of produced microcapsules,
while the shape of microcapsules has no important significance on cell viability. The applied
encapsulation methods do not contain harmful stages and create conducive conditions for cell
growth. A possible application area of the developed system is dressing and regeneration of
damaged joint cartilage.