Conductive thin films have various applications in different technological fields. Indium tin oxide (ITO) is a mixed oxide. In the film form, ITO has been widely employed as electrode in many optoelectronic devices. Methods like thermal evaporation, sputtering, chemical vapor deposition (CVD), electron beam, spray coating, and sol-gel synthesis give ITO thin films. In this work, we prepared ITO thin films by dip coating of a glass substrate into ITO obtained by spray pyrolysis. ITO consisted of spherical particles with different diameters. The ITO thin films were treated with laser. X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis confirmed that spray pyrolysis produced spherical ITO particles. Transmittance analyses revealed the production of transparent films with thickness ranging from 0.800 to 1.200 µm. The four-wire test showed that the porosity of the films led to low conductivity. Film resistance was a function of the number of layers of ITO thin film.

Additive manufacture is an effective technology to produce complex macrostructures from polymers. Sol-gel is a chemical process that affords multifunctional materials by functionalization of different substrates. This work reports on the use of acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene polymer (ABS) as starting material to obtain a substrate by additive manufacture. Coating of ABS by the sol-gel methodology generated a multifunctional material. Sols with and without phosphate ions were prepared from silicon and calcium alkoxide. Based on X-ray diffraction patterns, a calcium phosphate crystalline structure emerged on ABS after contact of the substrate with simulated body fluid. Infrared analysis revealed that the peaks of the functionalized substrate shifted, indicating that ABS interacted with the sol-gel coating. According to thermal analysis, the maximum decomposition temperature of the coated samples was 20 ºC higher as compared to non-coated ABS. Sol-gel and additive manufacture are important technologies to produce materials with applications in biological medium.

Over the last decades, the combination of different technologies to search for systems with new properties and features has brought various segments of biological and earth sciences together. Additive manufacturing, known as rapid prototyping, combined with the sol-gel methodology enables the production of novel systems with applications in many scientific fields. In this work, flexible polyamide membranes were obtained by additive manufacturing, functionalized by the sol-gel methodology, and incorporated with the coordination compound between Eu(III) and 1,10-phenanthroline. The presence of vibrations at 1100 cm-1 in the FTIR spectrum of the material, which is a band typical of the Si-O-Si group in the alkoxide employed during the process, confirmed the polyamide membrane functionalization. The thermogravimetric curve showed that a residue remained after heating at 700 ºC, which was attributed to SiO2. The membrane was highly luminescent, which confirmed incorporation of the Eu3+ compound into the material and pointed to the possible application of this system as a topical medication for the treatment of skin diseases.