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Biohybrid micro/nanorobots that integrate biological entities with artificial nanomaterials have shown great potential in the field of biotechnology. Here, the magnetic plant biobots (MPBs) were fabricated by employing tomato-callus cultivation engineering in the presence of Fe3O4 nanoparticles that are capable of active movement and directional guidance under a transversal rotating magnetic field. The MPBs enabled rapid and efficient removal of chlorpyrifos (approximately 80%), a hazardous nerve gas agent that causes severe acute toxicity, and recovery using an external magnetic field. The eco-friendly plant biobots described here demonstrate their potential in environmental applications.
The first prototype of the portable protein analyzer made with liquid crystal polymer microtubes is constructed to perform the processes of suspending, depositing, and separating for protein extraction and detection by combined photo/magnetic control. Such an analyzer specifically purifies, enriches, and detects various proteins in complex samples in a short time (20 min) and with trace sample consumption (5 μL) and a low detection limit (1 μg mL-1).
Solid-phase crystallized Ce and H codoped In2O3 (ICO:H) transparent conducting films achieve very high electron mobility values of over 100 cm2/Vs and suitable low-carrier concentration, leading to high electrical conductivity and broadband optical transparency. However, a high-temperature annealing process for solid-phase crystallization is necessary to obtain high mobility. Therefore, such a high processing temperature limits the formation and adoption of these films on heat-sensitive flexible substrates. Herein, we used excimer laser irradiation to achieve an ICO:H film on flexible polyethylene terephthalate that had ultrahigh mobility of 133 cm2/Vs, which is the highest among those reported for flexible transparent electrodes.
Cell-derived exosomes have been rapidly developed and applied in various biomedical fields over the last decade, holding great potentials in tissue repair such as chronic wounds due to their excellent biocompatibility and immune stability. Recent advances in regulating the features and biological functions of cell-derived exosomes by biochemical and biophysical cues in the cell microenvironment are summarized. Then microenvironmental cue-regulated exosomes as therapeutic strategies to improve chronic wound healing are discussed, and hydrogel-based exosome delivery systems used in the treatment of chronic wounds are highlighted. Finally, ongoing challenges and future opportunities are proposed.
Two-dimensional (2D) van der Waals (vdW) magnet with the advent of ferromagnetism has stimulated particular attention in exploring topological spin texture especially for skyrmions. We here report the real-space observation of tuning the density of field free skyrmions in Fe3GeTe2(FGT), which can serve as a new application for spintronic devices. By tilting the FGT nanosheet, we found that the field-free Bloch-type skyrmions can also represent an invisible contrast when the tilt angle is zero, but emerge a reversal magnetic contrast at high tilt angle. These findings shed light on the identification of the spin configuration in 2D vdW magnet.
X-ray magnetic tomography measurements were performed on an advanced high-coercivity Nd-Fe-B permanent magnet, and three-dimensional (3D) magnetic domain structure was successfully obtained along the magnetic hysteresis curve. Furthermore, scanning electron tomography measurement was adopted to obtain 3D microstructure for the same observing volume. By comparing these two types of 3D images, we found various critical behaviors of magnetic domains inside the magnet, which are essential to understand the microscopic coercivity mechanism of permanent magnets.
This paper provides a deterministic AFM moment manipulation controlled by the piezoelectric strain, as well as the method to determine the modulated angle of the AFM moments. The experimental results and theoretical calculations indicated that a 20° magnetic moment rotation of the IrMn layer was achieved.
In this paper, we review a large number of recent studies on the synthesis of nanoparticles assisted by machine learning. Moreover, we describe the working steps of machine learning, the main algorithms, and the main ways to obtain datasets. Finally, we discuss the current problems of this research and provide an outlook.
Potassium acetate (KAc) has desirably both a high solubility and a salting-out effect on polyvinyl alcohol (PVA). The freezing temperature of 50 wt% KAc solution can reach as low as −70 °C. The hydrogels soaked in 50 wt% KAc solution exhibit the highest mechanical properties with an ultimate stress of 8.2 MPa and toughness of 25.8 MJ/m3, surpassing most reported results for anti-freezing gels. At 50 wt% KAc, the hydrogels also present a high conductivity of 8.0 S/m at room temperature and 1.2 S/m at −60 °C.
Though collinear-type antiferromagnets are fundamental building blocks of antiferromagnetic (AFM) spintronics, the potential utilization of non-collinear-type antiferromagnets for spintronic functionality has not been elucidated thus far. Here we suggest an AFM helimagnet of EuCo2As2 as a novel spintronic material, revealing an unconventional sign-changing behavior of anisotropic magnetoresistance. This contrast arises from electrically distinctive dual magnetic phases. Further, various AFM memory states regarding magnetic-phase evolution were identified by combining experimental and theoretical results. Our findings based on a unique type of AFM order are useful for the development of AFM spintronics, which has been driven by new materials.
We report a new type of mesh electrode based on metal/oxide-based elastic films such as indium zinc oxide (IZO) with high transparency and low diffraction for highly stretchable organic light-emitting diodes (SOLEDs). Furthermore, the electrical, optical, and mechanical performances of the IZO mesh electrode are further enhanced by incorporating island-shaped Ti nanoparticles beneath the IZO mesh [i.e., 22 Ω/sq., 92% at 480 nm, mechanical stability under 100% strain and 1000 endurance cycles]. TADF-based blue SOLED with the proposed Ti-embedded IZO mesh electrode exhibits a stable operation with a high external quantum efficiency of 13.2% and a 100% stretchability.
We propose a gravity-assisted rotatory drawing method to fabricate multicolor lasing microfibers, and weave them into flexible textiles. Through regulating the doped dyes and solution viscosity, full-color tunable lasing textiles can be achieved. Furthermore, nanoparticle patterns are printed on the lasing textile to encrypt it for anticounterfeiting application.
Self-propelled amorphous, cubic, and tetrahedral Ag3PO4 micromotors were synthetized using a scalable precipitation method for antibacterial applications. Their programmable morphologies exhibited different motion properties under fuel-free and surfactant-free conditions and visible light irradiation. Differences in these motion properties were observed according to morphology and correlated with photocatalytic activity. Ag3PO4 micromotors are inherently fluorescent. The as-prepared self-propelled particles exhibited morphologically dependent antibiofilm activities toward eradication of gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria.
We first show through computational simulations and experiments that mechanochromic molecules, spiropyrans (SPs), were activated by force in Diels–Alder (DA) reaction-based CANs. Owing to the mechanochromic SP molecules and thermally reversible DA networks, these thermosets indicated damage with colour and fluorescence signals and autonomously repaired it with thermal treatment. While maintaining high solvent resistivity and good mechanical performance, they were reprocessed up to fifteen times without degrading the mechanical, damage-reporting, and self-healing properties.
Glasses are non equilibrium materials that develop by cooling of a supercooled liquid, where the rapidly increasing viscosity results in a kinetic arrest of long range atom rearrangements. During heating from glass state, different relaxations are thermally activated and display different relaxation spectrum. Here, we used one ultrafast nanocalorimetry to examine the evolution of multiple relaxations and discover the merging of the relaxation modes with increasing heating rates, resulting in step-like increases in both the supercooled liquid region and excess heat capacity. Our findings provide new insights on the evolution of the relaxation spectrum and the associated heterogeneous atomic motion.
Plasmonic thin-layer chromatography was developed for the separation of quantum dots (QDs) by combining plasmonic optical trapping with thin-layer chromatography (TLC). Photoexcitation of the localized surface plasmon resonance of Au nanoparticles immobilized on a TLC plate decreased the distance traveled by QDs, enabling size separation of QDs with identical compositions and sorting of QDs according to the optical properties of QDs with the same size. Optical property-based separation cannot be achieved by conventional chromatography, in which the interactions between stationary phases of chromatographs and QDs are simply based on the differences in the size or surface functionality of QDs.
This Perspective illustrates how theory and experiment can be combined to study the interfacial charge transfer between transition metal nanoparticles and oxide supports, the short- or long-range natures of interactions between them and the effects of oxide nanostructuring on the properties of supported metal particles. These studies deepen our understanding of the role of metal-oxide interactions in industrially relevant nanocomposites thus helping to design interfaces with unique properties for future applications
