Abstract Smart membranes with responsive wettability show promise for controllably separating oil/water mixtures, including immiscible oil-water mixtures and surfactant-stabilized oil/water emulsions. However, the membranes are challenged by unsatisfactory external stimuli, inadequate wettability responsiveness, difficulty in scalability and poor self-cleaning performance. Here, we develop a capillary force-driven confinement self-assembling strategy to construct a scalable and stable CO 2 -responsive membrane for the smart separation of various oil/water systems. In this process, the CO 2 -responsive copolymer can homogeneously adhere to the membrane surface by manipulating the capillary force, generating a membrane with a large area up to 3600 cm 2 and excellent switching wettability between high hydrophobicity/underwater superoleophilicity and superhydrophilicity/underwater superoleophobicity under CO 2 /N 2 stimulation. The membrane can be applied to various oil/water systems, including immiscible mixtures, surfactant-stabilized emulsions, multiphase emulsions and pollutant-containing emulsions, demonstrating high separation efficiency (>99.9%), recyclability, and self-cleaning performance. Due to robust separation properties coupled with the excellent scalability, the membrane shows great implications for smart liquid separation.
Abstract Copper‐based catalyst was applied in the condensed diester hydrogenation with unexpected high selectivity (∼100 %) to 1,6‐hexanediol. On basis of the mass transfer analysis and kinetics results, the reaction rate of the condensed diester hydrogenation was deduced to be controlled by the activation of hydrogen on Cu 0 sites, which was further demonstrated by the correlations between the catalytic activity and different copper species. Importantly, this catalysis mechanism is different with that of gas‐phase diester hydrogenation, which is generally determined by the adsorption of ester on Cu + species.
Abstract Titanium and titanium alloys are widely used in orthopedic implants. Modifying the nanotopography provides a new strategy to improve osseointegration of titanium substrates. Filamentous actin (F-actin) polymerization, as a mechanical loading structure, is generally considered to be involved in cell migration, endocytosis, cell division, and cell shape maintenance. Whether F-actin is involved and how it functions in nanotube-induced osteogenic differentiation of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) remain to be elucidated. In this study, we fabricated TiO 2 nanotubes on the surface of a titanium substrate by anodic oxidation and characterized their features by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray energy dispersive analysis (EDS), and atomic force microscopy (AFM). Alkaline phosphatase (ALP) staining, Western blotting, qRT-PCR, and immunofluorescence staining were performed to explore the osteogenic potential, the level of F-actin, and the expression of MKL1 and YAP/TAZ. Our results showed that the inner diameter and roughness of TiO 2 nanotubes increased with the increase of the anodic oxidation voltage from 30 to 70 V, while their height was 2 μm consistently. Further, the larger the tube diameter, the stronger the ability of TiO 2 nanotubes to promote osteogenic differentiation of MSCs. Inhibiting F-actin polymerization by Cyto D inhibited osteogenic differentiation of MSCs as well as the expression of proteins contained in focal adhesion complexes such as vinculin (VCL) and focal adhesion kinase (FAK). In contrast, after Jasp treatment, polymerization of F-actin enhanced the expression of RhoA and transcription factors YAP/TAZ. Based on these data, we concluded that TiO 2 nanotubes facilitated the osteogenic differentiation of MSCs, and this ability was enhanced with the increasing diameter of the nanotubes within a certain range (30–70 V). F-actin mediated this process through MKL1 and YAP/TAZ.
The refractive index of commercial chalcogenide glasses (ChGs) available in the market is generally 2.4 to 2.7, which is relatively low and has huge room for improvement. In this paper, different ratios of Ag/Pb were doped into commercial glasses by the melt-quenching method to substantially increase their refractive index. The refractive index of the commercial Ge28Sb12Se60 glass was increased from 2.6 to 3.05 by external doping with 20 atomic percentage (at%) of Ag. And the refractive index of commercially available Ge33As12Se55 glass was increased from 2.45 to 2.88 by external doping with 9 at% of Pb. These improvements effectively reduce the thickness of commercial lenses at the same radius of curvature and focal length. The physical and optical properties of commercial glasses doped with Ag/Pb in different proportions were systematically characterized.
An entry from the Cambridge Structural Database, the world’s repository for small molecule crystal structures. The entry contains experimental data from a crystal diffraction study. The deposited dataset for this entry is freely available from the CCDC and typically includes 3D coordinates, cell parameters, space group, experimental conditions and quality measures.
The Caenorhabditis elegans embryo is a widely used model for the functional analysis of dynamic cellular processes, such as chromosome segregation, cytokinesis or lineage analysis. However, the conventional embryo preparation method that relies on manually dissecting gravid worms to extract embryos is somewhat time consuming and does not lend itself to high throughput assays. Here, we report a fully integrated microfluidic approach for C. elegans early embryogenesis assays with unprecedented accuracy and throughput. The device consists of a compressible microfluidic pillar-array chamber for robust and fast on-chip extraction of embryos from the uterus of gravid nematodes. Subsequently, embryos are immobilized by automated fluidic transfer in a microtrap array for individual tracking of a large number of embryos, including fragile mutants with drug-permeable eggshells. Our device allows high-resolution live imaging of very early events in embryogenesis, starting from the one-cell stage. We also demonstrate the feasibility of well-controlled compound application in versatile microfluidic pharmacological assays performed on early embryos.
Constructing high-performance photo-electrodes by patterning the photo-active semiconducting components with desirable texture and architecture is one of the most promising approaches to achieve the practical and scale-up application of photo-electric or photoelectrochemical (PEC) devices. However, it is a still big challenge to efficiently and effectively handle nano-structural semiconducting materials into intergraded circuit devices, displaying good electric-contact and stability. Here, a facile manufacture strategy for fabricating native metal-oxides based photo-electrodes by directly printing Ga-based liquid metals is explored. The PEC device, functionalized by the native Ga-oxide functional layer, exhibits self-powered photo-detection behaviors and presents fast photo-electric responsibility in response to the simulated Sunlight illumination. This printable PEC device shows good potential for high sensitive self-powered photo-detector and provides a flexible and versatile approach for the design and fabrication of novel electrode structures.
TiO 2 samples with different crystal forms were treated in flowing NH 3 at elevated temperatures to fabricate N -doped TiO 2 photocatalysts with different crystal forms. The resulting N -doped TiO 2 photocatalysts were characterized by means of X-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy, diffusion reflectance spectrometry, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. The visible-light photocatalytic activity of the catalysts was evaluated by measuring the photocatalyzed removal rate of propylene. Results indicate that the visible-light activity of N -doped TiO 2 photocatalysts is highly dependent on the crystal form. Namely, N -doped anatase TiO 2 has the highest visible-light activity, while the visible-light activity of N -doped TiO 2 photocatalysts decreases with decreasing content of anatase phase and increasing content of rutile phase. In addition N -doped rutile TiO 2 has no visible-light photocatalytic activity.
'/%3e%3cuse xlink:href='%23a' transform='rotate(23.036 .093 25.536)'/%3e%3cuse xlink:href='%23a' transform='rotate(45.87 1.273 16.18)'/%3e%3cuse xlink:href='%23a' transform='rotate(69.945 .996 12.078)'/%3e%3cuse xlink:href='%23a' transform='rotate(20.66 -19.689 31.932)'/%3e%3c/svg%3e)