Biomimetic Scaffolds for Tendon Tissue Regeneration.

Tendon tissue connects muscle to bone and plays crucial roles in stress transfer. Tendon injury remains a significant clinical challenge due to its complicated biological structure and poor self-healing capacity. The treatments for tendon injury have advanced significantly with the development of technology, including the use of sophisticated biomaterials, bioactive growth factors, and numerous stem cells. Among these, biomaterials that the mimic extracellular matrix (ECM) of tendon tissue would provide a resembling microenvironment to improve efficacy in tendon repair and regeneration. In this review, we will begin with a description of the constituents and structural features of tendon tissue, followed by a focus on the available biomimetic scaffolds of natural or synthetic origin for tendon tissue engineering. Finally, we will discuss novel strategies and present challenges in tendon regeneration and repair.

A redox-active covalent organic framework for the efficient detection and removal of hydrazine.

The removal and detection of soluble hydrazine is of importance due to its harm to soil and subterranean water, but challenging. Herein, we preferentially disposed a porous and redox active covalent-organic framework (DAAQ-TFP COF, denoted as DQ-COF) to simultaneously removal and detect hydrazine. Electroactive sites (anthraquinone units) can be intelligently incorporated into the channel walls/pores of COF. DQ-COF has high crystallinity and good thermal stability, and DQ-COF dropped onto nickel matrix (DQ-COF/Ni composite) still retains high surface area, characterized by PXRD, FT-IR, nitrogen adsorption and TGA. Subsequently, a detailed study of DQ-COF towards hydrazine uptake and detection potentials is explored. DQ-COF as adsorbent unfolds strong removal ability towards hydrazine, the maximum removal capacity of which is up to 1108 mg g-1, following Friedrich and pseudo-second-order kinetic models. Meanwhile, the DQ-COF supported on nickel renders attractive electrochemical properties, which is efficiently responsive to hydrazine at a part per billion (ppb) level, coupled with a wide linear range (0.5 ˜ 1223 µM), low detection limit (0.07 µM) and high anti-interference ability. There is no other COFs with such a favorable capability in synchronous removal and selective detection towards hydrazine, probably applying in superintending water quality and disposing wastewater.

Nanospace-confined preparation of uniform nitrogen-doped graphene quantum dots for highly selective fluorescence dual-function determination of Fe3+ and ascorbic acid.

N-Doped graphene quantum dots (N-GQDs) combine the advantages of N-doped carbon and quantum dot materials, displaying enhanced performance in electrocatalysis, drug delivery, sensing and so on. In this work, novel hydrotropic N-GQDs with controlled size are obtained for the first time via a nanospace-confined preparation strategy, in which HNO3 vapour serves as scissors for quickly cutting the N-doped carbon nanolayer in the confined nanospace of reusable mesoporous molecular sieves. The as-prepared N-GQDs exhibit a uniform lateral size of about 2.4 nm, high photostability and yellow fluorescence, which is strongly quenched upon addition of ferric ions due to the coordination between ferric ions and N/O-rich groups of the N-GQDs surface. Significantly, the fluorescence response to Fe3+ is linear in the 0.5 to 40 µM concentration range and the N-GQDs showed good selectivity and satisfying recovery for ferric ion detection in tap water. Noteworthily, the quenched fluorescence by Fe3+ can be recovered by adding ascorbic acid (AA), which efficiently destroyed the coordination between Fe3+ and N-GQDs. Based on this principle, the N-GQDs were used to successfully construct an AA sensor, exhibiting a wide linearity range (between 0.5 and 90 µM) with a low detection of limit (80 nM at S/N = 3) and better selectivity towards AA compared with other common physiological substances. Finally, the constructed fluorescence sensor was employed successfully for AA determination in fish blood with satisfactory recovery ranging from 95.3 to 106.2%. The results indicate that N-GQDs synthesized by the nanospace-confined strategy are promising in biosensor fabrication.

A highly selective fluorescence sensing platform for nanomolar Hg(II) detection based on cytosine derived quantum dot.

Inspired by low toxicity and good biocompatibility of biomass derived quantum dot (QD), we herein developed a cytosine derived quantum dot, namely cyt-dot, via a one-step hydrothermal synthesis. The as-prepared cyt-dot emits blue fluorescence (FL) containing abundant oxygen (20.6at.%) and nitrogen (24.1at.%) contents. The cyt-dot based sensing platform shows exclusive selectivity for Hg(II) while being insensitive towards Fe(III) and Ag(I), which are important interference that usually cannot be ruled out. The detection limit for Hg(II) is of 11nM, which is very close to the guideline value of 10nM allowed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in drinking water. In real water sample analyses, the present sensing platform can fulfil satisfied recoveries ranging from 100% to 108%. Besides, the acidity of solution has almost no effect on the sensing performance of the cyt-dot in a pH range of 5-8, suggesting its potential applications in sensing and bio-imaging.

N-Doped Ordered Mesoporous Carbon Originated from a Green Biological Dye for Electrochemical Sensing and High-Pressure CO2 Storage.

Herein, a series of nitrogen-doped ordered mesoporous carbons (NOMCs) with tunable porous structure were synthesized via a hard-template method with a green biological dye as precursor, under various carbonization temperatures (700-1100 °C). Compared with the ordered mesoporous silica-modified and unmodified electrodes, the use of electrodes coated by NOMCs (NOMC-700-NOMC-1100) resulted in enhanced signals and well-resolved oxidation peaks in electrocatalytic sensing of catechol and hydroquinone isomers, attributable to NOMCs' open porous structures and increased edge-plane defect sites on the N-doped carbon skeleton. Electrochemical sensors using NOMC-1000-modified electrode were fabricated and proved feasible in tap water sample analyses. The NOMCs were also used as sorbents for high-pressure CO2 storage. The NOMC with the highest N content exhibits the best CO2 absorption capacities of 800.8 and 387.6 mg/g at 273 and 298 K (30 bar), respectively, which is better than those of other NOMC materials and some recently reported CO2 sorbents with well-ordered 3D porous structures. Moreover, this NOMC shows higher affinity for CO2 than for N2, a benefit of its higher nitrogen content in the porous carbon framework.

Design of templated nanoporous carbon electrode materials with substantial high specific surface area for simultaneous determination of biomolecules.

Nanoporous carbon materials have attracted significant interests in the design of electrodes for electrocatalysis and biosensors. Here, three templated nanoporous carbons (TNCs) materials with substantial different specific surface area were designed and synthesized by a nanocasting method, in which mesoporous silicates and acid were used as template and catalyst, respectively. The TNCs were then used as electrode materials for simultaneous detection of dopamine (DA), ascorbic acid (AA) and uric acid (UA) at physiological pH. The correlations between specific surface area, edge-plane defect sites in TNCs and their distinguishing ability towards AA, DA, and UA were investigated. For TNCs with substantial larger specific surface area and more defect sites, the oxidation peaks of AA, DA and UA were separated well and their oxidation currents increased remarkably. A highly sensitive electrochemical sensor for simultaneous detection of those biomolecules was achieved by designing TNCs1 with the largest specific surface area and the most defect sites as the electrode material. The sensitivity of AA, DA and UA at the sensor is 0.012, 4.031, 0.605 µA/µM respectively. Results suggest that TNCs1 is promising in biomolecules simultaneous detection. This work may also be valuable for scientists who search for excellent carbon materials for biosensing and electrocatalysis.

Discrimination and simultaneous determination of hydroquinone and catechol by tunable polymerization of imidazolium-based ionic liquid on multi-walled carbon nanotube surfaces.

Tunable polymerization of ionic liquid on the surfaces of multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) was achieved by a mild thermal-initiation-free radical reaction of 3-ethy-1-vinylimidazolium tetrafluoroborate in the presence of MWCNTs. Successful modification of polymeric ionic liquid (PIL) on MWCNTs surfaces (PIL-MWCNTs) was demonstrated by scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, thermogravimetric analysis and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. The resulting PIL-MWCNTs possessed unique features of high dispersity in aqueous solution and tunable thickness of PIL layer, due to positive imidazole groups along PIL chains and controllable ionic liquid polymerization by tuning the ratio of precursor. Based on cation-π interaction between the positive imidazole groups on PIL-MWCNTs surface and hydroquinone (HQ) or catechol (CC), excellent discrimination ability toward HQ and CC and improved simultaneous detection performance were achieved. The linear range for HQ and CC were 1.0×10(-6) to 5.0×10(-4) M and 1.0×10(-6) to 4.0×10(-4) M, respectively. The detection limit for HQ was 4.0×10(-7) M and for CC 1.7×10(-7) M (S/N=3), correspondingly.

Sodium dodecyl benzene sulfonate functionalized graphene for confined electrochemical growth of metal/oxide nanocomposites for sensing application.

The electrochemical fructose sensor attracts considerable attention in the food industry and for clinical applications. Here, a novel fructose biosensor was developed based on immobilization of highly dispersed CuO-Cu nanocomposites on Graphene that was non-covalently functionalized by sodium dodecyl benzene sulfonate (SDBS) (denoted briefly as SDBS/GR/CuO-Cu). The structure and morphology of SDBS/GR/CuO-Cu were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The electrochemistry and electrocatalysis were evaluated by cyclic voltammetry (CV). The fructose sensing performances were evaluated by chronoamperometry (i-t). Those properties were also compared with that of CuO-Cu. Results revealed the distinctly enhanced sensing properties of SDBS/GR/CuOCu towards fructose, showing significantly lowered overpotential of +0.40V, ultrafast (<1s) and ultra-sensitive current response (932 µAm M(-1)cm(-2)) in a wide linear range of 3-1000 µM, with satisfactory reproducibility and stability. Those could be ascribed to the good electrical conductivity, large specific surface area, high dispersing ability and chemical stability of GR upon being functionalized non-covalently by SDBS, as well as the outstanding cation anchoring ability of SDBS on GR to resist aggregation among Cu-based nanoparticles during electro-reduction. More importantly, an improved selectivity in fructose detection was achieved. SDBS/GR/CuO-Cu is one of the promising electrode materials for electrochemical detection of fructose.