Smart Mechanoluminescent Phosphors: A Review of Strontium-Aluminate-Based Materials, Properties, and Their Advanced Application Technologies.

Mechanoluminescence, a smart luminescence phenomenon in which light energy is directly produced by a mechanical force, has recently received significant attention because of its important applications in fields such as visible strain sensing and structural health monitoring. Up to present, hundreds of inorganic and organic mechanoluminescent smart materials have been discovered and studied. Among them, strontium-aluminate-based materials are an important class of inorganic mechanoluminescent materials for fundamental research and practical applications attributed to their extremely low force/pressure threshold of mechanoluminescence, efficient photoluminescence, persistent afterglow, and a relatively low synthesis cost. This paper presents a systematic and comprehensive review of strontium-aluminate-based luminescent materials' mechanoluminescence phenomena, mechanisms, material synthesis techniques, and related applications. Besides of summarizing the early and the latest research on this material system, an outlook is provided on its environmental, energy issue and future applications in smart wearable devices, advanced energy-saving lighting and displays.

Structural and functional brain signatures of endurance runners.

Although endurance running (ER) seems to be a simple repetitive exercise, good ER performance also requires and relies on multiple cognitive and motor control processes. Most of previous neuroimaging studies on ER were conducted using a single MRI modality, yet no multimodal study to our knowledge has been performed in this regard. In this study, we used multimodal MRI data to investigate the brain structural and functional differences between endurance runners (n = 22; age = 26.27 ± 6.07 years; endurance training = 6.23 ± 2.41 years) and healthy controls (HCs; n = 20; age = 24.60 ± 4.14 years). Compared with the HCs, the endurance runners showed greater gray matter volume (GMV) and cortical surface area in the left precentral gyrus, which at the same time had higher functional connectivity (FC) with the right postcentral and precentral gyrus. Subcortically, the endurance runners showed greater GMV in the left hippocampus and regional inflation in the right hippocampus. Using the bilateral hippocampi as seeds, further seed-based FC analyses showed higher hippocampal FC with the supplementary motor area, middle cingulate cortex, and left posterior lobe of the cerebellum. Moreover, compared with the HCs, the endurance runners also showed higher fractional anisotropy in several white matter regions, involving the corpus callosum, left internal capsule, left corona radiata, left external capsule, left posterior lobe of cerebellum and bilateral precuneus. Taken together, our findings provide several lines of evidence for the brain structural and functional differences between endurance runners and HCs. The current data suggest that these brain characteristics may have arisen as a result of regular ER training; however, whether they represent the neural correlates underlying the good ER performances of the endurance runners requires further investigations.

Luminescence in Manganese (II)-Doped SrZn2S2O Crystals From Multiple Energy Conversion.

Under the excitation of ultraviolet, X-ray, and mechanical stress, intense orange luminescence (Mn2+, 4T1 → 6A1) can be generated in Mn2+-doped SrZn2S2O crystal in orthorhombic space group of Pmn21. Herein, the multiple energy conversion in SrZn2S2O:Mn2+, that is, photoluminescence (PL), X-ray-induced luminescence, and mechanoluminescence, is investigated. Insight in luminescence mechanisms is gained by evaluating the Mn2+ concentration effects. Under the excitation of metal-to-ligand charge-transfer transition, the most intense PL is obtained. X-ray-induced luminescence shows similar features with PL excited by band edge UV absorption due to the same valence band to conduction band transition nature. Benefiting much from trap levels introduced by Mn2+ impurities, the quenching behavior mechanoluminescence is more like the directly excited PL from Mn2+ d-d transitions. Interestingly, this concentration preference leads to varying degrees of spectral redshift in each mode luminescence. Further, SrZn2S2O:Mn2+ exhibits a good linear response to the excitation power, which makes it potential candidates for applications in X-ray radiation detection and mechanical stress sensing.

Corrigendum: Luminescence in Manganese (II)-Doped SrZn2S2O Crystals From Multiple Energy Conversion.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/fchem.2020.00752.].