Inkjet-printed optical interference filters.

Optical interference filters (OIFs) are vital components for a wide range of optical and photonic systems. They are pivotal in controlling spectral transmission and reflection upon demand. OIFs rely on optical interference of the incident wave at multilayers, which are fabricated with nanometer precision. Here, we demonstrate that these requirements can be fulfilled by inkjet printing. This versatile technology offers a high degree of freedom in manufacturing, as well as cost-affordable and rapid-prototyping features from the micron to the meter scale. In this work, via rational ink design and formulation, OIFs were fully inkjet printed in ambient conditions. Longpass, shortpass, bandpass, and dichroic OIFs were fabricated, and precise control of the spectral response in OIFs was realized. Subsequently, customized lateral patterning of OIFs by inkjet printing was achieved. Furthermore, upscaling of the printed OIFs to A4 size (29.7 × 21.0 cm²) was demonstrated.

Organosilicon-Based Ligand Design for High-Performance Perovskite Nanocrystal Films for Color Conversion and X-ray Imaging.

Perovskite nanocrystals (PNCs) bear a huge potential for widespread applications, such as color conversion, X-ray scintillators, and active laser media. However, the poor intrinsic stability and high susceptibility to environmental stimuli including moisture and oxygen have become bottlenecks of PNC materials for commercialization. Appropriate barrier material design can efficiently improve the stability of the PNCs. Particularly, the strategy for packaging PNCs in organosilicon matrixes can integrate the advantages of inorganic-oxide-based and polymer-based encapsulation routes. However, the inert long-carbon-chain ligands (e.g., oleic acid, oleylamine) used in the current ligand systems for silicon-based encapsulation are detrimental to the cross-linking of the organosilicon matrix, resulting in performance deficiencies in the nanocrystal films, such as low transparency and large surface roughness. Herein, we propose a dual-organosilicon ligand system consisting of (3-aminopropyl)triethoxysilane (APTES) and (3-aminopropyl)triethoxysilane with pentanedioic anhydride (APTES-PA), to replace the inert long-carbon-chain ligands for improving the performance of organosilicon-coated PNC films. As a result, strongly fluorescent PNC films prepared by a facile solution-casting method demonstrate high transparency and reduced surface roughness while maintaining high stability in various harsh environments. The optimized PNC films were eventually applied in an X-ray imaging system as scintillators, showing a high spatial resolution above 20 lp/mm. By designing this promising dual organosilicon ligand system for PNC films, our work highlights the crucial influence of the molecular structure of the capping ligands on the optical performance of the PNC film.

N-acetyl Cysteine Inhibits Cell Proliferation and Differentiation of LPSInduced MC3T3-E1 Cells Via Regulating Inflammatory Cytokines.

BACKGROUND: Peri-implantitis is one of the most common complications in oral implantation and could lead to the loss of the function of bone tissues around implants. METHODS: This study used lipopolysaccharide (LPS) as a stimulant for MC3T3-E1 cells and N-acetyl cysteine (NAC) as an inhibitor to inhibit the effect of LPS to investigate the effect of NAC on the expression of bone formation related factors and inflammatory-related factors of osteoblasts under the action of LPS. RESULTS: In this study, we found that the cell proliferation and cell differentiation were significantly promoted when NAC concentrations were between 0 ~ 0.5 mM, but were inhibited when the concentration exceeded 0.5 mM. LPS had a slightly promoting effect on the cell proliferation before 20 µg/mL but inhibited the cell proliferation after 20 µg/mL. LPS reduced protein and gene expressions of Runx2, ALP and BGP and increased protein and gene expressions of NF-κB and TNF-α. NAC reversibly regulated the LPS's regulation on the expression of MC3T3-E1 cell cytokine gene and protein. CONCLUSION: The optimal NAC concentration for treating MC3T3-E1 cells is 0.5 mM, and the optimal LPS concentration for stimulating MC3T3-E1 cells is 20 µg/mL. NAC plays an active role in regulating the differentiation of MC3T3-E1 cells, and can inhibit LPS to regulate the differentiation of MC3T3-E1 cells. NAC promotes the expression of an osteogenic factor of MC3T3-E1cells and inhibits the expression of inflammatory cytokines.

The kapok petal: superhydrophobic surface induced by microscale trichomes.

For the first time it is reported that the kapok petal shows a superhydrophobic characteristic with a static water contact angle higher than 150°. Intriguingly, there exist single-scale micro-trichomes and no more nanocrystals on a kapok petal in contrast to most natural superhydrophobic surfaces with hierarchical morphologies, such as the lotus leaf and rose petal. Experimental results show that the kapok petal has an excellent self-cleaning ability either in air or oil. Further scanning electron microscopy characterization demonstrates that the superhydrophobic state is induced by densely distributed microscale trichomes with an average diameter of 10.2 µm and a high aspect ratio of 17.5. A mechanical model is built to illustrate that the trichomes reentrant curvature should be a key factor to inducing the superhydrophobic state of the kapok petal. To support the proposed mechanism, gold-wire trichomes with a reentrant curvature are fabricated and the results show that a superhydrophobic state can be induced by the microstructures with a reentrant curvature surface. Taking the scalability and cost-efficiency of microstructure fabrication into account, we believe the biomimetic structures inspired by the superhydrophobic kapok petal can find numerous applications that require a superhydrophobic state.

Boosting Electrocatalytic Water Oxidation by Creating Defects and Lattice-Oxygen Active Sites on Ni-Fe Nanosheets.

Layered nickel-iron oxide/hydroxide nanosheets have proven to be the most efficient catalyst for the water oxidation reaction. Introducing structural defects to the nanosheets is a particularly attractive method for increasing the number of active sites and tailoring the intrinsic electronic properties. Herein, defects were introduced on Ni-Fe nanosheets through sequentially electrodoping and dedoping the surface of the material with tetramethylammonium ions. The as-prepared defect-rich Ni-Fe nanosheets showed an enhanced catalytic performance for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) compared with conventional NiFe layered double hydroxides (LDHs), exhibiting an overpotential of only 172 mV at the current density of 10 mA cm-2 . The relationship between pH and OER activity indicated that the lattice oxygens participated in the catalytic OER process as active sites. This work provides new insights into the understanding of the structure-activity relationship of layered materials and helps to develop new methods to implement defects on such frameworks aided by organic molecules.

Bioinspired high-scattering polymer films fabricated by polymerization-induced phase separation.

Inspired by the porous scale of the bright white beetle Cyphochilus, a polymerization-induced phase separation method is proposed to fabricate bioinspired high-scattering polymer films with porous structures. With an optimized formulation, the porous films with a mean pore size of ∼200nm feature a broadband reflectance of ∼71% at a thickness of 16 µm and are measured to have a transport mean free path of ∼3µm. The porous films with high reflectivity enable the application on light-emitting diodes and have great potential in other similar optoelectronic fields.

Numerical study on the scattering property of porous polymer structures via supercritical CO2 microcellular foaming.

Disordered porous polymer structures have gained tremendous attention due to their wide applications in various fields. As a simple yet versatile technique, supercritical CO2 microcellular foaming has been proposed to fabricate highly scattering porous polymer films, which have been used to enhance the efficiency of quantum dots (QDs) films. In the foaming process, numerous enclosed pores are generated, which induce significant scattering, underpinning the efficiency enhancement in optoelectronic devices. However, the scattering property of foamed porous structures has still not been well investigated, and effective guidelines for engineering the porous structures are still not available. In this work, we use Mie scattering theory and ray-tracing simulation to analyze the optical property of a single pore, pore assembly, and porous film. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that the scattering scheme in the porous QD films leads to a large enhancement of excitation light absorption and QD emission extraction. It is envisioned that our work will contribute to the engineering guidelines of porous structures and boost the application of porous structures in similar fields.

Dual pH-triggered catalytic selective Mn clusters for cancer radiosensitization and radioprotection.

Hypoxia is known to be a common feature within many types of solid tumors, which is closely related to the limited efficacy of radiotherapy. Meanwhile, due to the non-discriminatory killing effect of both normal and cancer cells during the radiation process, traditional radiosensitizers could bring severe non-negligible side-effects to the whole body. In this work, stable and atomically precise Mn clusters which possess efficient pH-triggered catalytic selective capacity are developed rationally. Mn clusters could efficiently catalyze oxygen production in an acidic tumor microenvironment, while exhibiting strong reducibility and free radical scavenging ability in neutral circumstances. In vivo experiments show that Mn clusters are able to enhance the radiotherapy effect in the mouse model of 4T1 tumors and protect normal tissues from radiation at the same time. Thus, the present work provides a novel dual-functional strategy to enhance radiotherapy-induced tumor treatment by improving tumor oxygenation and protect normal tissues from radiation simultaneously.

Atomic-Precision Gold Clusters for NIR-II Imaging.

Near-infrared II (NIR-II) imaging at 1100-1700 nm shows great promise for medical diagnosis related to blood vessels because it possesses deep penetration and high resolution in biological tissue. Unfortunately, currently available NIR-II fluorophores exhibit slow excretion and low brightness, which prevents their potential medical applications. An atomic-precision gold (Au) cluster with 25 gold atoms and 18 peptide ligands is presented. The Au25 clusters show emission at 1100-1350 nm and the fluorescence quantum yield is significantly increased by metal-atom doping. Bright gold clusters can penetrate deep tissue and can be applied in in vivo brain vessel imaging and tumor metastasis. Time-resolved brain blood-flow imaging shows significant differences between healthy and injured mice with different brain diseases in vivo. High-resolution imaging of cancer metastasis allows for the identification of the primary tumor, blood vessel, and lymphatic metastasis. In addition, gold clusters with NIR-II fluorescence are used to monitor high-resolution imaging of kidney at a depth of 0.61 cm, and the quantitative measurement shows 86% of the gold clusters are cleared from body without any acute or long-term toxicity at a dose of 100 mg kg-1 .

White hairy layer on the Boehmeria nivea leaf-inspiration for reflective coatings.

Whiteness is an intriguing property in some creature surfaces and usually originates from broadband multi-scattering by the refined structures. In this article, we report that Boehmeria nivea, a widely distributed tropical and subtropical plant, has a highly reflective layer on the lower surface of the leaf. Morphological characterization demonstrates that the layer consists of numerous wrinkled micro-filaments, forming a disordered porous network to efficiently scatter visible light. Moreover, the white layer is shown to exhibit a protection function by reflecting incident light when exposed to high radiation. The reflective layer can slightly improve the absorption by the leaves when light is incident on the upper surface of the leaves. In addition, the porous layer shows hydrophobicity. To mimic the white layer, a well-established electrospinning process is used to fabricate porous polymeric membranes, consisting of nano-wrinkled filaments with micro-sized diameter. Finally, the artificial membranes are demonstrated to have a light-shielding function in a photo-chromic experiment and a light-management ability for quantum dot film.

Nanozyme-Based Bandage with Single-Atom Catalysis for Brain Trauma.

Neurotrauma is one of the most serious traumatic injuries, which can induce an excess amount of reactive oxygen and nitrogen species (RONS) around the wound, triggering a series of biochemical responses and neuroinflammation. Traditional antioxidant-based bandages can effectively decrease infection via preventing oxidative stress, but its effectiveness is limited to a short period of time due to the rapid loss of electron-donating ability. Herein, we developed a nanozyme-based bandage using single-atom Pt/CeO2 with a persistent catalytic activity for noninvasive treatment of neurotrauma. Single-atom Pt induced the lattice expansion and preferred distribution on (111) facets of CeO2, enormously increasing the endogenous catalytic activity. Pt/CeO2 showed a 2-10 times higher scavenging activity against RONS as well as 3-10 times higher multienzyme activities compared to CeO2 clusters. The single-atom Pt/CeO2 retained the long-lasting catalytic activity for up to a month without obvious decay due to enhanced electron donation through the Mars-van Krevelen reaction. In vivo studies disclosed that the nanozyme-based bandage at the single-atom level can significantly improve the wound healing of neurotrauma and reduce neuroinflammation.

Multipass active stretcher with large chirp for high-flux ultra-intense lasers.

We demonstrate a novel active multipass stretcher that can deliver pulses with large chirp, adjustable chirped pulse duration, and great beam quality for a high-flux chirped-pulse amplification system. The stretcher is based on a Martinez-type stretcher and a regenerative amplifier structure, and the laser pulses can be amplified while they are stretched in the cavity. By controlling the round trip of the pulses running in the cavity, chirped pulses with more than 10 ns, even scaling to 30 ns, pulse duration and 20 nm bandwidth can be obtained very easily, which indicates a chirp rate of 0.5 ns/nm at 1053 nm central wavelength. Chirped pulses with several millijoules energy can be delivered with an Nd:glass-based intracavity amplifier used to compensate the losses. Benefited by the advantage of regenerative structure, the output pulses have excellent beam quality with M2 of 1.1. Finally, the chirped pulses from this novel stretcher are compressed to 1.13 times the Fourier transform limit. With these advantages, this novel multipass active stretcher is significant for ultra-intense laser systems, especially for high-flux and high-energy 100 petawatt lasers.

Microlens arrays with adjustable aspect ratio fabricated by electrowetting and their application to correlated color temperature tunable light-emitting diodes.

We develop a facile, fast, and cost-effective method based on the electrowetting effect to fabricate concave microlens arrays (MLA) with a tunable height-to-radius ratio, namely aspect ratio (AR). The electric parameters including voltage and frequency are demonstrated to play an important role in the MLA forming process. With the optimized frequency of 5 Hz, the AR of MLA are tuned from 0.057 to 0.693 for an increasing voltage from 0 V to 180 V. The optical properties of the MLA, including their transmittance and light diffusion capability, are investigated by spectroscopic measurements and ray-tracing simulations. We show that the overall transmittance can be maintained above around 90% over the whole visible range, and that an AR exceeding 0.366 is required to sufficiently broaden the transmitted light angular distribution. These properties enable to apply the developed MLA films to correlated-color-temperature (CCT)-tunable light-emitting-diodes (LEDs) to enhance their angular color uniformity (ACU). Our results show that the ACU of CCT-tunable LEDs is significantly improved while preserving almost the same lumen output, and that the MLA with the highest AR exhibits the best ACU performance.

Hollow PtPdRh Nanocubes with Enhanced Catalytic Activities for In Vivo Clearance of Radiation-Induced ROS via Surface-Mediated Bond Breaking.

Catalytic nanomaterials can be used extrinsically to combat diseases associated with a surplus of reactive oxygen species (ROS). Rational design of surface morphologies and appropriate doping can substantially improve the catalytic performances. In this work, a class of hollow polyvinyl pyrrolidone-protected PtPdRh nanocubes with enhanced catalytic activities for in vivo free radical scavenging is proposed. Compared with Pt and PtPd counterparts, ternary PtPdRh nanocubes show remarkable catalytic properties of decomposing H2 O2 via enhanced oxygen reduction reactions. Density functional theory calculation indicates that the bond of superoxide anions breaks for the energetically favorable status of oxygen atoms on the surface of PtPdRh. Viability of cells and survival rate of animal models under exposure of high-energy γ radiation are considerably enhanced by 94% and 50% respectively after treatment of PtPdRh nanocubes. The mechanistic investigations on superoxide dismutase (SOD) activity, malondialdehyde amount, and DNA damage repair demonstrate that hollow PtPdRh nanocubes act as catalase, peroxidase, and SOD analogs to efficiently scavenge ROS.

Butterfly-inspired micro-concavity array film for color conversion efficiency improvement of quantum-dot-based light-emitting diodes.

Inspired by the Papilio blumei butterfly, quantum-dot (QD) film coupled with micro-concavity array (MCA) films is proposed in this Letter to enhance color conversion efficiency (CCE) of QD-based light-emitting diodes (LEDs). The diameter, aspect ratio, and pitch of the MCA are optimized in the optical simulations. Both the simulation and experimental results show that the scattering and double reflection effects are the key to the CCE improvement of QD films. The results show that the CCEs are increased from 19.98% to 21.59% and 21.78% (350 mA) for single-sided microstructured QD film and double-sided microstructured QD film configurations, respectively. Overall, the MCA film is a promising solution to enhance the CCE of QD-based LEDs.

Highly reflective nanofiber films based on electrospinning and their application on color uniformity and luminous efficacy improvement of white light-emitting diodes.

Based on electrospinning technology, in this study, we fabricated poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) nanofiber films with high reflectivity and scattering properties. Various films with different thicknesses and fiber diameters were fabricated by changing the electrospinning time and solution concentration, respectively. Detailed optical measurements demonstrate that the film reflectance and scattering ability increase with the thickness, whereas fiber diameter contributes little to both properties. With optimized film thickness and fiber diameter, nanofiber films feature whiteness with a reflectance of 98.8% compared to the BaSO4 white plate. Furthermore, when deposited on the reflector surface of a remote phosphor-converted light-emitting diode lamp, nanofiber films witness a correlated color temperature deviation decrease from 8880 K to 1407 K and a luminous efficiency improvement of 11.66% at 350 mA. Therefore, the nanofiber films can be applied in lighting systems as a highly reflective coating to improve their light efficacy and quality.