Beta-TCP scaffolds with rationally designed macro-micro hierarchical structure improved angio/osteo-genesis capability for bone regeneration.

The design of hierarchical porous structure in scaffolds is crucial for bone defect regenerative repair. However, bioceramic materials present a challenge in precisely constructing designed micropores owing to the limitation of forming process. To investigate micropore shape influences bone regeneration in bioceramic scaffolds with macropores, hierarchical porous scaffolds with interconnective macropores (~400 µm) and two types of micropores (spherical and fibrous) were prepared using a combination of direct ink writing (DIW) and template sacrifice methods. Compared to the scaffold with spherical micropores, the scaffold with highly interconnected fibrous micropores significantly improved cell adhesion and upregulated osteogenic and angiogenetic-related gene expression in mBMSCs and HUVECs, respectively. Furthermore, in vivo implantation experiments showed that hierarchical scaffolds with fibrous micropores accelerated the bone repair process significantly. This result can be attributed to the high interconnectivity of fibrous micropores, which promotes the transportation of nutrients and waste during bone regeneration. Our work demonstrates that hierarchical porous scaffold design, especially one with a fibrous micropore structure, is a promising strategy for improving the bone regeneration performance of bioceramic scaffolds.

3D printed pore morphology mediates bone marrow stem cell behaviors via RhoA/ROCK2 signaling pathway for accelerating bone regeneration.

Bone bionics and structural engineering have sparked a broad interest in optimizing artificial scaffolds for better bone regeneration. However, the mechanism behind scaffold pore morphology-regulated bone regeneration remains unclear, making the structure design of scaffolds for bone repair challenging. To address this issue, we have carefully assessed diverse cell behaviors of bone mesenchymal stem cells (BMSCs) on the ß-tricalcium phosphate (ß-TCP) scaffolds with three representative pore morphologies (i.e., cross column, diamond, and gyroid pore unit, respectively). Among the scaffolds, BMSCs on the ß-TCP scaffold with diamond pore unit (designated as D-scaffold) demonstrated enhanced cytoskeletal forces, elongated nucleus, faster cell mobility, and better osteogenic differentiation potential (for example, the alkaline phosphatase expression level in D-scaffold were 1.5-2 times higher than other groups). RNA-sequencing analysis and signaling pathway intervention revealed that Ras homolog gene family A (RhoA)/Rho-associated kinase-2 (ROCK2) has in-depth participated in the pore morphology-mediated BMSCs behaviors, indicating an important role of mechanical signaling transduction in scaffold-cell interactions. Finally, femoral condyle defect repair results showed that D-scaffold could effectively promote endogenous bone regeneration, of which the osteogenesis rate was 1.2-1.8 times higher than the other groups. Overall, this work provides insights into pore morphology-mediated bone regeneration mechanisms for developing novel bioadaptive scaffold designs.

Enhanced osmotic energy conversion through bacterial cellulose based double-network hydrogel with 3D interconnected nanochannels.

Hydrogel with 3D networks have shown great potential for ion transportation and energy conversion. However, the micron size pores of hydrogel greatly limit the ion selectivity and energy conversion performance. Here, we report a bacterial cellulose (BC) derived hydrogel membrane with double-network (DN) and tailored ion transport channels by rationally filling acrylic acid (AAc)-co-acrylamide (AAm)-co-methyl methacrylate (MMA) polymers into BC hydrogel micropores. Fabricated AAM/BC DN hydrogel membrane displays a unique hierarchical interconnected porous structure and 3D cation transport channels. From the results, the maximum power density reached up to 7.63 W·m-2 at 50-fold salinity gradient under alkaline conditions (pH 11). Interestingly, the power density of 45.5 W·m-2 was achieved through acid-base neutralization reaction. Furthermore, hydrogel successfully obtained a power density of 28.4 W·m-2 from a mixed system of paper black liquor wastewater/seawater. The results of this investigation suggested the enormous potential of BC-based nanofluidic membrane in sustainable osmotic energy conversion.

3D-printed solar evaporator with seashell ornamentation-inspired structure for zero liquid discharge desalination.

Solar-driven interfacial evaporation has enormous promise for fresh water recovery and salt harvesting, but salt accumulation-related challenges stand in its way. Herein, we report a spined groove-ridge pairs inspired by the shell ornamentation of the Vasticardium vertebratum, which addresses salt accumulation by artfully integrating salt reflux into localized salt crystallization. The seashell-mimetic radial V-groove array enables the 3D evaporator to transport water rapidly and directionally, resulting in high-performance water evaporation (∼95% efficiency) and localized crystallization. The periodic spines enlightened by the spine-bearing ridge on the seashell provide considerable micro-unit salt reflux. The 2-in-1 integration design endows the three-dimensional evaporator with superior solar-driven zero liquid discharge and excellent long-term salt resistance even when dealing with high-salinity brine (20 wt% NaCl) and a series of heavy metallic salt solutions. Our design offers a new alternative solution to avoiding salt scaling and could advance locally crystallized solar evaporators towards practical applications.

Porous and conductive cellulose nanofiber/carbon nanotube foam as a humidity sensor with high sensitivity.

In this study, we developed a humidity sensor with high sensitivity based on cellulose nanofiber/carbon nanotube (CNF/CNT) hybrid foam. The porous structure of the foam not only provides more contact interface for water molecules adsorption, but also tunes the conductivity of the CCF closed to the point where the sensor is most sensitive to the change in humidity. With this porous structural design, the obtained foam sensor shows a high humidity sensitivity of 87.3% (ΔI/I0, and the response limit is 100%), excellent linearity (R2 = 0.996) within the humidity range from 29 to 95% relative humidity (RH), and good long-time stability (more than two months). Furthermore, the water vapor adsorption behavior of the CNF/CNT foam sensor can be well described by the pseudo-first-order kinetic model. Finally, a simple humidity measuring device based on the CNF/CNT foam is presented, which can find good applications for human breath and fingertip humidity monitoring.

Hierarchically porous calcium-silicon nanosphere-enabled co-delivery of microRNA-210 and simvastatin for bone regeneration.

The regenerative repair of large bone defects is a major problem in orthopedics and clinical medicine. The key problem is the lack of ability of existing bone graft materials to promote osteogenesis and angiogenesis. Previous studies have shown that the osteogenic or angiogenic abilities of these materials could be significantly improved by adding miRNA or small-molecule drugs to bone graft materials; however, the synergistic effect arising from this combination is not clear. Therefore, we proposed to construct a dual drug delivery system that could simultaneously achieve the co-encapsulation and co-delivery of miRNA and small-molecule drugs to explore the effect of a dual drug delivery system on bone repair. In this study, we constructed dual-sized pore structure calcium-silicon nanospheres (DPNPs) and achieved the co-encapsulation of miR-210, angiogenic gene drugs, and simvastatin (Siv), a small-molecule osteogenic drug, through metal-ion coordination and physical adsorption. In vitro and in vivo osteogenic and angiogenic experiments showed that the dual drug delivery system (Siv/DPNP/miR-210) exhibited better properties than those of the individual unloaded and single drug-loaded systems and could significantly accelerate the process of bone repair, which provides a novel strategy for the regeneration and repair of bone defects.

Electrostatic self-assembly enabled flexible paper-based humidity sensor with high sensitivity and superior durability.

Humidity sensors have been widely used for humidity monitoring in industrial fields. However, the application of conventional sensors is limited due to the structural rigidity, high cost, and time-consuming integration process. Owing to the good hydrophilicity, biodegradability, and low cost of cellulose, the sensors built on cellulose bulk materials are considered a feasible method to overcome these drawbacks while providing reasonable performance. Herein, we design a flexible paper-based humidity sensor based on conductive 2,2,6,6-tetramethylpiperidine-1-oxyl (TEMPO)-oxidized cellulose fibers/carbon nanotubes (TOCFs/CNTs) conformal fibers network. The CNTs are dispersed by cationic cetyl trimethyl ammonium bromide (CTAB), which introduces positive charges on the CNTs surface. The conductive fibers are achieved by an electrostatic self-assembly process that positively charged CNTs are adsorbed to the surface of negatively charged TOCFs. The vast number of hydrophilic hydroxyl groups on the surface of TOCFs provide more water molecules adsorption sites and facilitate the electron transfer from water molecules to CNTs, endowing the sensor with an excellent humidity responsive property. Besides, the swelling of the TOCFs greatly damages the conductive CNTs network and further promotes the humidity sensitive performance of the sensor. Benefiting from the unique structure, the obtained sensor exhibits a maximum response value of 87.0% (ΔI/I0 , and the response limit is 100%), outstanding linearity (R2 = 0.995) between 11 and 95% relative humidity (RH), superior bending (with a curvature of 2.1 cm-1) and folding (up to 50 times) durability, and good long-time stability (more than 3 months). Finally, as a proof of concept, the sensor demonstrates an excellent responsive property to human breath, fingertip humidity, and the change of air humidity, indicating a great potential towards practical applications.

Highly Elastic Hydrated Cellulosic Materials with Durable Compressibility and Tunable Conductivity.

Anisotropic cellular materials with direction-dependent structure and durable mechanical properties enable various applications (e.g., nanofluidics, biomedical devices, tissue engineering, and water purification), but their widespread use is often hindered by complex and scale-limited fabrication and unsatisfactory mechanical performance. Here, inspired by the anisotropic and hierarchical material structure of tendons, we demonstrate a facile, scalable top-down approach for fabricating a highly elastic, ionically conductive, anisotropic cellulosic material (named elastic wood) directly from natural wood via chemical treatment. The resulting elastic wood demonstrates good elasticity and durable compressibility, showing no sign of fatigue after 10 000 compression cycles. The chemical treatment not only softens the wood cell walls by partially removing lignin and hemicellulose but introduces an interconnected cellulose fibril network into the wood channels. Atomistic and continuum modeling further reveals that the absorbed water can freely and reversibly move inside the elastic wood and therefore helps the elastic wood accommodate large compressive deformation and recover to its original shape upon compression release. In addition, the elastic wood showed a high ionic conductivity of up to 0.5 mS cm-1 at a low KCl concentration of 10-4 M, which can be tuned by changing the compression ratio of the material. The demonstrated elastic, mechanically robust, and ionically conductive cellulosic material combining inherited anisotropic cellular structure from natural wood and a self-formed internal gel may find a variety of potential applications in ionic nanofluidics, sensors, soft robots, artificial muscle, environmental remediation, and energy storage.

Cellulose Nanofiber/Carbon Nanotube Dual Network-Enabled Humidity Sensor with High Sensitivity and Durability.

Humidity sensors have been widely used for humidity monitoring in industrial fields, while the unsatisfactory flexibility, time consumption, and expensive integration process of conventional inorganic sensors significantly limit their application in wearable electronics. Using paper-based humidity sensors is considered a feasible method to overcome these drawbacks because of their good flexibility and roll-to-roll manufacturability, while they still face problems such as poor durability and low sensitivity. In this study, we report a high-performance paper-based humidity sensor based on a rationally designed bilayered structure consisting of a nanoporous cellulose nanofiber/carbon nanotube (CNF/CNT) sensitive layer and a microporous paper substrate. The vast number of hydrophilic hydroxyl groups on the surface of CNF and paper fibers enables fast water molecule exchange between the humidity-sensitive material and the external environment via hydrogen bonding, endowing the paper-based sensor with an excellent humidity responsive property. The obtained sensor displays a maximum response value of 65.0% (ΔI/I0) at 95% relative humidity. Furthermore, the mechanical interlocking structure formed between the CNF/CNT layer and the paper layer provides the sensor with strong interlayer adhesion. Benefiting from the unique structure, the sensor also exhibits outstanding bending (with a maximum curvature of 22.2 cm-1) and folding durability (up to 50 times). Finally, as a proof of concept, a simple humidity-measuring device is assembled, which demonstrates an excellent responsive property toward human breath and the change of air humidity, indicating a great potential of our paper-based humidity sensor toward practical applications.

A High-Performance Self-Regenerating Solar Evaporator for Continuous Water Desalination.

Emerging solar desalination by interfacial evaporation shows great potential in response to global water scarcity because of its high solar-to-vapor efficiency, low environmental impact, and off-grid capability. However, solute accumulation at the heating interface has severely impacted the performance and long-term stability of current solar evaporation systems. Here, a self-regenerating solar evaporator featuring excellent antifouling properties using a rationally designed artificial channel-array in a natural wood substrate is reported. Upon solar evaporation, salt concentration gradients are formed between the millimeter-sized drilled channels (with a low salt concentration) and the microsized natural wood channels (with a high salt concentration) due to their different hydraulic conductivities. The concentration gradients allow spontaneous interchannel salt exchange through the 1-2 µm pits, leading to the dilution of salt in the microsized wood channels. The drilled channels with high hydraulic conductivities thus function as salt-rejection pathways, which can rapidly exchange the salt with the bulk solution, enabling the real-time self-regeneration of the evaporator. Compared to other salt-rejection designs, the solar evaporator exhibits the highest efficiency (≈75%) in a highly concentrated salt solution (20 wt% NaCl) under 1 sun irradiation, as well as long-term stability (over 100 h of continuous operation).

Flexible and Highly Sensitive Humidity Sensor Based on Cellulose Nanofibers and Carbon Nanotube Composite Film.

Flexible and highly sensitive humidity sensors are crucial for humidity detection. In this study, a flexible cellulose nanofiber/carbon nanotube (NFC/CNT) humidity sensor with high sensitivity performance was developed via fast vacuum filtration. CNTs were well dispersed in water by using 2,2,6,6-tetramethylpiperidinyl-1-oxyl (TEMPO)-oxidized NFC as a dispersant. More importantly, NFC also acted as a humidity sensitive material, achieving superior performance of NFC/CNT humidity sensors. The obtained NFC/CNT humidity sensor with 5 wt % CNT loading exhibits outstanding sensitive performance, and its response value reaches a maximum of 69.9% (Δ I/ I0) at 95% relative humidity (RH). It also displays good bending resistance and long-term stability. In addition, the NFC/CNT humidity sensor was employed to monitor human breath. Therefore, we believe that the flexible, highly sensitive, and simply designed NFC/CNT humidity sensor is a promising candidate for various applications in the field of humidity measurement.

Muscle-Inspired Highly Anisotropic, Strong, Ion-Conductive Hydrogels.

Biological tissues generally exhibit excellent anisotropic mechanical properties owing to their well-developed microstructures. Inspired by the aligned structure in muscles, a highly anisotropic, strong, and conductive wood hydrogel is developed by fully utilizing the high-tensile strength of natural wood, and the flexibility and high-water content of hydrogels. The wood hydrogel exhibits a high-tensile strength of 36 MPa along the longitudinal direction due to the strong bonding and cross-linking between the aligned cellulose nanofibers (CNFs) in wood and the polyacrylamide (PAM) polymer. The wood hydrogel is 5 times and 500 times stronger than the bacterial cellulose hydrogels (7.2 MPa) and the unmodified PAM hydrogel (0.072 MPa), respectively, representing one of the strongest hydrogels ever reported. Due to the negatively charged aligned CNF, the wood hydrogel is also an excellent nanofluidic conduit with an ionic conductivity of up to 5 × 10-4 S cm-1 at low concentrations for highly selective ion transport, akin to biological muscle tissue. The work offers a promising strategy to fabricate a wide variety of strong, anisotropic, flexible, and ionically conductive wood-based hydrogels for potential biomaterials and nanofluidic applications.

From Wood to Textiles: Top-Down Assembly of Aligned Cellulose Nanofibers.

Advanced textiles made of macroscopic fibers are usually prepared from synthetic fibers, which have changed lives over the past century. The shortage of petrochemical resources, however, greatly limits the development of the textile industry. Here, a facile top-down approach for fabricating macroscopic wood fibers for textile applications (wood-textile fibers) comprising aligned cellulose nanofibers directly from natural wood via delignification and subsequent twisting is demonstrated. Inherently aligned cellulose nanofibers are well retained, while the microchannels in the delignified wood are squeezed and totally removed by twisting, resulting in a dense structure with approximately two times higher mechanical strength (106.5 vs 54.9 MPa) and ≈20 times higher toughness (7.70 vs 0.36 MJ m-3 ) than natural wood. Dramatically different from natural wood, which is brittle in nature, the resultant wood-textile fibers are highly flexible and bendable, likely due to the twisted structures. The wood-textile fibers also exhibit excellent knitting properties and dyeability, which are critical for textile applications. Furthermore, functional wood-textile fibers can be achieved by preinfiltrating functional materials in the delignified wood film before twisting. This top-down approach of fabricating aligned macrofibers is simple, scalable, and cost-effective, representing a promising direction for the development of smart textiles and wearable electronics.

Three-Dimensional, Solid-State Mixed Electron-Ion Conductive Framework for Lithium Metal Anode.

Solid-state electrolytes (SSEs) have been widely considered as enabling materials for the practical application of lithium metal anodes. However, many problems inhibit the widespread application of solid state batteries, including the growth of lithium dendrites, high interfacial resistance, and the inability to operate at high current density. In this study, we report a three-dimensional (3D) mixed electron/ion conducting framework (3D-MCF) based on a porous-dense-porous trilayer garnet electrolyte structure created via tape casting to facilitate the use of a 3D solid state lithium metal anode. The 3D-MCF was achieved by a conformal coating of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) on the porous garnet structure, creating a composite mixed electron/ion conductor that acts as a 3D host for the lithium metal. The lithium metal was introduced into the 3D-MCF via slow electrochemical deposition, forming a 3D lithium metal anode. The slow lithiation leads to improved contact between the lithium metal anode and garnet electrolyte, resulting in a low resistance of 25 Ω cm2. Additionally, due to the continuous CNT coating and its seamless contact with the garnet we observed highly uniform lithium deposition behavior in the porous garnet structure. With the same local current density, the high surface area of the porous garnet framework leads to a higher overall areal current density for stable lithium deposition. An elevated current density of 1 mA/cm2 based on the geometric area of the cell was demonstrated for continuous lithium cycling in symmetric lithium cells. For battery operation of the trilayer structure, the lithium can be cycled between the 3D-MCF on one side and the cathode infused into the porous structure on the opposite side. The 3D-MCF created by the porous garnet structure and conformal CNT coating provides a promising direction toward new designs in solid-state lithium metal batteries.

Anisotropic, Mesoporous Microfluidic Frameworks with Scalable, Aligned Cellulose Nanofibers.

Cellulose paper has been extensively used in microfluidic analytical devices because of its hydrophilic nature. However, cellulose is randomly packed in paper without any particular orientation or channels within the bulk of the material, necessitating a complicated design of hydrophilic microchannels to guide the liquid flow. Herein, we develop an anisotropic mesoporous microfluidic framework (named as white wood) with aligned cellulose nanofibers and inherent microchannels via a facile one-step delignification process from natural wood. The hydrophilic nature of the innate microchannels in white wood makes it ideal for application as a pump-free microfluidic chip, exhibiting a fast and anisotropic liquid and large solid particle (as demonstrated with carbon nanotubes) mass transport, with a high transport speed along the channel direction approximately five times faster than that perpendicular to the channel direction. The anisotropic mass transport is further exemplified in the fabrication of chitosan films with aligned microstructures and birefringence, formed by virtue of unidirectional capillary forces exerted by the microchannels. We envision that our anisotropic mesoporous framework can have great applications to pump-free microfluidics, and the simple preparation process will pave a new way for the development of microfluidic devices based on chemically modified wood.

Processing bulk natural wood into a high-performance structural material.

Synthetic structural materials with exceptional mechanical performance suffer from either large weight and adverse environmental impact (for example, steels and alloys) or complex manufacturing processes and thus high cost (for example, polymer-based and biomimetic composites). Natural wood is a low-cost and abundant material and has been used for millennia as a structural material for building and furniture construction. However, the mechanical performance of natural wood (its strength and toughness) is unsatisfactory for many advanced engineering structures and applications. Pre-treatment with steam, heat, ammonia or cold rolling followed by densification has led to the enhanced mechanical performance of natural wood. However, the existing methods result in incomplete densification and lack dimensional stability, particularly in response to humid environments, and wood treated in these ways can expand and weaken. Here we report a simple and effective strategy to transform bulk natural wood directly into a high-performance structural material with a more than tenfold increase in strength, toughness and ballistic resistance and with greater dimensional stability. Our two-step process involves the partial removal of lignin and hemicellulose from the natural wood via a boiling process in an aqueous mixture of NaOH and Na2SO3 followed by hot-pressing, leading to the total collapse of cell walls and the complete densification of the natural wood with highly aligned cellulose nanofibres. This strategy is shown to be universally effective for various species of wood. Our processed wood has a specific strength higher than that of most structural metals and alloys, making it a low-cost, high-performance, lightweight alternative.

Lightweight, Mesoporous, and Highly Absorptive All-Nanofiber Aerogel for Efficient Solar Steam Generation.

The global fresh water shortage has driven enormous endeavors in seawater desalination and wastewater purification; among these, solar steam generation is effective in extracting fresh water by efficient utilization of naturally abundant solar energy. For solar steam generation, the primary focus is to design new materials that are biodegradable, sustainable, of low cost, and have high solar steam generation efficiency. Here, we designed a bilayer aerogel structure employing naturally abundant cellulose nanofibrils (CNFs) as basic building blocks to achieve sustainability and biodegradability as well as employing a carbon nanotube (CNT) layer for efficient solar utilization with over 97.5% of light absorbance from 300 to 1200 nm wavelength. The ultralow density (0.0096 g/cm3) of the aerogel ensures that minimal material is required, reducing the production cost while at the same time satisfying the water transport and thermal-insulation requirements due to its highly porous structure (99.4% porosity). Owing to its rationally designed structure and thermal-regulation performance, the bilayer CNF-CNT aerogel exhibits a high solar-energy conversion efficiency of 76.3% and 1.11 kg m-2 h-1 at 1 kW m-2 (1 Sun) solar irradiation, comparable or even higher than most of the reported solar steam generation devices. Therefore, the all-nanofiber aerogel presents a new route for designing biodegradable, sustainable, and scalable solar steam generation devices with superb performance.

Highly Compressible, Anisotropic Aerogel with Aligned Cellulose Nanofibers.

Aerogels can be used in a broad range of applications such as bioscaffolds, energy storage devices, sensors, pollutant treatment, and thermal insulating materials due to their excellent properties including large surface area, low density, low thermal conductivity, and high porosity. Here we report a facile and effective top-down approach to fabricate an anisotropic wood aerogel directly from natural wood by a simple chemical treatment. The wood aerogel has a layered structure with anisotropic structural properties due to the destruction of cell walls by the removal of lignin and hemicellulose. The layered structure results in the anisotropic wood aerogel having good mechanical compressibility and fragility resistance, demonstrated by a high reversible compression of 60% and stress retention of ∼90% after 10 000 compression cycles. Moreover, the anisotropic structure of the wood aerogel with curved layers stacking layer-by-layer and aligned cellulose nanofibers inside each individual layer enables the wood aerogel to have an anisotropic thermal conductivity with an anisotropy factor of ∼4.3. An extremely low thermal conductivity of 0.028 W/m·K perpendicular to the cellulose alignment direction and a thermal conductivity of 0.12 W/m·K along the cellulose alignment direction can be achieved. The thermal conductivity is not only much lower than that of the natural wood material (by ∼3.6 times) but also lower than most of the commercial thermal insulation materials. The top-down approach is low-cost, scalable, simple, yet effective, representing a promising direction for the fabrication of high-quality aerogel materials.

Highly Transparent and Self-Extinguishing Nanofibrillated Cellulose-Monolayer Clay Nanoplatelet Hybrid Films.

A viable solution toward "green" optoelectronics is rooted in our ability to fabricate optoelectronics on transparent nanofibrillated cellulose (NFC) film substrates. However, the flammability of transparent NFC film poses a severe fire hazard in optoelectronic devices. Despite many efforts toward enhancing the fire-retardant features of transparent NFC film, making NFC film fire-retardant while maintaining its high transparency (≥90%) remains an ambitious objective. Herein, we combine NFC with NFC-dispersed monolayer clay nanoplatelets as a fire retardant to prepare highly transparent NFC-monolayer clay nanoplatelet hybrid films with a superb self-extinguishing behavior. Homogeneous and stable monolayer clay nanoplatelet dispersion was initially obtained by using NFC as a green dispersing agent with the assistance of ultrasonication and then used to blend with NFC to prepare highly transparent and self-extinguishing hybrid films by a water evaporation-induced self-assembly process. As the content of monolayer clay nanoplatelets increased from 5 wt % to 50 wt %, the obtained hybrid films presented enhanced self-extinguishing behavior (limiting oxygen index sharply increased from 21% to 96.5%) while retaining a ∼90% transparency at 600 nm. More significantly, the underlying mechanisms for the high transparency and excellent self-extinguishing behavior of these hybrid films with a clay nanoplatelet content of over 30 wt % were unveiled by a series of characterizations such as SEM, XRD, TGA, and limiting oxygen index tester. This work offers an alternative environmentally friendly, self-extinguishing, and highly transparent substrate to next-generation optoelectronics, and is aimed at providing a viable solution to environmental concerns that are caused by ever-increasing electronic waste.