Hybrid strategy of graphene/carbon nanotube hierarchical networks for highly sensitive, flexible wearable strain sensors.

One-dimensional and two-dimensional materials are widely used to compose the conductive network atop soft substrate to form flexible strain sensors for several wearable electronic applications. However, limited contact area and layer misplacement hinder the rapid development of flexible strain sensors based on 1D or 2D materials. To overcome these drawbacks above, we proposed a hybrid strategy by combining 1D carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and 2D graphene nanoplatelets (GNPs), and the developed strain sensor based on CNT-GNP hierarchical networks showed remarkable sensitivity and tenability. The strain sensor can be stretched in excess of 50% of its original length, showing high sensitivity (gauge factor 197 at 10% strain) and tenability (recoverable after 50% strain) due to the enhanced resistive behavior upon stretching. Moreover, the GNP-CNT hybrid thin film shows highly reproducible response for more than 1000 loading cycles, exhibiting long-term durability, which could be attributed to the GNPs conductive networks significantly strengthened by the hybridization with CNTs. Human activities such as finger bending and throat swallowing were monitored by the GNP-CNT thin film strain sensor, indicating that the stretchable sensor could lead to promising applications in wearable devices for human motion monitoring.

Selenate Reduction and Selenium Enrichment of Tea by the Endophytic Herbaspirillum sp. Strain WT00C.

Herbaspirillum sp. WT00C is a tea-plant-specific endophytic bacterium. A genomic survey revealed an intact pathway for selenocompound metabolism in the genome of this bacterium. When it was cultured with sodium selenate, Herbaspirillum sp. WT00C was able to turn the culture medium to red. Electron microscopy and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy confirmed that Herbaspirillum sp. WT00C reduced selenite (Se6+) to elemental selenium (Se0), and selenium nanoparticles (SeNPs) were secreted outside bacterial cells and grew increasingly larger to form Se-nanospheres and finally crystallized to form selenoflowers. Biochemical assays showed that selenospheres contained proteins but not carbohydrates or lipids. The improvement of selenium enrichment of tea plants by Herbaspirillum sp. WT00C was also tested. After Herbaspirillum sp. WT00C was inoculated into tea seedlings via needle injection and soaking tea-cutting methods, this endophytic bacterium markedly enhanced selenium enrichment of tea. When the tea seedlings inoculated by soaking tea-cutting mode were cultivated in the selenium-containing soils, selenium contents of tea leaves in three experimental groups were more than twofold compared to those of control groups. Our study demonstrates that the endophytic bacterium Herbaspirillum sp. WT00C has the ability to reduce selenate and improve selenium enrichment of tea.

Influence of Structural Parameters on the Surface Enhanced Raman Scattering of Au Nanoarrays.

As an important research topic of surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS), periodic metal nanoarrays have attracted remarkable attention due to their superior properties, such as excellent enhancing ability, and high structural homogeneity and stability. In this work, periodic Au nanostructures with variable repetitive unit size, Au nanoparticle size, and gap sizes are fabricated by electron beam lithography on SiO2/Si substrates to investigate the influence of these structural parameters on SERS performances. The SERS intensity is found to increase linearly with decreasing repetitive unit size (increase of Au nanoparticle number density), while shows no obvious dependence on the Au nanoparticle size. A SERS enhancement factor of 6.6 × 105 is obtained for Au arrays with a repetitive unit size of 200 nm. The gap size does not affect the SERS intensity when it is over 75 nm, and exhibits an obvious enhancement effect when it is below 25 nm. A linear quantitative relationship between the Raman intensity and analyte concentrations of R6G, as well as a limit of detection of 10-11 mol/L was achieved for an Au nanoparticle array with gap size of 25 nm.

A Free-Standing and Self-Healable 2D Supramolecular Material Based on Hydrogen Bonding: A Nanowire Array with Sub-2-nm Resolution.

In many 2D materials reported thus far, the forces confining atoms in a 2D plane are often strong interactions, such as covalent bonding. Herein, the first demonstration that hydrogen (H)-bonding can be utilized to assemble polydiacetylene (a conductive polymer) toward a 2D material, which is stable enough to be free-standing, is shown. The 2D material is well characterized by a large number of techniques (mainly different microscopy techniques). The H-bonding allows splitting of the material into ribbons, which can reassemble, similar to a zipper, leading to the first example of a healable 2D material. Moreover, such technology can easily create 2D, organic, conductive nanowire arrays with sub-2-nm resolution. This material may have potential applications in stretchable electronics and nanowire cross-bar arrays.