Synthesizing Benzotriazole Group-Terminated Carbon Dots as Multifunctional Additives of Poly(ethylene glycol).

Long running-in period and corrosion problems have greatly hindered the practical applications of poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) lubricants. In this work, benzotriazole group-terminated carbon dots (BT-CDs) were specifically synthesized through a facile solvothermal method. The benzotriazole groups on BT-CD surfaces not only imparted them excellent dispersibility in the PEG base oil but also brought in outstanding anticorrosion ability for BT-CDs. With the aid of the coordination effects between benzotriazole groups and metal atoms, the BT-CDs could quickly and solidly adsorb onto the steel surface to form a dense adsorption layer, which resulted in an amazing phenomenon, i.e., the disappearance of the running-in period for the friction test. Adding 5.0 wt % BT-CDs reduced the friction and wear of PEG200 by 49.16 and 49.52%, respectively. When the duration was prolonged from 20 to 120 min, these values were further enlarged to 53.77 and 60.71%. The worn surface characterization demonstrated that the BT-CDs induced the generation of robust lubricating films on the frictional interfaces, accounting for their distinguished tribological performance. Considering the superior anticorrosion ability and the potential possibility of avoiding the running-in period, the BT-CDs are expected to be developed as particularly promising additives toward PEG.

Alkane-Strengthened Viscoelasticity in Micellar Solutions of Surface-Active Ionic Liquids and Their Potential Application in Enhanced Oil Recovery.

Wormlike micelles (WLMs) are highly sensitive to alkanes, resulting in structural destruction and loss of viscosity. Therefore, the study of WLMs against alkanes holds great significant importance. Surface-active ionic liquids have shown increasing promise for different situations for customizing molecular structures with the specialty of flexible functional assembly. In this paper, we found that WLMs constructed from the long-chain fatty acid surface-active ionic liquid (N,N-dimethylbenzylamine-oleic acid, abbreviated as BD-OA) exhibit strengthened viscoelasticity with the introduction of alkanes, expanding the resistance range to alkane damage. Here, the rheological behavior, microstructure, and dissipative particle dynamics (DPD) simulations of BD-OA WLMs were investigated at macro-, micro-, and mesoscopic scales, before (and after) the introduction of alkane. Our findings confirm the structural transformation of the micellar system from WLMs to lamellar micelles with higher viscoelasticity after alkane induction. The rearrangement of the micelle configuration may be attributed to the infiltration of alkane molecules into the fence layer formed by the BD-OA WLMs, leading to an increase in the boundary accumulation parameter and ultimately resulting in the formation of lower curvature lamellar micelles. More importantly, the against alkanes BD-OA WLMs have exhibited excellent in enhanced oil recovery, which has a promise for substituting common oil-displacing agents in tertiary oil recovery processes.

Intelligent Devices Harnessing Underwater Superoleophobic and Underoil Superhydrophobic Quartz Sands for the Separation of Diverse Stratified and Emulsified Water-Oil Mixtures.

To achieve the green, sustainable, and controllable recovery of oil-water resources and to address the limited functionality of single superwet materials in oil-water separation, this study reports a multifunctional oil-water separation strategy by compositing the underwater superoleophobic and underoil superhydrophobic materials (HS). The underwater superoleophobic quartz sands with an oil contact angle of 152.68° were prepared by adjusting the particle size. This material demonstrated a water flux of 4688 L m-2 h-1 and a low-density oil and water mixture separation efficiency of 98.6%, which remained above 97.9% over 50 cycles. It was effective in separating oil-in-water emulsions with a separation efficiency of >99%. For HS, quartz sands were modified with dodecyltrimethoxysilane. The optimized HS-4 exhibited superhydrophobic properties with a water contact angle of 157.06°. It achieved an oil flux of 5775 L m-2 h-1 and a water and dichloromethane mixture separation efficiency of 98.4%. Additionally, they exhibited significant potential in the separation of water-in-oil emulsions. Furthermore, by placing the underwater superoleophobic and underoil superhydrophobic units at the bottom of the filter, we achieved cyclic separation of high-density oil and water mixtures, low-density oil and water mixtures, water-in-oil emulsions, and oil-in-water emulsions. The separation efficiency consistently exceeded 96.5% over 10 cycles. In addition, the oil-water separation mechanism of underwater oleophobic and underoil hydrophobic materials was demonstrated by the relative concentration distribution of water and oil with molecular dynamics simulations. This intelligent oil-water separation method marks a significant advancement in the sustainable separation of diverse oil-water mixtures.

Insights into the Efficient Release of the Polyacrylamide Drag Reducer via a pH-Responsive Inverse Polymer Emulsion.

The enormous demand for petroleum consumption has resulted in the shortage of fossil resources, prompting the need to explore unconventional reservoirs. Polyacrylamide emulsion drag reducers are capable of inhibiting the turbulence of fracturing fluids for enhancing the reservoir stimulation results, but the poor dissolution efficiency of polyacrylamide emulsion drag reducers is the primary limitation to their large-scale application. Here, a pH-responsive ionic liquid surfactant, oleic acid/cyclohexanediamine (HOA/HMDA), is synthesized by using oleic acid (HOA) and cyclohexanediamine (HMDA). HOA/HMDA shows a remarkable pH-responsive behavior due to the pH-induced deconstruction of the HOA/HMDA structure. Interestingly, the HOA/HMDA-stabilized monomer emulsion exhibits an obvious pH-induced emulsion structure transformation behavior. In addition, the HOA/HMDA-stabilized monomer emulsion possesses excellent dynamic and storage stability, supporting the inverse emulsion polymerization of the polymer P(AM/AMPS/AA). The obtained P(AM/AMPS/AA) polymer inverse emulsions maintained stability for 30 days. Our finding proposes that the structure of the P(AM/AMPS/AA) polymer inverse emulsions changes with pH stimulation, which is capable of facilitating the release of polymers. P(AM/AMPS/AA) is released from the P(AM/AMPS/AA) polymer inverse emulsions within 30 s at a pH value of 12.06, along with a drag reduction rate of 62.54%. Obviously, the HOA/HMDA-stabilized P(AM/AMPS/AA) polymer inverse emulsions eliminate the contradiction between the stability and release of polyacrylamide emulsion drag reducers, which is promising for meeting the demands of reservoir stimulation.

Study on the performance of biochar prepared from walnut shell and traditional graphene electrode plate in the treatment of domestic sewage in microbial fuel cells.

As a new pollutant treatment technology, microbial fuel cell (MFC) has a broad prospect. In this article, the devices assembled using walnut shells are named biochar-microbial fuel cell (B-MFC), and the devices assembled using graphene are named graphene-microbial fuel cell (G-MFC). Under the condition of an external resistance of 1,000 Ω, the B-MFC with biochar as the electrode plate can generate a voltage of up to 75.26 mV. The maximum power density is 76.61 mW/m2, and the total internal resistance is 3,117.09 Ω. The removal efficiency of B-MFC for ammonia nitrogen (NH3-N), chemical oxygen demand (COD), total nitrogen (TN), and total phosphorus (TP) was higher than that of G-MFC. The results of microbial analysis showed that there was more operational taxonomic unit (OTU) on the walnut shell biochar electrode plate. The final analysis of the two electrode materials using BET specific surface area testing method (BET) and scanning electron microscope (SEM) showed that the pore size of walnut shell biochar was smaller, the specific surface area was larger, and the pore distribution was smoother. The results show that using walnut shells to make electrode plates is an optional waste recycling method and an electrode plate with excellent development prospects.

Biomarker Discovery for Early Diagnosis of Papillary Thyroid Carcinoma Using High-Throughput Enhanced Quantitative Plasma Proteomics.

The incidence of thyroid cancer (TC) has been increasing over the last 50 years worldwide. A higher rate of overdiagnosis in indolent thyroid lesions has resulted in unnecessary treatment. An accurate detection of TC at an early stage is highly demanded. We aim to develop an enhanced isobaric labeling-based high-throughput plasma quantitative proteomics to identify biomarkers in a discovery cohort. Selected candidates were tested by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) in the training cohort and validation cohort. In total, 1063 proteins were quantified, and 129 proteins were differentially expressed between patients and healthy subjects. Serum levels of ISG15 and PLXNB2 were significantly elevated in patients with papillary thyroid cancer (PTC) or thyroid adenoma, compared to healthy subjects (p < 0.001) and patients with nodular goiter (p < 0.001). Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis of combined markers (ISG15 and PLXNB2) significantly distinguished PTC from healthy control (HC) subjects. Similar differentiations were also found between thyroid adenoma and HC subjects. Notably, this combined marker could distinguish stage-I PTC from HC subjects (area under the curve (AUC) = 0.872). Our results revealed that ISG15 and PLXNB2 are independent diagnostic biomarkers for PTC and thyroid adenoma, showing a promising value for the early detection of PTC.

Molecular Dynamics Simulation of Droplet Impact on a Hydrophobic 3D Elastic Surface.

The phenomenon of droplets impacting elastic surfaces is common in nature and in many engineering applications. It has been shown that droplet impact on an elastic surface drastically reduces droplet contact time and hinders droplet spreading. However, most of the current studies are based on experiments, and the analysis of the influence mechanism of the elastic substrate on the dynamic behavior of droplets is not complete. In addition, the simulations of droplet impact on elastic substrates are mainly focused on 2D elastic films or vibrating rigid substrates, ignoring the effect of 3D elastic substrate deformation on the droplet dynamic behavior. Therefore, in this paper, we propose to model the droplet impact on a 3D hydrophobic elastic substrate using the molecular dynamics method. We find that droplet pancake rebound can substantially reduce the droplet contact time. Moreover, we record the conditions required for the pancake rebound of the droplet. Furthermore, we investigated the effects of the elastic modulus of the substrate and the initial velocity of the droplet on the droplet contact time, contact area, and spreading factor. This study further elucidates the influence mechanism of the elastic substrate on the dynamic behavior of the droplet and provides theoretical guidance for regulating the dynamic behavior of the droplet in related fields.

CO2-Repurification Microemulsion Detergent for Oil-Based Slurry Cleaning.

In order to solve problems such as environmental pollution and pipeline blockage caused by oily wastewater after washing, N,N-dimethylcyclohexylamine (DMCHA) with CO2 response was selected as the oil phase, and an O/W microemulsion wellbore cleaning fluid with CO2 switching characteristics was successfully prepared with erucamide propyl betaine (EAB-40), sodium dodecyl benzene sulfonate (SDBS), n-butanol, silicone defoamer, and water. The water content of the microemulsion was 89.99%, and it had good stability at 40 and -5 °C. The emulsion was rapidly demulsified after being injected with CO2 in the CO2-repurification microemulsion detergent, and CO2 was removed with a N2 detergent. The emulsion was restored to its original state, which demonstrated the CO2/N2 switching properties of the emulsion. It is proven that the switching microemulsion has a good wetting transformation ability by cleaning the steel sheet and quartz sheet contaminated by oil-based slurry. The switching microemulsion system can clean the simulated wellbore contaminated by oil-based slurry, and the cleaning efficiency is above 99%. CO2 can be used at room temperature to separate oil and water from oily wastewater after cleaning.

CO2-Responsive Hydrophobic Deep Eutectic Solvent Based on Surfactant-Free Microemulsion-Mediated Synthesis of BaF2 Nanoparticles.

A new form of surfactant-free microemulsion (SFME) including hydrophobic deep eutectic solvent (HDES)/ethanol/water was constructed based on its CO2 response, and three regions, that is, HDES-in-water (HDES/W), bicontinuous (B.C.), and water-in-HDES (W/HDES) regions, were recognized. It is anticipated that SFMEs with tunable microstructures have outstanding applications as nanoreactors in reaction processes. The feasibility of preparing nanoparticles from HDES/ethanol/water SFME using barium fluoride (BaF2) as a model nanoparticle was investigated. HDES-based microemulsions benefit from HDES's excellent properties (novel, low toxicity, CO2-responsive, easy availability) and have potential in universal reactions, drug delivery, advanced material fabrication, etc. In this research, HDES-based microemulsions were prepared using HDES as the oil phase. Phase equilibria and microstructure were investigated using a ternary phase diagram, UV spectrophotometry, and the conductivity method. The CO2 switchable characteristics of the HDES-based microemulsions were investigated. HDES-based microemulsions were proposed as nanoreactors for the synthesis of barium fluoride nanomaterials. The microemulsion structure can modulate the size, morphology, and physicochemical properties of the nanoparticles through the CO2 switchable properties. It is argued that nanoreactors constructed with versatile HDES will offer a new direction for creation of cutting-edge scientific applications.

Multiple-Stimuli-Responsive Surfactant-Free Microemulsions Based on Hydrophobic Deep Eutectic Solvents.

Hydrophobic deep eutectic solvents (HDESs) have been applied to colloidal systems such as microemulsions, despite the development of stimulus-responsive HDESs still being in a preliminary stage. Here, menthol and indole were hydrogen bonded to form CO2-responsiveness HDES. A surfactant-free microemulsion constituted of HDES (menthol-indole) as the hydrophobic phase, water as the hydrophilic phase, and ethanol as the double solvent was demonstrated to be CO2- and temperature-responsive. Dynamic light scattering (DLS) proved the single-phase region of the phase diagram, while conductivity and polarity probing techniques confirmed the kind of microemulsion. The ternary phase diagram and DLS methods were used to investigate the responsiveness of CO2 and effect temperature on the microemulsion drop size and behavior of the phase of the HDES/water/ethanol microemulsion. The findings revealed that when temperature increased, the homogeneous phase region increased. The droplet size in the homogeneous phase region of the associated microemulsion may be reversibly and accurately adjusted by adjusting the temperature. Surprisingly, a slight temperature change can cause a significant phase inversion. Furthermore, in the system, there was no demulsification in time for the CO2/N2 responsiveness process but rather the production of a homogeneous and pellucid aqueous solution.

pH-Switchable W/O Polymer Emulsion: A Promising Strategy for Rapid Dissolution of Drag Reducers.

Additional hydrophilic surfactants are generally introduced into W/O emulsion drag reducer systems to enhance the dissolution capacity of polymers. The hydrophilic surfactants may decrease the stability of W/O emulsion, which leads to deterioration of polymer emulsions in the storage and transport process instead. Herein, a pH-switchable surfactant, N-(2-morpholinoethyl) oleamide (NMEO) was designed for stabilizing a W/O emulsion drag reducer. The surface activity and solubility changes occurring at pH < 6 of NMEO guaranteed the phase inversion from W/O to O/W of emulsions upon pH stimulation. Based on optimal conditions (oil-water ratio of 0.429, NMEO concentration of 3 wt%, and pH of 6.5), the inverse emulsion polymerization of poly(acrylamide-co-acrylic acid-co-2-acrylamide-2-methylpropane sulfonic acid) was proceeded to obtain a W/O polymer emulsion with the pH-switchable behavior. It was demonstrated that the polymer emulsions were provided with prolonged storage stability by NMEO and could be stored for at least 30 days due to the absence of hydrophilic surfactants. The polymers were released and completely dissolved within 2.5 min by pH stimulation, compared with traditional emulsion polymers and powder polymers that require 4 and 17 min, respectively. In addition, the emulsion drag reducer prepared by NMEO provided drag-reduction performance of 64.67% at 0.021 wt% concentration. The pH-switchable behavior of NMEO promotes the validity of W/O polymer emulsions along with the capacity of rapid release and solubilization, which eliminates the imbalance between the long-term storage stability and rapid solubility of traditional drag reducers. Thus, NMEO-stabilized emulsion drag reducers are expected to be a promising alternative for traditional products.

Stretchable Semi-Interpenetrating Carboxymethyl Guar Gum-Based Composite Hydrogel for Moisture-Proof Wearable Strain Sensor.

Wearable strain sensors of conductive hydrogels have very broad application prospects in electronic skins and human-machine interfaces. However, conductive hydrogels suffer from unstable signal transmission due to environmental humidity and inherent shortcomings of their materials. Herein, we introduce a novel moisture-proof conductive hydrogel with high toughness (2.89 MJ m-3), mechanical strength (1.00 MPa), and high moisture-proof sensing performance by using dopamine-functionalized gold nanoparticles as conductive fillers into carboxymethyl guar gum and acrylamide. Moreover, the hydrogel can realize real-time monitoring of major and subtle human movements with good sensitivity and repeatability. In addition, the hydrogel-assembled strain sensor exhibits stable sensing signals after being left for 1 h, and the relative resistance change rate under different strains (25-300%) shows no obvious noise signal up to 99% relative humidity. Notably, the wearable strain sensing is suitable for wearable sensor devices with high relative humidity.

Synthesis of Eco-Friendly Carbon Dots as Self-Repairing Additives of Polyalphaolefin by Means of a Green Solvation Effect.

The eco-friendly menthol-modified carbon dots (CDs-Menth) were synthesized for the first time and exhibited the particularly promising application potential as additives of polyalphaolefin (PAO4). On the one hand, the CDs-Menth could be well dispersed into PAO4 with excellent and long-term dispersion stability via a convenient and green mean, that is, the solvation effect of petroleum ether. This mean was far more advanced to current strategies such as chemical modifications and adding dispersants. On the other hand, the CDs-Menth as additives possessed not only the duty-bound merits such as the distinguished friction-reducing, anti-wear, and load-carrying functions, but also an amazing ability of self-repairing effect. The repairing rate of lower disc in the ball-on-disc friction pair lubricated with CDs-Menth/PAO4 lubricant (2.5 wt %) was about 19.3% if the friction duration was prolonged from 20 to 120 min. Meanwhile, the wear volume reduction for PAO4 caused by CDs-Menth remarkably increased from 43.5 to 74.6%. By virtue of the self-repairing effect, the CDs-Menth could form the tough and tensile boundary lubrication films on the rubbing surfaces, not only tremendously reducing the friction and wear of friction pair, but also hopefully protecting the friction interfaces from the potential oxidation and corrosion.

Carboxylate Group-Based Phase-Selective Organogelators with a pH-Triggered Recyclable Property.

Phase-selective organogelators (PSOGs) have recently attracted more attention because of their advantages in handling oil spills and leaked organic solvents. However, it is difficult to separate and recover the organic phase and PSOGs from organic gels due to the strong interaction between them. Aiming to enhance the separation and recovery performance of the organic phase and PSOGs, we synthesized a series of pH-responsive PSOGs by using itaconic anhydride and fatty amines with carbon chain lengths of C12-C18. Here, PSOGs have an excellent gelation ability in that amounts of organic solvents and fuel oil can be solidified at a low concentration (<3 wt %). It is worth noting that these gels are stronger, which is more convenient for removal by a salvage operation. More importantly, compared with traditional organogelators, pH-responsive PSOGs can easily recover the organic phase and fuel oil with an adjustment of the pH without extraction or distillation. Because of the transformation between the hydrophilicity and hydrophobicity of PSOGs by pH stimulation, 83.15% PSOGs are recovered in three-cycle experiments. In addition, the recycled PSOGs can be used to realize the removal of the organic phase again. Herein, we find that pH-responsive PSOGs could be used as promising and sustainable materials for separating and recovering organic solvents/oils and PSOGs.

pH-Responsive Regulation of a Surfactant-Free Microemulsion Based on Hydrophobic Deep Eutectic Solvents.

Microemulsions containing a responsive hydrophobic deep eutectic solvent (HDES) as the oil phase that can replace conventional organic solvents are considered to be a green strategy. It is anticipated that a pH-responsive HDES is synthesized to prepare rapid responsive surfactant-free microemulsions (SFMEs), which enable the transition from SFMEs to nanoemulsions. Menthol and n-octanoic acid (OA) were assembled into HDES by hydrogen bonding at a molar ratio of 1:2. The pH-responsive HDES as the oil phase and isopropyl alcohol (IPA) as the double solvent could form HDES/IPA/water SFMEs, which have unique responsiveness. Specifically, from the nuclear magnetic resonance hydrogen spectrum, pH, thermogravimetry, and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy investigations, the excellent switchability and stability of menthol-OA were demonstrated. On the basis of these complexes, microemulsions were successfully prepared. Electrical conductivity and pH measurements were used to determine the structures of microemulsions and the phase inversion process. The effects of the contents of water and HDES, NaCl concentration, and pH of the system were investigated. Nanoemulsions were successfully prepared on the basis of the pH response of the microemulsions. In addition, the prepared nanoemulsion has a unique pH-responsive behavior that can be controllably regulated among nanoemulsions, microemulsions, and phase separation systems.

pH-Induced reversible conversion between non-Pickering and Pickering high internal phase emulsion.

Solid-stabilized high internal phase emulsions have received extensive attention. Many previous studies have confirmed that solid emulsifiers in high internal phase Pickering emulsions (HIPPEs) provide a great interface mechanical barrier. With the development of research, novel solid-stabilized emulsions have emerged. These emulsions are stabilized by the electrostatic repulsion between the surfactants and hydrophilic solid particles. They are distinct from Pickering emulsions in that the solid particles do not exist at the oil-water interface, but are dispersed in the continuous phase, so it is called a non-Pickering emulsion. However, high internal phase non-Pickering emulsions (HIPNPEs) are rarely reported. Herein, HIPNPEs that are synergistically stabilized by anionic surfactants with dynamic covalent bonds and negatively charged nano-SiO2 particles were prepared. In the presence of dodecylamine, the acidity causes the dynamic covalent bonds to break and the surfactant to be inactivated. Additionally, the long-chain amine is protonated and adsorbed on nano-SiO2 particles to form a new surfactant for stabilizing HIPPEs. However, alkalinity causes the HIPNPEs to form again. In addition, rheological tests confirmed that the HIPNPEs and HIPPEs had similar rheological behaviors, which were typical gel-like fluids. The emulsion can quickly respond to realize the conversion between the different types of high internal phase emulsion by simple stimulation, which provides a new direction for stimulus-responsive high internal phase emulsions.

Crucial Roles of LncRNAs-Mediated Autophagy in Breast Cancer.

Breast cancer remains a worldwide public health issue. LncRNA and autophagy respectively or simultaneously, get involved in cellular and molecular processes of many different cancers, including genesis, metastasis, and deterioration of breast cancer and other malignant tumors. In this review, relevant studies have been summarized, and we have found that lncRNA-mediated autophagy in luminal A breast cancer, luminal B breast cancer, HER-2 positive breast cancer, and basal-like breast cancer may play an important role in mediating drug resistance sensitivity. LncRNAs target genes and affect different signaling pathways to a complex network, which attenuates the occurrence and development of primary breast cancer by coordinating autophagy. Abnormal expression of LncRNA may lead to dysregulation of autophagy, resulting in tumor genesis, expansion, and resistance to anti-tumor therapy. Targeting specific lncRNAs for autophagy regulation may conduct as a bio-marker for reliable diagnosis and prognosis treatment of breast cancer or provide a promising therapeutic strategy.

Unsupervised Deep Anomaly Detection for Medical Images Using an Improved Adversarial Autoencoder.

Anomaly detection has been applied in the various disease of medical practice, such as breast cancer, retinal, lung lesion, and skin disease. However, in real-world anomaly detection, there exist a large number of healthy samples, and but very few sick samples. To alleviate the problem of data imbalance in anomaly detection, this paper proposes an unsupervised learning method for deep anomaly detection based on an improved adversarial autoencoder, in which a module called chain of convolutional block (CCB) is employed instead of the conventional skip-connections used in adversarial autoencoder. Such CCB connections provide considerable advantages via direct connections, not only preserving both global and local information but also alleviating the problem of semantic disparity between the encoding features and the corresponding decoding features. The proposed method is thus able to capture the distribution of normal samples within both image space and latent vector space. By means of minimizing the reconstruction error within both spaces during training phase, higher reconstruction error during test phase is indicative of an anomaly. Our method is trained only on the healthy persons in order to learn the distribution of normal samples and can detect sick samples based on high deviation from the distribution of normality in an unsupervised way. Experimental results for multiple datasets from different fields demonstrate that the proposed method yields superior performance to state-of-the-art methods.

Gelator-Enhanced Organohydrogels with Switchable Mechanics and High-Strain Shape-Memory Capacity.

Hydrogels and organogels, as two crucial representatives of soft materials, have attracted immense interest. However, they develop independently along two parallel lines, and these gels with single networks have their inherent drawbacks. For example, hydrogels tend to freeze, and organogels are usually brittle. Herein, organogels were incorporated into a hydrogel matrix for the synthesis of organohydrogels GOHs through polymerization in Pickering emulsion. The rigid organogel domains contribute to enhancing the strength of organohydrogels. Besides this, the organogels derived from 12-HAS self-assembly behavior exhibit a gel-sol transition when the temperature reaches 70 °C, thus leading to a thermo-softening behavior in the GOHs. Due to the phase transition of organogel domains and the elastic hydrogel network, the resultant organohydrogels demonstrate high-strain shape-memory performance (over 1000%) which could help achieve full recovery in seconds. Consequently, GOHs are endowed with the potential of practical application in soft robots, wearable devices, and biological materials.

Dual CO2 Responsiveness of an Oil-In-Water Emulsion by Using Sodium Oleate and Water-Soluble Tertiary Amines.

Two kinds of water-soluble tertiary amines (TAs), triethylamine (TEA, monoamine), and tetramethyltrimethylenediamine (TMA, diamine) were introduced into a NaOA stable oil-water (O/W) emulsion, respectively, and their dual reactivity to carbon dioxide was studied. TA was converted into bicarbonate after bubbling of CO2, which induced the increase of ionic strength of the aqueous phase, and formed ion pair with NaOA through electrostatic interaction. NaOA itself can also be protonated into oleic acid, which can be reverently deprotonated by alternating bubbles of CO2 at 25 °C and N2 at 50 °C, thus affecting the stability and demulsification process of the emulsion. In order to demonstrate TA's and NaOA's synergistic effect on CO2 responsiveness, gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, ζ potential, electrical conductivity, pH value, 1H nuclear magnetic resonance, morphological evolution, and interfacial tension were used to study the contributions of the single component and two components of NaOA, TEA, and TMA to emulsion stability and CO2 responsiveness, respectively. Combined with the composition distribution under different pH conditions, it was further proved that TAs had an effect on the stability and CO2 responsiveness of the NaOA emulsion.