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Ever since the discovery of graphene, increasing efforts have been devoted to the use of this stellar material as well as the development of other graphene‐like materials such as thin‐layer transition metal dichalcogenides and oxides (TMD/Os) for a variety of applications. Because of their large surface area and unique optical properties, these two‐dimensional materials with a size ranging from the...
A custom single‐wall carbon nanotube (SWCNT)‐modulated separator is employed to directly suppress the polysulfide migration and indirectly protect the lithium‐metal anode from severe polysulfide contamination. The conductive sp2‐carbon scaffold continuously reactivates and reutilizes the trapped active material, so the SWCNT‐modulated separator provides a facile way to facilitate the implementation...
A triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) has been thought to be a promising method to harvest energy from environment. To date, the utilization of surface structure and material modification has been considered the most effective way to increase its performance. In this work, a wrinkle structure based high‐performance TENG is presented. Using the fluorocarbon plasma treatment method, material modification...
An integrated method for blood plasma separation is presented by combining a pneumatic device, which is referred to as a “smart pipette,” and a hydrophoretic microchannel as a microfluidic pipette tip for whole‐blood sample preparation. This method enables hemolysis‐free, high‐purity plasma separation through smart pipetting of whole blood, potentially providing the means for rapid, inexpensive blood...
A novel design for isothermal amplification using primers labeled with both gold nanoparticles and magnetic microbeads is shown by A. Merkoçi and co‐workers. On page 205, the amplified product carries both labels, allowing rapid purification and quantification. The magnetic properties of the first primer facilitate the purification/preconcentration of the amplified DNA through magnetic separation...
Macroscopically chiral nanospheres and nanotubes composed of helical copolymers are described on page 238 by F. Freire, R. Riguera, and co‐workers. The presence of a donor co‐solvent either activates or deactivates cation–π supramolecular interactions on the chiral monomers of the copolymer, generating either P or M helical senses in the nanostructure through the ‘Sergeants and Soldiers’ effect.
Bioinspired hierarchical structures on the surface of vertical light‐emitting diodes (VLEDs) are demonstrated by combining a self‐assembled dip‐coating process and nanopatterning transfer method using thermal release tape. This versatile surface structure can efficiently reduce the total internal reflection and add functions, such as superhydrophobicity and high oleophobicity, to achieve an antifouling...
On page 190, B. Kim and S. Choi describe a method to separate blood plasma from whole blood through the combined use of a smart pipette and a microfluidic pipette tip. These combined devices are similar enough to a conventional pipette and pipette tip for users to be familiar with its use, so that non‐experts can easily carry out the necessary procedures. This platform can therefore substantially...
Intrinsically stretchable multilayer circuit boards are fabricated with a fast and material efficient method based on filtration. Silver nanowire conductor patterns of outstanding performance are defined by filtration through wax printed membranes and the circuit board is assembled by subsequent transfers of the nanowires onto the elastomer substrate. The method is used to fabricate a bright stretchable...
Recently, the appeal of 2D black phosphorus (BP) has been rising due to its unique optical and electronic properties with a tunable band gap (≈0.3–1.5 eV). While numerous research efforts have recently been devoted to nano‐ and optoelectronic applications of BP, no attention has been paid to promising medical applications. In this article, the preparation of BP‐nanodots of a few nm to <20 nm with...
DNA origami “Trojan horse” nanostructures provide an effective delivery approach to circumvent drug resistance in leukemia cells. These 100 nanometer delivery vehicles, described on page 308 by C. E. Castro and co‐workers, are easily fabricated in 10 min and can be precisely loaded with commonly used anthracycline chemotherapeutic drugs. Drug‐loaded DNA origami nanostructures enter cells via endocytosis,...
Tremendous efforts have been devoted to the synthesis and application of two‐dimensional (2D) nanomaterials due to their extraordinary and unique properties in electronics, photonics, catalysis, etc., upon exfoliation from their bulk counterparts. One of the greatest challenges that scientists are confronted with is how to produce large quantities of 2D nanomaterials of high quality in a commercially...
The reversible electrochemical transformation from lithium (Li) and sulfur (S) into Li2S through multielectron reactions can be utilized in secondary Li–S batteries with very high energy density. However, both the low Coulombic efficiency and severe capacity degradation limits the full utilization of active sulfur, which hinders the practical applications of Li–S battery system. The present study...
On page 321, D. Bonifazi and co‐workers report the motility of model breast cancer cells seeded onto surfaces exposing concentration gradients of the isoleucine‐glycine‐aspartate (IGD) motif. The peculiar migratory behavior is depicted in the image, where the long‐distance displacement of a sub‐population of cancer cells is observed along the verse imposed by the self‐assembled gradient monolayer...
The paradigm of using nanoparticle‐based formulations for drug delivery relies on their enhanced passive accumulation in the tumor interstitium. Nanoparticles with active targeting capabilities attempt to further enhance specific delivery of drugs to the tumors via interaction with overexpressed cellular receptors. Consequently, it is widely accepted that drug delivery using actively targeted nanoparticles...
A novel class of all‐organic nanoscale porphyrin nanodroplet agents is presented which is suitable for multimodality ultrasound and photoacoustic molecular imaging. Previous multimodality photoacoustic‐ultrasound agents are either not organic, or not yet demonstrated to exhibit enhanced accumulation in leaky tumor vasculature, perhaps because of large diameters. In the current study, porphyrin nanodroplets...
Shape‐controlled synthesis of gold nanoparticles generally involves the use of surfactants, typically cetyltrimethylammonium (CTAX, X = Cl−, Br−), to regulate the nucleation growth process and to obtain colloidally stable nanoparticles. The surfactants adsorb on the nanoparticle surface making further functionalization difficult and therefore limit their use in many applications. Herein, the influence...