National Central University

3 ARTICLES PUBLISHED IN JoVE

Engineering

Effect of Bending on the Electrical Characteristics of Flexible Organic Single Crystal-based Field-effect Transistors

¹Institution of Chemistry, Academia Sinica, ²Department of Chemistry, National Central University

This manuscript describes the bending process of an organic single crystal-based field-effect transistor to maintain a functioning device for electronic property measurement. The results suggest that bending causes changes in the molecular spacing in the crystal and thus in the charge hopping rate, which is important in flexible electronics.

Bioengineering

Human Pluripotent Stem Cell Culture on Polyvinyl Alcohol-Co-Itaconic Acid Hydrogels with Varying Stiffness Under Xeno-Free Conditions

Tzu-Cheng Sung^*1, Hsing-Fen Li^*1, Akon Higuchi^1,2, Qing-Dong Ling^3,4, Jia-Sin Yang¹, Yeh-Chia Tseng¹, Chih-Hsien Pan Pan¹, Abdullah A. Alarfaj², Murugan A. Munusamy², Suresh Kumar⁵, Shih-Tien Hsu⁶, Kadarkarai Murugan^7,8

¹Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering, National Central University, ²Department of Botany and Microbiology, King Saud University, ³Cathay Medical Research Institute, Cathay General Hospital, ⁴Graduate Institute of Systems Biology and Bioinformatics, National Central University, ⁵Department of Medical Microbiology and Parasitology, Universiti Putra Malaysia, ⁶Department of Internal Medicine, Taiwan Landseed Hospital, ⁷Department of Zoology, Bharathiar University, ⁸Thiruvalluvar University

A protocol is presented to prepare polyvinyl alcohol-co-itaconic acid hydrogels with varying stiffness, which were grafted with and without oligopeptides, to investigate the effect of the stiffness of biomaterials on the differentiation and proliferation of stem cells. The stiffness of the hydrogels was controlled by the crosslinking time.

Biochemistry

Preparation of High-Temperature Sample Grids for Cryo-EM

Yuan-Chih Chang^1,2, Chin-Yu Chen^3,4, Ming-Daw Tsai^1,5

¹Institute of Biological Chemistry, Academia Sinica, ²Academia Sinica Cryo-EM Facility, Academia Sinica, ³Department of Life Sciences, National Central University, ⁴Hubei University, ⁵Institute of Biochemical Sciences, National Taiwan University

This paper provides a detailed protocol for preparing sample grids at temperatures as high as 70 °C, prior to plunge freezing for cryo-EM experiments.