fabrication-spherical-worm-shaped-micellar-nanocrystals-combining

Fabrication of Spherical and Worm-shaped Micellar Nanocrystals by Combining Electrospray, Self-assembly, and Solvent-based Structure Control

Micellar nanocrystals (micelles with encapsulated nanocrystals) have become an emerging major class of nanobiomaterials. We describe a method of ...

Nanjing University

An approach for predicting the reflected sound pressure is proposed in one-dimensional sound field. For a duct ended with a rigid reflective surface, only one microphone is required to measure the total sound pressure on the surface, which is further used as the error sensing strategy in an active noise control (ANC) system to reduce the in-duct reflection. Experiments are carried out to validate the prediction method, and a broadband feedforward ANC system is implemented to suppress the impulsive reflection. It is found that the ANC system based on the reflected sound prediction is effective, and 12.2 dB attenuation of the one-dimension impulsive reflection is obtained after the active control.

Active control of one-dimension impulsive reflection based on a prediction method.

Hydrogels, electrospun fiber mats (EFMs), and their composites have been extensively studied for tissue engineering because of their physical and chemical similarity to native biological systems. However, while chemically similar, hydrogels and electrospun fiber mats display very different topographical features. Here, we examine the influence of surface topography and composition of hydrogels, EFMs, and hydrogel-EFM composites on cell behavior. Materials studied were composed of synthetic poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) and poly(ethylene glycol)-poly(ε-caprolactone) (PEGPCL) hydrogels and electrospun poly(caprolactone) (PCL) and core/shell PCL/PEGPCL constituent materials. The number of adherent cells and cell circularity were most strongly influenced by the fibrous nature of materials (e.g., topography), whereas cell spreading was more strongly influenced by material composition (e.g., chemistry). These results suggest that cell attachment and proliferation to hydrogel-EFM composites can be tuned by varying these properties to provide important insights for the future design of such composite materials.

Cell attachment to hydrogel-electrospun fiber mat composite materials.

Using CMOS-compatible Pd catalysts, we demonstrated the formation of high-mobility ⟨111⟩-oriented GaSb nanowires (NWs) via vapor-solid-solid (VSS) growth by surfactant-assisted chemical vapor deposition through a complementary experimental and theoretical approach. In contrast to NWs formed by the conventional vapor-liquid-solid (VLS) mechanism, cylindrical-shaped Pd5Ga4 catalytic seeds were present in our Pd-catalyzed VSS-NWs. As solid catalysts, stoichiometric Pd5Ga4 was found to have the lowest crystal surface energy and thus giving rise to a minimal surface diffusion as well as an optimal in-plane interface orientation at the seed/NW interface for efficient epitaxial NW nucleation. These VSS characteristics led to the growth of slender NWs with diameters down to 26.9 ± 3.5 nm. Over 95% high crystalline quality NWs were grown in ⟨111⟩ orientation for a wide diameter range of between 10 and 70 nm. Back-gated field-effect transistors (FETs) fabricated using the Pd-catalyzed GaSb NWs exhibit a superior peak hole mobility of ∼330 cm2 V-1 s-1, close to the mobility limit for a NW channel diameter of ∼30 nm with a free carrier concentration of ∼1018 cm-3. This suggests that the NWs have excellent homogeneity in phase purity, growth orientation, surface morphology and electrical characteristics. Contact printing process was also used to fabricate large-scale assembly of Pd-catalyzed GaSb NW parallel arrays, confirming the potential constructions and applications of these high-performance electronic devices.

Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor-Compatible, High-Mobility, ⟨111⟩-Oriented GaSb Nanowires Enabled by Vapor-Solid-Solid Chemical Vapor Deposition.

The interfacial instability process is an emerging general method to fabricate nanocrystal-encapsulated micelles (also called micellar nanocrystals) for biological detection, imaging, and therapy. The present work utilized fluorescent semiconductor nanocrystals (quantum dots or QDs) as the model nanocrystals to investigate the interfacial instability-based fabrication process of nanocrystal-encapsulated micelles. Our experimental results suggest intricate and intertwined roles of the emulsion droplet size and the surfactant poly (vinyl alcohol) (PVA) used in the fabrication process of QD-encapsulated poly (styrene-b-ethylene glycol) (PS-PEG) micelles. When no PVA is used, no emulsion droplet and thus no micelle is successfully formed; Emulsion droplets with large sizes (~25 μm) result in two types of QD-encapsulated micelles, one of which is colloidally stable QD-encapsulated PS-PEG micelles while the other of which is colloidally unstable QD-encapsulated PVA micelles; In contrast, emulsion droplets with small sizes (~3 μm or smaller) result in only colloidally stable QD-encapsulated PS-PEG micelles. The results obtained in this work not only help to optimize the quality of nanocrystal-encapsulated micelles prepared by the interfacial instability method for biological applications but also offer helpful new knowledge on the interfacial instability process in particular and self-assembly in general.

Ning Han

Nanjing University

Fabrication of Spherical and Worm-shaped Micellar Nanocrystals by Combining Electrospray, Self-assembly, and Solvent-based Structure Control