Rapid Impregnating Resins for Fiber-Reinforced Composites Used in the Automobile Industry.

As environmental regulations become stricter, weight- and cost-effective fiber-reinforced polymer composites are being considered as alternative materials in the automobile industry. Rapidly impregnating resin into the reinforcing fibers is critical during liquid composite molding, and the optimization of resin impregnation is related to the cycle time and quality of the products. In this review, various resins capable of rapid impregnation, including thermoset and thermoplastic resins, are discussed for manufacturing fiber-reinforced composites used in the automobile industry, along with their advantages and disadvantages.

Development of Au nanocluster-based fluorescent strip immunosensor for sensitive detection of aflatoxin B.

Gold clusters with intriguing chemical/physical properties have great promise in applications such as sensing and bio-imaging due to their fascinating photoluminescence character. In this study, an immunofluorescence sensor based on levonorgestrel protected atomically precise Au nanocluster (AuNC) for aflatoxin B (AFB) detection was fabricated due to its strong carcinogenic and mutagenic effect on humans. The prepared polymer-AuNC nanospheres displayed bright luminescence and good stability in aqueous solution.

Atomic-precise PtCu cluster-based fluorescent sensor for rapid interleukin-6 detection.

Levonorgestrel protected PtCu clusters were assembled with a polymer to prepare nanobeads (NBs) with intense red fluorescence. An immunofluorescence sensor based on PtCuNBs was established for the rapid and sensitive detection of interleukin-6 (IL-6) owing to its significance in inflammatory diseases, with a limit of detection of 42.66 pg mL.

Challenges and advances in materials and fabrication technologies of small-diameter vascular grafts.

The arterial occlusive disease is one of the leading causes of cardiovascular diseases, often requiring revascularization. Lack of suitable small-diameter vascular grafts (SDVGs), infection, thrombosis, and intimal hyperplasia associated with synthetic vascular grafts lead to a low success rate of SDVGs (< 6 mm) transplantation in the clinical treatment of cardiovascular diseases. The development of fabrication technology along with vascular tissue engineering and regenerative medicine technology allows biological tissue-engineered vascular grafts to become living grafts, which can integrate, remodel, and repair the host vessels as well as respond to the surrounding mechanical and biochemical stimuli.

Extra Silver Atom Triggers Room-Temperature Photoluminescence in Atomically Precise Radarlike Silver Clusters.

Luminescent metal clusters show promise for applications in imaging and sensing. However, promoting emission from metal clusters at room temperature is a challenging task owing to the lack of an efficient approach to suppress the nonradiative decay process in metal cores. We report herein that the addition of a silver atom into a metal interstice of the radarlike thiolated silver cluster [Ag (S Bu) (S) (CF COO) (DMAc) ]⋅DMAc (NC1, DMAc=dimethylacetamide), which is non-emissive under ambient conditions, produced another silver cluster [Ag (AdmS) (S) (CF COO) (H O) ] (NC2) that displayed bright green room-temperature photoluminescence aided by the new ligand 1-adamantanethiol (AdmSH).