Structurally and surficially activated TiO nanomaterials for photochemical reactions.

Renewable fuels and environmental remediation are of paramount importance in today's world due to escalating concerns about climate change, pollution, and the finite nature of fossil fuels. Transitioning to sustainable energy sources and addressing environmental pollution has become an urgent necessity. Photocatalysis, particularly harnessing solar energy to drive chemical reactions for environmental remediation and clean fuel production, holds significant promise among emerging technologies.

Atomically Substitutional Engineering of Transition Metal Dichalcogenide Layers for Enhancing Tailored Properties and Superior Applications.

Transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) are a promising class of layered materials in the post-graphene era, with extensive research attention due to their diverse alternative elements and fascinating semiconductor behavior. Binary MX layers with different metal and/or chalcogen elements have similar structural parameters but varied optoelectronic properties, providing opportunities for atomically substitutional engineering via partial alteration of metal or/and chalcogenide atoms to produce ternary or quaternary TMDs. The resulting multinary TMD layers still maintain structural integrity and homogeneity while achieving tunable (opto)electronic properties across a full range of composition with arbitrary ratios of introduced metal or chalcogen to original counterparts (0-100%).

Intrinsic Optical Properties and Emerging Applications of Gold Nanostructures.

The collective oscillation of free electrons at the nanoscale surface of gold nanostructures is closely modulated by tuning the size, shape/morphology, phase, composition, hybridization, assembly, and nanopatterning, along with the surroundings of the plasmonic surface located at a dielectric interface with air, liquid, and solid. This review first introduces the physical origin of the intrinsic optical properties of gold nanostructures and further summarizes stimuli-responsive changes in optical properties, metal-field-enhanced optical signals, luminescence spectral shaping, chiroptical response, and photogenerated hot carriers. The current success in the landscape of nanoscience and nanotechnology mainly originates from the abundant optical properties of gold nanostructures in the thermodynamically stable face-centered cubic (fcc) phase.

Thermoelectric Silver-Based Chalcogenides.

Heat is abundantly available from various sources including solar irradiation, geothermal energy, industrial processes, automobile exhausts, and from the human body and other living beings. However, these heat sources are often overlooked despite their abundance, and their potential applications remain underdeveloped. In recent years, important progress has been made in the development of high-performance thermoelectric materials, which have been extensively studied at medium and high temperatures, but less so at near room temperature.

BSA-assisted hydrothermal conversion of MoS nanosheets into quantum dots with high yield and bright fluorescence for constructing a sensing platform via dual quenching effects.

With large surface-responsive and excitation-dependent fluorescence, two-dimensional fluorescent quantum dots (QDs) have been receiving tremendous attention to develop their facile synthetic approaches and/or expand their promising applications. Here, a two-step strategy is demonstrated for high-yield production of MoS QDs from MoS powder through first sonication-driven exfoliation and subsequent hydrothermal splitting with the assistance of bovine serum albumin (BSA). Experimentally, ∼100 nm-sized MoS nanosheets are ultrasonically exfoliated from MoS powder in a BSA solution, and further hydrothermally split into ∼ 8.

One-step synthesized amphiphilic carbon dots for the super-resolution imaging of endoplasmic reticulum in live cells.

Stimulated emission depletion (STED) microscopy provides a powerful tool for visualizing the ultrastructure and dynamics of subcellular organelles, however, the photobleaching of organelle trackers have limited the application of STED imaging in living cells. Here, we report photostable and amphiphilic carbon dots (Phe-CDs) with bright orange fluorescence a simple one-pot hydrothermal treatment of -phenylenediamine and phenylalanine. The obtained Phe-CDs not only had high brightness (quantum yield ∼18%) but also showed excellent photostability under ultraviolet irradiation.

Size Effects of Electrocatalysts: More Than a Variation of Surface Area.

The efficiency of electrocatalytic reactions has been continuously improved in recent years due to the great effort in the development of electrocatalysts. A popular strategy is engineering the size of electrocatalysts for better electrochemical performance and lower cost. Nanosized electrocatalysts with high specific surface area have been widely used in state-of-the-art electrochemical devices such as fuel cells.

Aqueous Synthesis, Doping, and Processing of n-Type AgSe for High Thermoelectric Performance at Near-Room-Temperature.

Herein, we have successfully synthesized binary AgSe, composite Ag:AgSe, and ternary Cu:AgSe through an ambient aqueous-solution-based approach in a one-pot reaction at room temperature and atmospheric pressure without involving high-temperature heating, multiple-processes treatment, and organic solvents/surfactants. Effective controllability over phases and compositions/components are demonstrated with feasibility for large-scale production through an exquisite alteration in reaction parameters especially pH for enhancing and understanding thermoelectric properties. Thermoelectric reaches 0.

Biomaterials by design: Harnessing data for future development.

Biomaterials is an interdisciplinary field of research to achieve desired biological responses from new materials, regardless of material type. There have been many exciting innovations in this discipline, but commercialization suffers from a lengthy discovery to product pipeline, with many failures along the way. Success can be greatly accelerated by harnessing machine learning techniques to comb through large amounts of data.

Machine Learning-Driven Biomaterials Evolution.

Biomaterials is an exciting and dynamic field, which uses a collection of diverse materials to achieve desired biological responses. While there is constant evolution and innovation in materials with time, biomaterials research has been hampered by the relatively long development period required. In recent years, driven by the need to accelerate materials development, the applications of machine learning in materials science has progressed in leaps and bounds.

Advances in photothermal nanomaterials for biomedical, environmental and energy applications.

Materials that exhibit photothermal effect have attracted enormous research interests due to their ability to strongly absorb light and effectively transform it into heat for a wide range of applications in biomedical, environmental and energy related fields. The past decade has witnessed significant advances in the preparation of a variety of photothermal materials, mainly due to the emergence of many nano-enabled new materials, such as plasmonic metals, stoichiometric/non-stoichiometric semiconductors, and the newly emerging MXenes. These photothermal nanomaterials can be hybridized with other constituents to form functional hybrids or composites for achieving enhanced photothermal performance.

Metal-facilitated Photocatalytic Nanohybrids: Rational Design and Promising Environmental Applications.

As a promising technique to potentially address the energy crisis and environmental issues, photocatalysis has been reported widely to exhibit various outstanding behaviors in production of new fuels/chemicals and treatment of contaminants. The photocatalytic performance is extremely dependent on the used photocatalysts, so that the design and preparation of efficient photocatalysts are critically important for significantly improving the photocatalytic activity. Among various strategies, the hybridization of metal with semiconductors has recently been attracting more and more research interest owing to their expended spectral absorption, promoted transferring rate of charge carriers and Plasmon-enhanced effect.

Revealing the signaling regulation of hydrogen peroxide to cell pyroptosis using a ratiometric fluorescent probe in living cells.

A ratiometric fluorescent probe with a large emission shift was developed for the accurate measurement of hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) in sophisticated pyroptosis signaling pathways. The results reported here demonstrate that H2O2, as a principal member of ROS, is a critical upstream signaling molecule in regulating pyroptosis.

Synthesis and optical and electronic properties of one-dimensional sulfoxonium-based hybrid metal halide (CH)SOPbI.

We report the synthesis and optical and electronic properties of a one-dimensional sulfoxonium-based hybrid metal halide in an orthorhombic crystal system with a Pnma space group. To provide direct insights, a method is developed to calculate tolerance factors with the ionic radii of non-spherical cations from X-ray crystallographic data.

Plasmonically Modulated Gold Nanostructures for Photothermal Ablation of Bacteria.

With the wide utilization of antibiotics, antibiotic-resistant bacteria have been often developed more frequently to cause potential global catastrophic consequences. Emerging photothermal ablation has been attracting extensive research interest for quick/effective eradication of pathogenic bacteria from contaminated surroundings and infected body. In this field, anisotropic gold nanostructures with tunable size/morphologies have been demonstrated to exhibit their outstanding photothermal performance through strong plasmonic absorption of near-infrared (NIR) light, efficient light to heat conversion, and easy surface modification for targeting bacteria.

An azacyclo-localizing fluorescent probe for the specific labeling of lysosome and autolysosome.

Understanding lysosome-related physiology needs specific lysosome probes to track the biological processes of lysosome in living cells. Here, we report an azacyclo-modified fluorescent probe that has a large Stokes shift, good photostability and negligible cytotoxicity for highly specific labeling of lysosome and autolysosome in living cells. The probes with different kinds of azacyclo groups on parent dye dansyl are screened to show that dansyl-cycleanine (DNS-C) with four nitrogen atoms possesses the best lysosome-localized ability.

Functionalized Hybridization of 2D Nanomaterials.

The discovery of graphene and subsequent verification of its unique properties have aroused great research interest to exploit diversified graphene-analogous 2D nanomaterials with fascinating physicochemical properties. Through either physical or chemical doping, linkage, adsorption, and hybridization with other functional species into or onto them, more novel/improved properties are readily created to extend/expand their functionalities and further achieve great performance. Here, various functionalized hybridizations by using different types of 2D nanomaterials are overviewed systematically with emphasis on their interaction formats (e.

Graphene Oxide: From Tunable Structures to Diverse Luminescence Behaviors.

Since the first discovery of luminescent graphene oxide (GO), exponentially increasing investigations on the tunable structures and surfaces for modulating its optical properties have struggled to expand applications in imaging, sensing, biomedical diagnostics, and so on. Here, the latest works on reconstructing or modifying the structures and surfaces of GO to achieve diverse luminescence are systematically reviewed, including fluorescence, electroluminescence, and chemiluminescence. Moreover, the fundamental difficulties of the investigations and applications of luminescent GO nanomaterials are clarified to inspire more constructive thoughts for expanding their application boundaries.

Membrane-Penetrating Carbon Quantum Dots for Imaging Nucleic Acid Structures in Live Organisms.

The dynamics of DNA and RNA structures in live cells are important for understanding cell behaviors, such as transcription activity, protein expression, cell apoptosis, and hereditary disease, but are challenging to monitor in live organisms in real time. The difficulty is largely due to the lack of photostable imaging probes that can distinguish between DNA and RNA, and more importantly, are capable of crossing multiple membrane barriers ranging from the cell/organelle to the tissue/organ level. We report the discovery of a cationic carbon quantum dot (cQD) probe that emits spectrally distinguishable fluorescence upon binding with double-stranded DNA and single-stranded RNA in live cells, thereby enabling real-time monitoring of DNA and RNA localization and motion.

Morphological Growth and Theoretical Understanding of Gold and Other Noble Metal Nanoplates.

For the last decades, the chemical reduction of Au to Au has been widely employed to produce various gold nanostructures. In comparison with the fast reduction, the slow reduction is systematically investigated in this research to provide more insights to reveal intermediary process and further disclose the underlying mechanism for growing gold nanostructures by using a series of simple ligands with aldehyde groups as weak reducing agents. The different binding energies of ligands to Au (n=3, 1 and 0) exhibit variable binding affinities in starting, intermediate, and final gold species.

Phase Engineering of Hydrophobic Meso-Environments in Silica Particles for Technical Performance Enrichment.

Hexadecyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) was utilized to template the growth of mesoporous silica particles via ammonia-catalyzed hydrolysis and condensation of tetraethoxysilane (TEOS) in the reaction solutions with varied volume fractions of ethanol ( f). The use of 9,10-bis(phenylethynyl) anthracene (BPEA) as a fluorescence probe unraveled a clear difference in interior structure between the CTAB micelles confined at different f. At f of 0.

BSA-caged metal clusters to exfoliate MoS nanosheets towards their hybridized functionalization.

Herein, we develop a facile exfoliation and in situ functionalization strategy to produce hybridized Au/MoS2 nanostructures comprised of size-controlled gold nanoparticles (Au NPs) and ultrathin MoS2 nanosheets by using bovine serum albumin (BSA)-caged Au25 clusters as both exfoliating and functionalizing agents. As revealed, BSA molecules are strongly adsorbed on MoS2via their hydrophobic interaction, and this drives the expansion of the BSA molecules that initially protect Au25 cores at pH 4, leading to the effective exfoliation of MoS2 nanosheets together with the epitaxial growth of Au25 cores into 5 nm-sized Au NPs on MoS2 nanosheets due to their reduced surface protection. Upon the addition of H2O2, the resulting Au NPs can further grow to achieve a controlled size from 5 to 30 nm with an increase of the reaction time.

Cross-Platform Cancer Cell Identification Using Telomerase-Specific Spherical Nucleic Acids.

Distinguishing tumor cells from normal cells holds the key to precision diagnosis and effective intervention of cancers. The fundamental difficulties, however, are the heterogeneity of tumor cells and the lack of truly specific and ideally universal cancer biomarkers. Here, we report a concept of tumor cell detection, bypassing the specific genotypic and phenotypic features of different tumor cell types and directly going toward the hallmark of cancer, uncontrollable growth.

Dynamic mapping of spontaneously produced HS in the entire cell space and in live animals using a rationally designed molecular switch.

Hydrogen sulfide (H2S) is a key signaling molecule in the cytoprotection, vascular mediation and neurotransmission of living organisms. In-depth understanding of its production, trafficking, and transformation in cells is very important in the way H2S mediates cellular signal transductions and organism functions; it also motivates the development of H2S probes and imaging technologies. A fundamental challenge, however, is how to engineer probes with sensitivity and cellular penetrability that allow detection of spontaneous production of H2S in the entire cell space and live animals.