The advancement of biosensor research has been a primary driving force in the continuing progress of modern medical science. While traditional nanofabrication methods have long been the foundation of biosensor research, recent years have seen a shift in the field of nanofabrication towards laser-based techniques. Here we report a gold-based biosensor, with a limit of detection (LoD) 3.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFood spoilage is an ongoing global issue that contributes to rising carbon dioxide emissions and increased demand for food processing. This work developed anti-bacterial coatings utilising inkjet printing of silver nano-inks onto food-grade polymer packaging, with the potential to enhance food safety and reduce food spoilage. Silver nano-inks were synthesised via laser ablation synthesis in solution (LaSiS) and ultrasound pyrolysis (USP).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOver 80% of wastewater worldwide is released into the environment without proper treatment. Whilst environmental pollution continues to intensify due to the increase in the number of polluting industries, conventional techniques employed to clean the environment are poorly effective and are expensive. MXenes are a new class of 2D materials that have received a lot of attention for an extensive range of applications due to their tuneable interlayer spacing and tailorable surface chemistry.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA series of bent-shaped 4-cyanoresorcinol bisterephthalates is reported. Some of these achiral compounds spontaneously form a short-pitch heliconical lamellar liquid-crystalline phase with incommensurate 3-layer pitch and the helix axis parallel to the layer normal. It is observed at the paraelectric-(anti)ferroelectric transition, if it coincides with the transition from random to uniform tilt and with the transition from anticlinic to synclinic tilt correlation of the molecules in the layers of the developing tilted smectic phase.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTwo homologue achiral bent-core liquid crystals (LCs), BCN66 and BCN84, in their nematic phases are studied by dielectric spectroscopy in the frequency range 10 Hz-10 MHz. In each of these compounds, two relaxation processes are identified and assigned to (i) collective dynamics of molecules in nanometer-sized cybotactic clusters and (ii) individual molecular relaxations, in the ascending order of frequency of the probe field. The temperature and the bias electric field dependence of the dielectric strength and relaxation frequency for these processes are shown to give rise to sharpness in cluster boundaries, increased size and volume fraction in the LC nematic phase.
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