Dually fluorinated unimolecular micelles for stable oxygen-carrying and enhanced photosensitive efficiency to boost photodynamic therapy against hypoxic tumors.

Tumor hypoxia is one of key challenges in deep tumor photodynamic therapy (PDT), and how to fix this issue is attracting ongoing concerns worldwide. This work demonstrates dually fluorinated unimolecular micelles with desirable and stable oxygen-carrying capacity, high cellular penetration, and integrative type I & II PDT for deep hypoxic tumors. Dually fluorinated star copolymers with fluorinated phthalocyanines as the core are prepared through photoinitiated electron/energy transfer-reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer (PET-RAFT) polymerization under irradiation with NIR LED light at room temperature, followed by assembly into unimolecular micelles.

NIR-Photocontrolled Aqueous RAFT Polymerization with Polymerizable Water-Soluble Zinc Phthalocyanine as Photocatalyst.

In order to give an answer for the challenges of long wavelength-photocontrolled radical polymerization in aqueous solutions and to address the shortcomings of conventional near-infrared (NIR) photocatalysts (PCs) that are difficult to subject to post-treatment, we designed and synthesized a series of β-tetra-substituted water-soluble zinc phthalocyanines (β-TS-Zns) as the NIR PCs for reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) polymerization successfully under irradiation with NIR (λ = 730 nm) light at room temperature. Importantly, the NIR PCs can also be designed as polymerizable monomers and covalently loaded on the polymer chains, which are endowed with permanent NIR photocatalysis of the resultant polymers. Moreover, the polymerization can not only be carried out in water but also in phosphate buffer saline (PBS) solution, yielding polymers with controlled molar mass and narrow dispersities ( = 1.

Simultaneous melting and solidification of a columnar dendritic microstructure in a temperature gradient: Numerical modeling and experiments.

The microstructural evolution of a SCN-ACE alloy in a temperature gradient is studied by cellular automaton (CA) modeling and in situ experiments. The initially columnar dendrites gradually evolve to a completely solid region with a planar solid/liquid interface. The CA simulations and in situ observations present the migration of secondary dendrite arms and liquid pockets due to temperature gradient zone melting (TGZM), and the movement of the interface between a mushy zone and a fully liquid zone.