A Solar to Chemical Strategy: Green Hydrogen as a Means, Not an End.

Green hydrogen is the key to the chemical industry achieving net zero emissions. The chemical industry is responsible for almost 2% of all CO emissions, with half of it coming from the production of simple commodity chemicals, such as NH, HO, methanol, and aniline. Despite electrolysis driven by renewable power sources emerging as the most promising way to supply all the green hydrogen required in the production chain of these chemicals, in this review, it is worth noting that the photocatalytic route may be underestimated and can hold a bright future for this topic.

Effects of the G-quadruplex-binding drugs quarfloxin and CX-5461 on the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum.

Plasmodium falciparum is the deadliest causative agent of human malaria. This parasite has historically developed resistance to most drugs, including the current frontline treatments, so new therapeutic targets are needed. Our previous work on guanine quadruplexes (G4s) in the parasite's DNA and RNA has highlighted their influence on parasite biology, and revealed G4 stabilising compounds as promising candidates for repositioning.

Amine-Acrylate Liquid Single Crystal Elastomers Reinforced by Hydrogen Bonding.

Liquid crystalline elastomers (LCEs) have been considered one of the most promising material concepts for artificial muscles. However, accomplishing actuation of LCEs requires macroscopic alignment of the liquid-crystalline orientation in the rubbery network, which imposes challenges in the materials chemistry and processing. A two-stage curing strategy has been the dominating approach during last three decades.

Bio-assembling Macro-Scale, Lumenized Airway Tubes of Defined Shape via Multi-Organoid Patterning and Fusion.

Epithelial, stem-cell derived organoids are ideal building blocks for tissue engineering, however, scalable and shape-controlled bio-assembly of epithelial organoids into larger and anatomical structures is yet to be achieved. Here, a robust organoid engineering approach, Multi-Organoid Patterning and Fusion (MOrPF), is presented to assemble individual airway organoids of different sizes into upscaled, scaffold-free airway tubes with predefined shapes. Multi-Organoid Aggregates (MOAs) undergo accelerated fusion in a matrix-depleted, free-floating environment, possess a continuous lumen, and maintain prescribed shapes without an exogenous scaffold interface.

FullyPrinted Flexible Plasmonic Metafilms with Directional Color Dynamics.

Plasmonic metafilms have been widely utilized to generate vivid colors, but making them both active and flexible simultaneously remains a great challenge. Here flexible active plasmonic metafilms constructed by printing electrochromic nanoparticles onto ultrathin metal films (<15 nm) are presented, offering low-power electricallydriven color switching. In conjunction with commercially available printing techniques, such flexible devices can be patterned using lithography-free approaches, opening up potential for fullyprinted electrochromic devices.

Evolution of Conformation, Nanomechanics, and Infrared Nanospectroscopy of Single Amyloid Fibrils Converting into Microcrystals.

Nanomechanical properties of amyloid fibrils and nanocrystals depend on their secondary and quaternary structure, and the geometry of intermolecular hydrogen bonds. Advanced imaging methods based on atomic force microscopy (AFM) have unravelled the morphological and mechanical heterogeneity of amyloids, however a full understanding has been hampered by the limited resolution of conventional spectroscopic methods. Here, it is shown that single molecule nanomechanical mapping and infrared nanospectroscopy (AFM-IR) in combination with atomistic modelling enable unravelling at the single aggregate scale of the morphological, nanomechanical, chemical, and structural transition from amyloid fibrils to amyloid microcrystals in the hexapeptides, ILQINS, IFQINS, and TFQINS.

Highly Efficient Blue-Emitting CsPbBr Perovskite Nanocrystals through Neodymium Doping.

Colloidal CsPbX (X = Br, Cl, and I) perovskite nanocrystals exhibit tunable bandgaps over the entire visible spectrum and high photoluminescence quantum yields in the green and red regions. However, the lack of highly efficient blue-emitting perovskite nanocrystals limits their development for optoelectronic applications. Herein, neodymium (III) (Nd) doped CsPbBr nanocrystals are prepared through the ligand-assisted reprecipitation method at room temperature with tunable photoemission from green to deep blue.

Highly Stable Contact Doping in Organic Field Effect Transistors by Dopant-Blockade Method.

In organic device applications, a high contact resistance between metal electrodes and organic semiconductors prevents an efficient charge injection and extraction, which fundamentally limits the device performance. Recently, various contact doping methods have been reported as an effective way to resolve the contact resistance problem. However, the contact doping has not been explored extensively in organic field effect transistors (OFETs) due to dopant diffusion problem, which significantly degrades the device stability by damaging the ON/OFF switching performance.

Graphene Metamaterials for Intense, Tunable, and Compact Extreme Ultraviolet and X-Ray Sources.

The interaction of electrons with strong electromagnetic fields is fundamental to the ability to design high-quality radiation sources. At the core of all such sources is a tradeoff between compactness and higher output radiation intensities. Conventional photonic devices are limited in size by their operating wavelength, which helps compactness at the cost of a small interaction area.

Controlling All-Optical Helicity-Dependent Switching in Engineered Rare-Earth Free Synthetic Ferrimagnets.

All-optical helicity-dependent switching in ferromagnetic layers has revealed an unprecedented route to manipulate magnetic configurations by circularly polarized femtosecond laser pulses. In this work, rare-earth free synthetic ferrimagnetic heterostructures made from two antiferromagnetically exchange coupled ferromagnetic layers are studied. Experimental results, supported by numerical simulations, show that the designed structures enable all-optical switching which is controlled, not only by light helicity, but also by the relative Curie temperature of each ferromagnetic layer.

Dependence on material choice of degradation of organic solar cells following exposure to humid air.

Electron microscopy has been used to study the degradation of organic solar cells when exposed to humid air. Devices with various different combinations of commonly used organic solar cell hole transport layers and cathode materials have been investigated. In this way the ingress of water and the effect it has on devices could be studied.

Machine-learning scoring functions to improve structure-based binding affinity prediction and virtual screening.

Docking tools to predict whether and how a small molecule binds to a target can be applied if a structural model of such target is available. The reliability of docking depends, however, on the accuracy of the adopted scoring function (SF). Despite intense research over the years, improving the accuracy of SFs for structure-based binding affinity prediction or virtual screening has proven to be a challenging task for any class of method.

Selectively Patterning Polymer Opal Films via Microimprint Lithography.

Large-scale structural color flexible coatings have been hard to create, and patterning color on them is key to many applications, including large-area strain sensors, wall-size displays, security devices, and smart fabrics. To achieve controlled tuning, a micro-imprinting technique is applied here to pattern both the surface morphology and the structural color of the polymer opal films (POFs). These POFs are made of 3D ordered arrays of hard spherical particles embedded inside soft shells.

Local Versus Long-Range Diffusion Effects of Photoexcited States on Radiative Recombination in Organic-Inorganic Lead Halide Perovskites.

shows localized regions of increased emission with dimensions ≈500 nm. Maps of the spectral emission line shape show narrower emission lines in high emission regions, which can be attributed to increased order. Excited states do not diffuse out of high emission regions before they decay, but are decoupled from nearby regions, either by slow diffusion rates or energetic barriers.

Lipid-coated nanocapillaries for DNA sensing.

We report a simple and efficient way to accomplish the chemical modification of glass nanopores by means of lipid self-assembly. Lipid coating improves the success rate of these glass nanopores as biosensors to detect λ-DNA.

Inducing symmetry breaking in nanostructures: anisotropic stretch-tuning photonic crystals.

We use elastically induced phase transitions to break the structural symmetry of self-assembled nanostructures, producing significantly modified functional properties. Stretching ordered polymer opals in different directions transforms the fcc photonic crystal into correspondingly distorted monoclinic lattices. This breaks the conventional selection rules for scattering from the crystal planes, yielding extra multiply scattered colors when the phase-breaking stretch is in specific directions.