Polyol-Intermediated Facile Synthesis of B-Site-Rich Ru-Based Nanocatalysts for CO-Free Hydrogen Production via Ammonia Decomposition.

Herein, a B-site-rich Ru/MgAlO nanocatalyst for the production of CO-free hydrogen from ammonia (NH) is synthesized using the polyol method. The polyol method enables size-sensitive Ru-nanoparticle growth and controlled B-site formation on the catalyst by tuning the carbon-chain length of the polyol solvent used, obviating the use of a separate stabilizer and enhancing electron donation from Ru (with a high surface electron density) and π-back bonding. The Ru/MgAlO (BG) catalyst synthesized using butylene glycol (a long-carbon-chain solvent) contains 2.

Data-Driven Analysis of High-Temperature Fluorocarbon Plasma for Semiconductor Processing.

The semiconductor industry increasingly relies on high aspect ratio etching facilitated by Amorphous Carbon Layer (ACL) masks for advanced 3D-NAND and DRAM technologies. However, carbon contamination in ACL deposition chambers necessitates effective fluorine-based plasma cleaning. This study employs a high-temperature inductively coupled plasma (ICP) system and Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometry (ToF-MS) to analyze gas species variations under different process conditions.

Prediction model of browning inhibitor concentration and its optimal composition for mass processing of ready-to-eat fresh-cut 'Fuji' apple (Malus domestica Borkh.) strains.

In this study, we optimized the composition of the browning inhibitor for apples and established a prediction model for the browning inhibitor concentration in mass-processed fresh-cut apples based on electrical conductivity measurements. The "Fuji" apples that were harvested in Chungju, Korea, were used for this study. Vitamin C mixture (VCM) and trehalose (Tre) were used as browning inhibitors at a 4% ratio.

Enhancing SiN Selectivity over SiO in Low-RF Power NF-O Reactive Ion Etching: The Effect of NO Surface Reaction.

Highly selective etching of silicon nitride (SiN) and silicon dioxide (SiO) has received considerable attention from the semiconductor community owing to its precise patterning and cost efficiency. We investigated the etching selectivity of SiN and SiO in an NF/O radio-frequency glow discharge. The etch rate linearly depended on the source and bias powers, whereas the etch selectivity was affected by the power and ratio of the gas mixture.

Optimized quantification of fatty acids in complex media using advanced analytical techniques.

Rationale: Various medium formulations contain essential fatty acids at concentrations ranging from 10 to 100 mg/L. Accurate and precise lipid measurement in media is crucial for monitoring media quality and conducting studies on lipids in the context of cell culture. This study employed two-dimensional gas chromatography (GC × GC) analyses to offer enhanced resolution, sensitivity, and separation performance compared to GC.

Suppression of Thermally Induced Surface Traps in Colloidal Quantum Dot Solids via Ultrafast Pulsed Light.

Thermal annealing (TA) of colloidal quantum dot (CQD) films is considered an important process for recent high-performing CQD solar cells (SCs) due to its beneficial effects on CQD solids, including enhanced electrical conductivity, denser packing of CQD films, and the removal of organic residues and solvents. However, the conventional TA for CQDs, which requires several  minutes, leads to hydroxylation and oxidation on the CQD surface, resulting in the formation of trap states and a subsequent decline in SC performance. To address these challenges, this study introduces a flashlight annealing (FLA) technique that significantly reduces the annealing time to the millisecond scale.

Hysteresis-Free, Elastic, and Tough Hydrogel with Stretch-Rate Independence and High Stability in Physiological Conditions.

Many existing synthetic hydrogels are inappropriate for repetitive motions because of large hysteresis, and their mechanical properties in warm and saline physiological conditions remain understudied. In this study, a stretch-rate-independent, hysteresis-free, elastic, and tough nanocomposite hydrogel that can maintain its mechanical properties in phosphate-buffered saline of 37 °C similar to warm and saline conditions of the human body is developed. The strength, stiffness, and toughness of the hydrogel are simultaneously reinforced by biomimetic silica nanoparticles with a surface of embedded circular polyamine chains.

LEGO-like Assembly of Fibrous Modules for Display Textiles.

Due to their promising advantages over classical rigid devices, the development of display textiles has exciting potential for various fields, including sensor technology, healthcare, and communication. To realize display textiles, it is necessary to prepare light-emitting building blocks at the fiber level and then weave or knit them to form the desired textile structures. However, from a practical viewpoint, it is difficult to continuously weave functional fibers containing light-emitting devices using conventional textile technologies.

Tuning Threshold Voltage of Electrolyte-Gated Transistors by Binary Ion Doping.

Electrolyte-gated transistors (EGTs) operating at low voltages have attracted significant attention in widespread applications, including neuromorphic devices, nonvolatile memories, chemical/biosensors, and printed electronics. To increase the practicality of the EGTs in electronic circuits, systematic control of threshold voltage (), which determines the power consumption and noise margin of the circuits, is essential. In this study, we present a simple strategy for systematically tuning to almost half of the operating potential range of the EGT by controlling the electrochemical doping of electrolyte ions into organic p-type semiconductors.

Facile synthesis of black phosphorus-zinc oxide nanohybrids for antibacterial coating of titanium surface.

Bacterial infection is a major complication associated with bioimplant materials, including titanium (Ti) based orthopedic joints and dental implants. Thus, the fabrication of Ti surfaces with antibacterial activity is highly important. Black phosphorus (BP) is a recently discovered promising two-dimensional semiconductor for various biomedical applications due to its tunable bandgap and physicochemical properties.

The Multivalent Polyampholyte Domain of Nst1, a P-Body-Associated Protein, Provides a Platform for Interacting with P-Body Components.

The condensation of nuclear promyelocytic leukemia bodies, cytoplasmic P-granules, P-bodies (PBs), and stress granules is reversible and dynamic via liquid-liquid phase separation. Although each condensate comprises hundreds of proteins with promiscuous interactions, a few key scaffold proteins are required. Essential scaffold domain sequence elements, such as poly-Q, low-complexity regions, oligomerizing domains, and RNA-binding domains, have been evaluated to understand their roles in biomolecular condensation processes.

Plasmonic Color Printing via Bottom-Up Laser-Induced Photomodification Process.

Plasmonic color printing has received significant attention owing to its advantages such as nonfading and nontoxic color expression, without necessitating the use of chemical dyes. Recently, color generation from laser-induced plasmonic nanostructures has been extensively explored because of its simplicity, cost-effectiveness, and large-scale processability. However, these methods usually utilize a top-down method that causes unexpected background colors.

CuCoS@B,N-Doped Reduced Graphene Oxide Hybrid as a Bifunctional Electrocatalyst for Oxygen Reduction and Evolution Reactions.

In this report, a facile synthetic route is adopted for typically designing a hybrid electrocatalyst containing boron, nitrogen dual-doped reduced graphene oxide (B,N-rGO) and thiospinel CuCoS (CuCoS@B,N-rGO). The electrocatalytic activity of the hybrid catalyst is tested with respect to oxygen evolution (OER) and oxygen reduction (ORR) reactions in alkali. Physicochemical characterizations confirm the unique formation of a reduced graphene oxide-non-noble-metal sulfide hybrid.

BeStSel: webserver for secondary structure and fold prediction for protein CD spectroscopy.

Circular dichroism (CD) spectroscopy is widely used to characterize the secondary structure composition of proteins. To derive accurate and detailed structural information from the CD spectra, we have developed the Beta Structure Selection (BeStSel) method (PNAS, 112, E3095), which can handle the spectral diversity of β-structured proteins. The BeStSel webserver provides this method with useful accessories to the community with the main goal to analyze single or multiple protein CD spectra.

Water Washable and Flexible Light-Emitting Fibers Based on Electrochemiluminescent Gels.

Herein, a new concept of device architecture to fabricate fibrous light-emitting devices is demonstrated based on an electrochemiluminescence (ECL) material for an electronic textile system. A unique feature of this work is that instead of conventional semiconductor materials, such as organics, perovskites, and quantum dots for fibrous light emitting devices, a solid-state ECL electrolyte gel is employed as a light-emitting layer. The solid-state ECL gel is prepared from a precursor solution composed of matrix polymer, ionic liquid, and ECL luminophore.

One-Step Template-Free Laser Patterning of Metal Microhoneycomb Structures.

Metal microhoneycomb structures have received considerable attention as a type of interaction-efficient functional devices owing to their unique morphology and material properties. Microhoneycomb structures are mainly fabricated using the well-known breath-figure method. However, additional post-treatments are required to produce a metal structure because it is a polymer-based process, and this necessitates expensive, complex, and multi-step fabrication processes.

Flexible Sensory Systems: Structural Approaches.

Biology is characterized by smooth, elastic, and nonplanar surfaces; as a consequence, soft electronics that enable interfacing with nonplanar surfaces allow applications that could not be achieved with the rigid and integrated circuits that exist today. Here, we review the latest examples of technologies and methods that can replace elasticity through a structural approach; these approaches can modify mechanical properties, thereby improving performance, while maintaining the existing material integrity. Furthermore, an overview of the recent progress in wave/wrinkle, stretchable interconnect, origami/kirigami, crack, nano/micro, and textile structures is provided.

The Structural Effect of Electrode Mesh on Hydrogen Evolution Reaction Performance for Alkaline Water Electrolysis.

Alkaline water electrolysis (AWE) is a mature water electrolysis technology that can produce green hydrogen most economically. This is mainly attributed to the use of Ni-based materials that are easy to process and inexpensive. The nickel-based meshes with various structures such as woven mesh and expanded mesh are widely used as electrode in the AWE due to its common availability and easy fabrication.

Pathogenic D76N Variant of β-Microglobulin: Synergy of Diverse Effects in Both the Native and Amyloid States.

β-microglobulin (β2m), the light chain of the MHC-I complex, is associated with dialysis-related amyloidosis (DRA). Recently, a hereditary systemic amyloidosis was discovered, caused by a naturally occurring D76N β2m variant, which showed a structure remarkably similar to the wild-type (WT) protein, albeit with decreased thermodynamic stability and increased amyloidogenicity. Here, we investigated the role of the D76N mutation in the amyloid formation of β2m by point mutations affecting the Asp76-Lys41 ion-pair of WT β2m and the charge cluster on Asp38.

Completely Hazy and Transparent Films by Embedding Air Gaps for Elimination of Angular Color Shift in Organic Light-Emitting Diodes.

Red, green, and blue top-emission organic light-emitting diodes (RGB TOLEDs) suffer from white color change with viewing angle due to the microcavity effect, called white angular dependence (WAD). Great efforts are devoted by applying various kinds of hazy films, but they suffer from poor mechanical stability and optical transmittance. Herein, we introduce an air-gap-embedded hazy film (AEHF) to solve these problems and suppress WAD in RGB TOLEDs.

Exploring SERS from complex patterns fabricated by multi-exposure laser interference lithography.

Designing uniform plasmonic surfaces in a large area is highly recommended for surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS). As periodic morphologies exhibit uniform SERS and optical tunability, diverse fabrication methods of periodic nanostructures have been reported for SERS applications. Laser interference lithography (LIL) is one of the most versatile tools since it can rapidly fabricate periodic patterns without the usage of photomasks.

Recycling silver nanoparticle debris from laser ablation of silver nanowire in liquid media toward minimum material waste.

As silver nanowires (Ag NWs) are usually manufactured by chemical synthesis, a patterning process is needed to use them as functional devices. Pulsed laser ablation is a promising Ag NW patterning process because it is a simple and inexpensive procedure. However, this process has a disadvantage in that target materials are wasted owing to the subtractive nature of the process involving the removal of unnecessary materials, and large quantities of raw materials are required.

Electrochemiluminescent Transistors: A New Strategy toward Light-Emitting Switching Devices.

Light-emitting transistors (LETs) have attracted a significant amount of interest as multifunctional building blocks for next-generation electronics and optoelectronic devices. However, it is challenging to obtain LETs with a high carrier mobility and uniform light-emission because the semiconductor channel should provide both the electrical charge transport and optical light-emission, and typical emissive semiconductors have low, imbalanced carrier mobilities. In this work, a novel device platform that adapts the electrochemiluminescence (ECL) principle in LETs, referred to as an ECL transistor (ECLT) is proposed.