Self-Assemblable Polymer Smart-Blocks for Temperature-Induced Injectable Hydrogel in Biomedical Applications.

Self-assembled temperature-induced injectable hydrogels fabricated via self-assembly of polymer smart-blocks have been widely investigated as drug delivery systems and platforms for tissue regeneration. Polymer smart-blocks that can be self-assembly play an important role in fabrication of hydrogels because they can self-assemble to induce the gelation of their copolymer in aqueous solution. The self-assembly occurs in response to an external stimulus change, such as temperature, pH, glucose, ionic strength, light, magnetic field, electric field, or their combination, which results in property transformations like hydrophobicity, ionization, and conformational change. The self-assembly smart-block based copolymers exist as a solution in aqueous media at certain conditions that are suitable for mixing with bioactive molecules and/or cells. However, this solution turns into a hydrogel due to the self-assembly of the smart-blocks under exposure to an external stimulus change in vitro or injection into the living body for a controllable release of loaded bioactive molecules or serving as a biomaterial scaffold for tissue regeneration. This work reports current scenery in the development of these self-assembly smart-blocks for fabrication of temperature-induced injectable physically cross-linked hydrogels and their potential application as drug delivery systems and platforms for tissue engineering.

Facile fabrication of highly flexible and floatable Cu2O/rGO on Vietnamese traditional paper toward high-performance solar-light-driven photocatalytic degradation of ciprofloxacin antibiotic.

In this work, we successfully demonstrated the facile fabrication of highly flexible and floatable Cu2O/rGO on Vietnamese traditional paper (VTP) for the solar-light-driven photocatalytic degradation of the antibiotic ciprofloxacin. The catalyst membrane was prepared by the green reduction of both Cu(OH)2 to Cu2O nanoparticles and graphene oxide to reduced graphene oxide. VTP has a fibrous structure with tiny fibers connected like a spider web and multiple layers in the form of a multidimensional array, which functions as a flexible and highly porous supporter to the catalyst. Moreover, the microfibrillated cellulose of VTP acts as micro-capillaries to drag ciprofloxacin (CIP) close to the active sites on the Cu2O/rGO/VTP surface, which improves the adsorption capacity and photocatalytic efficiency of ciprofloxacin. The adsorption process is best described by the pseudo-first-order and Freundlich models. The maximum photodegradation of CIP by the catalyst is more than 80% attained after 1.5 h under solar light irradiation with a fixed CIP concentration of 10 mg L-1. The catalyst membrane exhibited good reusability of up to 5 cycles.

Chemical composition, Aedes mosquito larvicidal activity, and repellent activity against Triatoma rubrofasciata of Severinia monophylla leaf essential oil.

Aedes aegypti and Ae. albopictus are key vectors in the spread of arboviruses such as dengue, chikungunya, yellow fever, and Zika. Triatoma rubrofasciata is an "assassin bug" whose populations and association with humans have dramatically increased and may represent a serious health concern. Control of insect vectors is a logical course of action to prevent the spread of these insect-borne infections. This work presents the leaf essential oil composition, mosquito larvicidal activities, and insect-repellent activity of Severinia monophylla. The essential oil of S. monophylla from Vietnam was obtained by hydrodistillation and analyzed by gas chromatography and mass spectrometry. The major components were sabinene, ß-caryophyllene, bicyclogermacrene, germacrene D, (E)-nerolidol, globulol, and linalool. The leaf essential oil showed remarkable larvicidal activity against Ae. aegypti with LC50 (48 h) of 7.1 µg/mL and Ae. albopictus with LC50 (48 h) of 36 µg/mL. The essential oil also showed repellent activity on T. rubrofasciata at a concentration of 0.5%.

Preparation of cross-linked magnetic chitosan particles from steel slag and shrimp shells for removal of heavy metals.

In this study, a new method for preparation of cross-linked magnetic chitosan particles (MCPs) from steel slag and shrimp shells using green tea extract as crosslinking reagent has been presented. The MCPs obtained were characterized by means of X-ray diffraction analysis, Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy and magnetic properties, and then were used to investigate the adsorption properties of Cu(II) and Ni(II) ions in aqueous solutions. The influence of experimental conditions such as contact time, pH value, adsorbent dose and initial metal concentration, and the possibility of regeneration were studied systematically. The Cu(II) and Ni(II) adsorption isotherms, kinetics and thermodynamics have been measured and discussed. The results show that the synthesized MCPs have high adsorption capacity for both metal ions (126.58 mg/g for Cu(II) and 66.23 mg/g for Ni(II)), and have excellent regeneration stability with efficiency of greater than 83% after five cycles of the adsorption-regeneration process. The adsorption process of Ni(II) and Cu(II) on MCPs was feasible, spontaneous and exothermic, and better described by the Langmuir model and pseudo-second-order kinetic equation. The MCPs can be applied as a low cost and highly efficient adsorbent for removal of heavy metals from wastewater due to its high adsorption capacity, easy recovery and good reusability.

Reduced graphene oxide-polyaniline film as enhanced sensing interface for the detection of loop-mediated-isothermal-amplification products by open circuit potential measurement.

The development of low cost, portable diagnostic tools for in-field detection of viruses and other pathogenic microorganisms is in great demand but remains challenging. In this study, a novel approach based on reduced graphene oxide-polyaniline (rGO-PANi) film for the in situ detection of loop-mediated-isothermal-amplification (LAMP) products by means of open circuit potential measurement is proposed. The pH-sensitive conducting polymer PANi was electro-deposited onto rGO coated screen printed electrodes and tuned to be at the emeraldine state at which the pH sensitivity was maximized. By combining PANi and rGO, the pH sensitivity of the system was modulated up to about -64 mV per pH unit. This enabled the number of amplified amplicons resulting from the isothermal amplification process to be monitored. The sensor was then examined for monitoring LAMP reactions using Hepatitis B virus (HBV) as a model. This simple, low-cost, reproducible and sensitive interfacing layer is expected to provide a new possibility for designing point-of-care sensors under limited-resource conditions.

Transparent and flexible high-performance supercapacitors based on single-walled carbon nanotube films.

Transparent and flexible energy storage devices have garnered great interest due to their suitability for display, sensor and photovoltaic applications. In this paper, we report the application of aerosol synthesized and dry deposited single-walled carbon nanotube (SWCNT) thin films as electrodes for an electrochemical double-layer capacitor (EDLC). SWCNT films exhibit extremely large specific capacitance (178 F g(-1) or 552 µF cm(-2)), high optical transparency (92%) and stability for 10 000 charge/discharge cycles. A transparent and flexible EDLC prototype is constructed with a polyethylene casing and a gel electrolyte.

Functional graphene by thiol-ene click chemistry.

Thiol-ene click reaction was successfully employed for chemical modification of graphene oxide (GO) by one-step synthesis. Herein, 2,2-azobis(2-methylpropionitrile) (AIBN) was used as thermal catalyst and cysteamine hydrochloride (HS-(CH2 )2 -NH2 HCl) was used as thiol-containing compound, which is incorporated to GO surface upon reaction with the C=C bonds. The hydrochloride acts as protecting group for the amine, which is finally eliminated by adding sodium hydroxide. The modified GO contains both S- and N-containing groups (NS-GO). We found that NS-GO sheets form good dispersion in water, ethanol, and ethylene glycol. These graphene dispersions can be processed into functionalized graphene film. Besides, it was demonstrated that NS-GO was proved to be an excellent host matrix for platinum nanoparticles. The developed method paves a new way for graphene modification and its functional nanocomposites.

Enhanced fluorescence, morphological and thermal properties of CdSe/ZnS quantum dots incorporated in silicone resin.

Our research focused on the morphological and optical properties of core/shell cadmium selenide/zinc sulfide (CdSe/ZnS) quantum dots incorporated in silicone resin. After dispersing ligand-coated quantum dots into Dow Corning two-component silicone resins (OE6630A and OE6630B at 1:4 mixing ratio by weight), the resins were cured at 150 degrees C for 1.5 hours to produce the quantum dot-silicone resin nanocomposites. The optical, morphological and thermal properties of the quantum dot incorporated in silicone resin were investigated by ultraviolet-visible, fluorescence, atomic force microscopy, field emission scanning electron microscopy, differential scanning calorimetry and thermogravimetric analysis. When the quantum dots, originally coated with trioctylamine ligand, were transferred from a chloroform solvent to methyl phenyl silicone oil and silicone resins of high viscosity, the quantum dots showed increased turbidity and lowered fluorescence intensity. Fluorescence enhancement was investigated by using various functional ligands such as poly(1, 1-dimethyl silazane) (multi-silazane), hexamethylenediamine (diamine), cysteamine (amino-thiol), triethylsilane (reactive hydrosilane), hexamethyldisilazane, nonamethyltrisilazane, octamethylcyclotetrasilazane (reactive amines). The results showed that the reactive amines were good additive ligands for enhancing the fluorescence of CdSe/ZnS quantum dots dispersed in the silicone resins, providing 1.2-2.48 Im/W and 4.2-5.56% higher luminous efficiency and photoluminescence conversion efficiency, respectively. We speculate that these reactive amines donate electrons to the surface electron traps, thereby reducing charge recombination. In addition, quantum dots aggregate to form quantum dot clusters with a relatively homogeneously dispersed in the silicone resin matrices, showing good emission properties due to surface passivation and good colloidal stability with the addition of silazane compounds to the resin. Furthermore, the addition of silazane compounds to quantum dots-silicone resin system also shows the improved thermal stability of the as-synthesized nanocomposites.