Plasticizing Silk Protein for On-Skin Stretchable Electrodes.

Soft and stretchable electronic devices are important in wearable and implantable applications because of the high skin conformability. Due to the natural biocompatibility and biodegradability, silk protein is one of the ideal platforms for wearable electronic devices. However, the realization of skin-conformable electronic devices based on silk has been limited by the mechanical mismatch with skin, and the difficulty in integrating stretchable electronics. Here, silk protein is used as the substrate for soft and stretchable on-skin electronics. The original high Young's modulus (5-12 GPa) and low stretchability (<20%) are tuned into 0.1-2 MPa and > 400%, respectively. This plasticization is realized by the addition of CaCl2 and ambient hydration, whose mechanism is further investigated by molecular dynamics simulations. Moreover, highly stretchable (>100%) electrodes are obtained by the thin-film metallization and the formation of wrinkled structures after ambient hydration. Finally, the plasticized silk electrodes, with the high electrical performance and skin conformability, achieve on-skin electrophysiological recording comparable to that by commercial gel electrodes. The proposed skin-conformable electronics based on biomaterials will pave the way for the harmonized integration of electronics into human.

Separation of hydrophobic solutes by organic-solvent-based micellar electrokinetic chromatography using cation surfactants.

In this study, the separation of 13 homologous stick-like hydrophobic solutes, i.e., biphenyl nitrile derivatives, by organic-solvent-based micellar electrokinetic chromatography (MEKC) was investigated in terms of separation medium composition, species and concentration of surfactant, other additives, separation voltage and temperature. The results showed that the 13 strong hydrophobic compounds were baseline separated in 25 min with a repeatability of less than 1.3% (RSD) for migration time. The separation medium was a mixture of methanol, 2-propanol and water (58.5:10:31.5), containing 150 mM cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) and 20 mM sodium borate. Variety of solvent composition, temperature and applied voltage all showed remarkable effect on the separation. The organic-solvent-based MEKC method proved to be superior to the aqueous MEKC and microemulsion electrokinetic chromatography (MEEKC) methods for the separation of strongly hydrophobic compounds.

Rapid determination of aristolochic acid I and II in Aristolochia plants from different regions by beta-cyclodextrin-modified capillary zone electrophoresis.

Chinese herbs nephropathy (CHN) is a kind of severe kidney disease caused by excessively taking aristolochic acid (AA). Hence, it is essential for health security and quality control of related herbal medicines to develop an efficient method for separation and determination of these two important components in Traditional Chinese Medicines. In this study, a rapid capillary zone electrophoresis (CZE) method using 120 mM sodium borate buffer containing 10 mM beta-cyclodextrin (beta-CD) as modifier was firstly developed for the analysis of AA-I and AA-II within 4min in some medicinal plant samples. The separation conditions including pH of running buffer, CD content in the buffer system, applied voltage and capillary temperature were systematically optimized, and two kinds of aristolochic acids in 37 herbal samples of Aristolochia plants were successfully determined with high separation efficiency, satisfactory sensitivity, repeatability and recovery. The result indicated high variability in the contents of aristolochic acids due to different species and regions. The comparison of CZE method with high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) was also discussed.

Separation and determination of biphenyl nitrile compounds by microemulsion electrokinetic chromatography with mixed surfactants.

A mixture of six biphenyl nitrile compounds and three related substances with high hydrophobicity and similar structures was successfully separated by microemulsion electrokinetic chromatography (MEEKC) within 30 min. The microemulsion system contained 100 mM sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS), 80 mM sodium cholate (SC), 0.81% v/v heptane, 7.5% v/v n-butanol, 10% v/v acetonitrile, and 10 mM borate. The addition of SC, organic modifiers, sample preparation, and temperature all showed remarkable effects on the separation. The capacity factor (k) was calculated by using dodecyl benzene as the marker for microemulsion, and the calculated partition coefficient log P(o/w) of the solutes was in the range of 3.35-7.38. The log k values matched well with the log P(o/w) with a correlation coefficient of 0.96. In addition, the linear correlation coefficients of each compound between peak area and concentration were from 0.996 to 0.998 with the repeatability RSD value < 1.2% for migration time and < 4.8% for peak area, and the highest theoretic plate number was > 586000. MEEKC was compared with micellar electrokinetic chromatography (MEKC) indicating that the former method is more suitable for this separation and can be used for the quality control of biphenyl nitrile compounds in the synthesis of liquid crystals.

Determination of dissociation constants of pharmacologically active xanthones by capillary zone electrophoresis with diode array detection.

In this article, the dissociation constants (pKa) of 10 pharmacologically active xanthones isolated from herbal medicine Securidaca inappendiculata were determined by capillary zone electrophoresis with diode array detection. The pKa values determined by the method based on the electrophoretic mobilities (calculated from migration times) have been proved by the method based on UV absorbance calculated from the online spectra corresponding peaks. No conspicuous difference was observed between the two methods with acceptable reproducibility. Two pKa values (pKa1 and pKa2) were found for four xanthones while generally the 10 compounds possess the pKa values ranging from 6.4 to 9.2.