Shishang Guo

Electrospun TiO2 Nanofiber‐Based Cell Capture Assay for Detecting Circulating Tumor Cells from Colorectal and Gastric Cancer Patients

A nanostructured platform that combines electrospun TiO(2) nanofibers (TiNFs)-deposited substrate and cell-capture agent realizes significant capture of circulating tumor cells (CTCs). The enhanced local topographic interactions between the horizontally packed TiNFs deposited substrates and extracellular matrix scaffolds, in addition to anti-EpCAM/EpCAM biological recognition, contributes to the significantly enhanced capture efficiency compared to flat surfaces.

Highly Uniform, Bifunctional Core/Double‐Shell‐Structured β‐NaYF4:Er3+, Yb3+ @ SiO2@TiO2 Hexagonal Sub‐microprisms for High‐Performance Dye Sensitized Solar Cells

Highly uniform core/double-shell-structured β-NaYF4:Er(3+),Yb(3+)@SiO2@TiO2 hexagonal sub-microprisms are prepared and employed in dye-sensitized solar cells (DSCs) internally. This work paves a facile way to enable the most-efficient upconversion material (β-NaYF4:Er(3+),Yb(3+)) to be used as scattering and upconversion centers in the photoelectrode of a DSC.

Cancer Cell Membrane-Coated Upconversion Nanoprobes for Highly Specific Tumor Imaging.

Cancer cell membrane-coated upconversion nanoprobes (CC-UCNPs) with immune escape and homologous targeting capabilities are used for highly specific tumor imaging. The combination of UCNPs with biomimetic cancer cell membranes embodies a novel materials design strategy and presents a compelling class of advanced materials.

Rational design of amorphous indium zinc oxide/carbon nanotube hybrid film for unique performance transistors.

Here we report unique performance transistors based on sol-gel processed indium zinc oxide/single-walled carbon nanotube (SWNT) composite thin films. In the composite, SWNTs provide fast tracks for carrier transport to significantly improve the apparent field effect mobility. Specifically, the composite thin film transistors with SWNT weight concentrations in the range of 0-2 wt % have been investigated with the field effect mobility reaching as high as 140 cm(2)/V·s at 1 wt % SWNTs while maintaining a high on/off ratio ∼10(7). Furthermore, the introduction SWNTs into the composite thin film render excellent mechanical flexibility for flexible electronics. The dynamic loading test presents evidently superior mechanical stability with only 17% variation at a bending radius as small as 700 μm, and the repeated bending test shows only 8% normalized resistance variation after 300 cycles of folding and unfolding, demonstrating enormous improvement over the basic amorphous indium zinc oxide thin film. The results provide an important advance toward high-performance flexible electronics applications.

Droplet electric separator microfluidic device for cell sorting

A simple and effective droplet electric separator microfluidic device was developed for cell sorting. The aqueous droplet without precharging operation was influenced to move a distance in the channel along the electric field direction by applying dc voltage on the electrodes beside the channel, which made the target droplet flowing to the collector. Single droplet can be isolated in a sorting rate of ∼100 Hz with microelectrodes under a required pulse. Single or multiple mammalian cell (HePG2) encapsulated in the surfactant free alginate droplet could be sorted out respectively. This method may be used for single cell operation or analysis.

Transparent, High‐Performance Thin‐Film Transistors with an InGaZnO/Aligned‐SnO2‐Nanowire Composite and their Application in Photodetectors

A high mobility of 109.0 cm(2) V(-1) s(-1) is obtained by thin-film transistors (TFTs) comprising a composite made by aligning SnO2 nanowires (NWs) in amorphous InGaZnO (a-IGZO) thin films. This composite TFT reaches an on-current density of 61.4 μA μm(-1) with a 10 μm channel length. Its performance surpasses that of single-crystalline InGaZnO and is comparable with that of polycrystalline silicon.

Self-assembled free-standing polypyrrole nanotube membrane as an efficient FTO- and Pt-free counter electrode for dye-sensitized solar cells.

The construction of nanoporous conductive polymer membranes has potential applications in catalysts and energy-conversion devices. In this letter, we present a facile method to prepare free-standing polypyrrole (PPy) nanotube films by simply heating pulp-like homogeneous suspensions at a low temperature, which can be employed as a novel counter electrode (CE) to substitute for the expensive fluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO) glass and Pt used in dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). The DSSCs assembled with these paper-like PPy membranes show an impressive conversion efficiency of 5.27%, which is about 84% of the cell with a conventional Pt/FTO CE (6.25%).

On-demand preparation of quantum dot-encoded microparticles using a droplet microfluidic system

Optical barcoding technology based on quantum dot (QD)-encoded microparticles has attracted increasing attention in high-throughput multiplexed biological assays, which is realized by embedding different-sized QDs into polymeric matrixes at precisely controlled ratios. Considering the advantage of droplet-based microfluidics, producing monodisperse particles with precise control over the size, shape and composition, we present a proof-of-concept approach for on-demand preparation of QD-encoded microparticles based on this versatile new strategy. Combining a flow-focusing microchannel with a double T-junction in a microfluidic chip, biocompatible QD-doped microparticles were constructed by shearing sodium alginate solution into microdroplets and on-chip gelating these droplets into a hydrogel matrix to encapsulate CdSe/ZnS QDs. Size-controllable QD-doped hydrogel microparticles were produced under the optimum flow conditions, and their fluorescent properties were investigated. A novel multiplex optical encoding strategy was realized by loading different sized QDs into a single droplet (and thus a hydrogel microparticle) with different concentrations, which was triggered by tuning the flow rates of the sodium alginate solutions entrapped with different-colored QDs. A series of QD-encoded microparticles were controllably, and continuously, produced in a single step with the present approach. Their application in a model immunoassay demonstrated the potential practicability of QD-encoded hydrogel microparticles in multiplexed biomolecular detection. This simple and robust strategy should be further improved and practically used in making barcode microparticles with various polymer matrixes.

Hierarchically porous hybrids of polyaniline nanoparticles anchored on reduced graphene oxide sheets as counter electrodes for dye-sensitized solar cells

Hierarchically porous polyaniline–reduced graphene oxide hybrids have been developed via oxidative polymerization of aniline by MnO2 on reduced graphene sheets under acidic conditions (named M-PANI@rGO). The formation mechanism of the above hybrids indicates that the MnO2 undergoes oxidative disintegration and results in the porous structure of polyaniline (PANI) nanoparticle formation on the reduced graphene oxide (rGO) surface. The scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images and Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) nitrogen sorption–desorption measurement clearly showed the nanoporous nature of the M-PANI@rGO hybrids. TEM-EDX confirmed the complete removal/degradation of MnO2 during the oxidative polymerization of aniline. Just for comparison, PANI–rGO hybrids have also been prepared via conventional polymerization using (NH4)2S2O8 as the oxidant (named C-PANI@rGO). When these different architectural PANI@rGO hybrids were applied as the counter electrode for dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs), the short-circuit current density (Jsc) and power-conversion efficiency (η) of the DSSCs with C-PANI@rGO hybrids are measured to be 11.64 mA cm−2 and 5.62%, respectively, while the corresponding values are 12.88 mA cm−2 and 6.15% for the DSSCs with M-PANI@rGO hybrids, which is comparable to 6.73% for the cell with a Pt counter electrode under the same experimental conditions. The hierarchically porous M-PANI@rGO hybrid is thus a promising candidate to replace platinum as a counter electrode for DSSCs.

Scalable Integration of Indium Zinc Oxide/Photosensitive‐Nanowire Composite Thin‐Film Transistors for Transparent Multicolor Photodetectors Array

By incorporating crystalline photosensitive nanowires (NWs), an amorphous InZnO (a-IZO) thin film is designed to be sensitive to the primary colors of light via a facile sol-gel approach. The mobility is also improved. The composite devices leverage the advantages of the transparency of a-IZO with the photosensitivity of CdS NWs.