Structural and functional stabilities of artificially designed DNA ultra-thin films grown by silica Assistance

We report the structural and functional stabilities of artificially synthesized DNA ultra-thin films. Fully covered DNA ultra-thin films on a silica substrate were fabricated by the silica-assisted growth method and those samples were then incubated in various chemicals and physical conditions. The DNA ultra-thin films showed high maintainability under those harsh conditions and these results would aid to facilitate the use of artificial DNA ultra-thin films in advanced research areas such as biophotonics and bioelectronics.     

Liquid crystalline epoxy resin with improved thermal conductivity by intermolecular dipole–dipole interactions

To address tremendous needs for developing efficiently heat dissipating materials with lightweights, a series of liquid crystalline epoxy resins (LCEs) are designed and synthesized as thermally conductive matrix. All prepared LCEs possess epoxies at the molecular side positions and cyanobiphenyl mesogenic end groups. Based on several experimental results such as differential scanning calorimetry, polarized optical microscopy, and X‐ray diffraction, it is found that the LCEs exhibited liquid crystalline mesophases. When LCE is cured with a diamine crosslinker, the cured LCE maintains the oriented LC domain formed in the uncured state, ascribing to a presence of dipole–diploe and π–π interactions between cyanobiphenyl mesogenic end groups. Due to the anisotropic molecular orientation, the cured LCE exhibits a high thermal conductivity of 0.46 W m^?1 K^?1, which is higher than those of commercially available crystalline or amorphous epoxy resins. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Polym. Sci., Part A: Polym. Chem. 2019 , 57, 708–715     

Refolding of Laccase in Dilution Additive Mode with Copper-Based Ionic Liquid

Ionic liquids (ILs) are molten salts which do not crystallize at room temperature. Tunable physicochemical properties of ILs including hydrophobicity and polarity facilitate their applications in many biological processes. In this study, a copper-based IL was employed in order to enhance the refolding efficiency of laccase from Trametes versicolor which requires copper as a cofactor. When 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium trichlorocuprate ([EMIM][CuCl₃]) was added to refolding buffer instead of urea, the laccase refolding yield was improved more than 2.7 times compared to the conventional refolding buffer which contains urea. When the refolding of laccase was carried out at different temperatures (4, 25, and 37 °C), the highest refolding yield was obtained at 25 °C. At low temperature, two conflicting effects, i.e., suppression of the aggregate formation and decrease of folding rate, influence the protein refolding. In contrast, a copper-based IL did not enhance the refolding of lysozyme, a non-copper-containing protein. From these results, we can conclude that this copper-based IL, [EMIM][CuCl₃], was exclusively effective on the refolding process of a copper-containing protein.     

Activation of α-Fe2O3 for Photoelectrochemical Water Splitting Strongly Enhanced by Low Temperature Annealing in Low Oxygen Containing Ambient

Photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting is a promising method for the conversion of solar energy into chemical energy stored in the form of hydrogen. Nanostructured hematite (α-Fe₂O₃) is one of the most attractive materials for a highly efficient charge carrier generation and collection due to its large specific surface area and the short minority carrier diffusion length. In the present work, the PEC water splitting performance of nanostructured α-Fe₂O₃ is investigated which was prepared by anodization followed by annealing in a low oxygen ambient (0.03 % O₂ in Ar). It was found that low oxygen annealing can activate a significant PEC response of α-Fe₂O₃ even at a low temperature of 400 °C and provide an excellent PEC performance compared with classic air annealing. The photocurrent of the α-Fe₂O₃ annealed in the low oxygen at 1.5 V vs. RHE results as 0.5 mA cm⁻², being 20 times higher than that of annealing in air. The obtained results show that the α-Fe₂O₃ annealed in low oxygen contains beneficial defects and promotes the transport of holes; it can be attributed to the improvement of conductivity due to the introduction of suitable oxygen vacancies in the α-Fe₂O₃. Additionally, we demonstrate the photocurrent of α-Fe₂O₃ annealed in low oxygen ambient can be further enhanced by Zn-Co LDH, which is a co-catalyst of oxygen evolution reaction. This indicates low oxygen annealing generates a promising method to obtain an excellent PEC water splitting performance from α-Fe₂O₃ photoanodes.     

Effect of irradiation for sterilization on beverage reference materials for the analysis of food additives

Accreditation and Quality Assurance - Reference materials for proficiency testing (PT) were prepared for 6 years. The target analytes were food additives, sorbic acid, benzoic acid, and...     

Linear Matrix Inequality Optimization Approach to Exponential Robust Filtering for Switched Hopfield Neural Networks

This paper is concerned with the delay-dependent exponential robust filtering problem for switched Hopfield neural networks with time-delay. A new delay-dependent switched exponential robust filter is proposed that results in an exponentially stable filtering error system with a guaranteed robust performance. The design of the switched exponential robust filter for these types of neural networks can be achieved by solving a linear matrix inequality (LMI), which can be easily facilitated using standard numerical packages. An illustrative example is given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed filter.     

Pd nanoparticles immobilized on PNIPAM–halloysite: highly active and reusable catalyst for Suzuki–Miyaura coupling reactions in water

Poly(N‐isopropylacrylamide)–halloysite (PNIPAM‐HNT) nanocomposites exhibited inverse temperature solubility with a lower critical solution temperature (LCST) in water. Palladium (Pd) nanoparticles were anchored on PNIPAM‐HNT nanocomposites with various amounts of HNT from 5 to 30 wt%. These Pd catalysts exhibited excellent reactivities for Suzuki–Miyaura coupling reactions at 50–70 °C in water. In particular, Pd anchored PNIPAM/HNT (95:5 w/w ratio) nanocomposites showed excellent recyclability up to 10 times in 96% average yield by simple filtration. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.