Investigation of entrance effects on particle electrophoretic behavior near a nanopore for resistive pulse sensing

Resistive pulse sensing using solid-state nanopores provides a unique platform for detecting the structure and concentration of molecules of different types of analytes in an electrolyte solution. The capture of an entity into a nanopore is subject not only to the electrostatic force but also the effect of electroosmotic flow originating from the charged nanopore surface. In this study, we theoretically analyze spherical particle electrophoretic behavior near the entrance of a charged nanopore. By investigating the effects of pore size, particle–pore distance, and salt concentration on particle velocity, we summarize dominant mechanisms governing particle behavior for a range of conditions. In the literature, the Helmholtz–Smoluchowski equation is often adopted to evaluate particle translocation by considering the zeta potential difference between the particle and nanopore surfaces. We point out that, due to the difference of the electric field inside and outside the nanopore and the influence from the existence of the particle itself, the zeta potential of the particle, however, needs to be at least 30% higher than that of the nanopore to allow the particle to enter into the nanopore when its velocity is close to zero. Accordingly, we summarize the effective salt concentrations that enable successful particle capture and detection for different pore sizes, offering direct guidance for nanopore applications.     

Joint optimal fair cooperative spectrum sensing and transmission in cognitive radio

Since the sensing power consumption of cooperative spectrum sensing (CSS) will decrease the throughput of secondary users (SU) in cognitive radio (CR), a joint optimal model of fair CSS and transmission is proposed in this paper, which can compensate the sensing overhead of cooperative SUs. The model uses the periodic listen-before-transmission method, where each SU is assigned a portion of channel bandwidth, when the primary user (PU) is estimated to be free by the coordinator. Then, a joint optimization problem of local sensing time, number of cooperative SUs, transmission bandwidth and power is formulated, which can compensate the sensing overhead of cooperative SUs appropriately through choosing suitable compensating parameter. The proposed optimization problem can be solved by the Polyblock algorithm. Simulation results show that compared with the traditional model, the total system throughput of the fairness cooperation model decreases slightly, but the total throughput of the cooperative SUs improves obviously.     

Electrochemical Simultaneous Sensing of Melatonin,Dopamine and Acetaminophen at Platinum Doped and Decorated Alpha Iron Oxide

Simultaneous sensing of dopamine (DA), acetaminophen (AP) and melatonin (MEL) was made by electrochemical method as the drugs melatonin and acetaminophen interact with dopamine in brain to induce neuro disorders. The glassy carbon electrode surface was modified with un‐doped α‐ Fe₂O₃, platinum doped Fe₂O₃ (dPtFe₂O₃), Pt decorated Fe₂O₃ (sPtFe₂O₃) and doped and decorated Fe₂O₃ (sdPtFe₂O₃) nano particles that are synthesized by co‐precipitation method in presence of polyethylene glycol for the first time. These particles were characterized using Ultra‐Violet Visible (UV‐Vis), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X‐ray diffractometry (XRD), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), thermo gravimetric analysis (TGA) and electrochemical techniques. The sdPtFe₂O₃ showed the highest catalytic activity than the dPtFe₂O₃, sPtFe₂O₃ and un‐doped α‐ Fe₂O₃ with well separated voltammetric peaks for DA and AP in presence of MEL. This is attributed to higher surface hydration effects of the sdPtFe₂O₃, dPtFe₂O₃ and sPtFe₂O₃ than the un‐doped Fe₂O₃ which plays a vital role in enhancing the melatonin sensing in presence of dopamine and acetaminophen. Linear ranges and lowest detection limits for all three analytes were increased by 10 times for the sdPtFe₂O₃ compared to other Fe₂O₃ modified electrodes. The sensor is validated using commercially available pharmaceutical drugs used in therapeutics.     

Immobilization of AIEgens into metal‐organic frameworks: Ligand design,emission behavior,and applications

Aggregation‐induced emission (AIE), in which the luminophores are highly emissive in aggregate state, is one of the most unique photophysical phenomena and has shown interesting applications in many areas. The immobilization of AIE luminogens (AIEgens) into metal‐organic frameworks (MOFs), which are inorganic‐organic hybrid porous materials with tunable and predictable structures, has been investigated over the past few years. These well‐defined porous frameworks cannot only provide an ideal platform for studying the mechanism of AIE phenomenon in solid state, but also show potential applications from sensing to white light‐emitting diodes. In this highlight, we will summarize the recent progress of AIEgens‐based MOFs, including ligand design, emission behavior, and applications. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Polym. Sci., Part A: Polym. Chem. 2017 , 55, 1809–1817     

Learning-based compressed sensing for infrared image super resolution

This paper presents an infrared image super-resolution method based on compressed sensing (CS). First, the reconstruction model under the CS framework is established and a Toeplitz matrix is selected as the sensing matrix. Compared with traditional learning-based methods, the proposed method uses a set of sub-dictionaries instead of two coupled dictionaries to recover high resolution (HR) images. And Toeplitz sensing matrix allows the proposed method time-efficient. Second, all training samples are divided into several feature spaces by using the proposed adaptive k-means classification method, which is more accurate than the standard k-means method. On the basis of this approach, a complex nonlinear mapping from the HR space to low resolution (LR) space can be converted into several compact linear mappings. Finally, the relationships between HR and LR image patches can be obtained by multi-sub-dictionaries and HR infrared images are reconstructed by the input LR images and multi-sub-dictionaries. The experimental results show that the proposed method is quantitatively and qualitatively more effective than other state-of-the-art methods.     

基于耦合T型空腔的多重法诺共振现象

提出由T型空腔和挡板组成的两种金属-电介质-金属(MIM)波导结构,分别为:正T型空腔结构和倒T型空腔结构,并应用有限元法系统地研究了该结构的透射特性.对于正T型空腔结构,仿真结果出现了双重法诺共振现象,并且共振波长可以通过改变T型空腔长度和高度进行调节.该结构有助于设计成敏感度达到1 620nm/RIU、品质因数为5.4×10~4的纳米传感器.对于倒置T型空腔,在波导中产生了多重法诺共振现象,其敏感度可达1 560nm/RIU,品质因数为9.37×104.该结构有望在光学集成回路,特别是纳米传感器、光束分路器方面具有广泛应用.     

Chiral sensing of Eu(III)‐containing achiral polymer complex from chiral amino acids coordination induction

The β‐diketonate‐based achiral polymer P‐1 could be synthesized by the polymerization of 3,7‐dibromo‐2,8‐dimethoxy‐5,5‐dioctyl‐5H‐dibenzo[b,d]silole ( M1 ) with (Z)?1,3‐bis(4‐ethynylphenyl)?3‐hydroxyprop‐en‐1‐one ( M2 ) via typical Sonogashira coupling reaction. The β‐diketonate unit in the main chain backbone of P‐1 can further coordinate with Eu(TTA)_x [TTA^? = 4,4,4‐trifluoro‐1‐(thiophen‐2‐yl)butane‐1,3‐dionate anion, X = 1, 2, 3] to afford corresponding Eu(III)‐containing polymer complexes. The resulting achiral polymer complex P‐2 (X = 2) can exhibit strong circular dichroism (CD) response toward both N‐Boc‐l and d‐ proline enantiomers. The CD signal was preliminarily attributed to coordination induction between chiral N‐Boc‐proline and the Eu(III) complex moiety. The linear regression analysis of CD sensing shows a good agreement between the magnitude of molar ellipticity and concentration of chiral N‐Boc‐l or d‐ proline, which indicates this kind Eu(III)‐containing achiral polymer complex can be used as a chiral probe for enantioselective recognition of N‐Boc‐l or d‐ proline enantiomers based on Cotton effect of CD spectra. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Polym. Sci., Part A: Polym. Chem. 2014 , 52, 3080–3086     

Perimidine-based synthetic receptors for determination of copper(II) in water solution

Perimidine-based chelators 1 and 2 were prepared, and their structures were confirmed by ¹H and ¹³C NMR, MS spectroscopy and elemental analysis. These compounds were studied as specific synthetic receptors for the recognition of transition metal ions. They exhibited high affinity and selectivity towards Cu(II) ions. The conditional binding constants, linear dynamic range and detection limit were determined by UV–vis spectroscopy. These parameters demonstrated high potential of the prepared synthetic receptors for the recognition and determination of Cu(II) ions. The minimum detectable concentrations of Cu(II) ions for the synthetic receptors 1 and 2 were 270 and 75 nM (R ² = 0.9915 and 0.9964) in aqueous medium (water/DMSO; 99:1 (v/v)), respectively.