Turn-on Circularly Polarized Luminescence in Chiral Indium Chlorides by 5s2 Metal Centers

Introducing chirality into the metal-halide hybrids has enabled many emerging properties including chiroptical activity, spin-dependent transport, and ferroelectricity. However, most of the chiral metal-halide hybrids to date are non-emissive, and the underlying mechanism remains elusive. Here, we show a new strategy to turn on the circularly polarized luminescence (CPL) in chiral metal-halide hybrids. We demonstrate that alloying Sb³⁺ into chiral indium-chloride hybrids dramatically increases the photoluminescence quantum yield in two new series of chiral indium-antimony chlorides. These materials exhibit strong CPL signals with tunable energy and a high dissymmetry factor up to 1.5×10⁻². Mechanistic studies reveal that the emission originates from the self-trapped excitons centered in 5s² Sb³⁺. Moreover, near-ultraviolet pumped white light is demonstrated with a polarization up to 6.0 %. Our work demonstrates new strategies towards highly luminescent chiral metal-halide hybrids.     

Tandem Guest-Host-Receptor Recognitions Precisely Guide Ciprofloxacin to Eliminate Intracellular Staphylococcus aureus

Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) is able to hide within host cells to escape immune clearance and antibiotic action, causing life-threatening infections. To boost the therapeutic efficacy of antibiotics, new intracellular delivery approaches are urgently needed. Herein, by rational design of an adamantane (Ada)-containing antibiotic-peptide precursor Ada-Gly-Tyr-Val-Ala-Asp-Cys(StBu)-Lys(Ciprofloxacin)-CBT ( Cip-CBT-Ada ), we propose a strategy of tandem guest-host-receptor recognitions to precisely guide ciprofloxacin to eliminate intracellular S. aureus. Via guest-host recognition, Cip-CBT-Ada is decorated with a β-cyclodextrin-heptamannoside ( CD-M ) derivative to yield Cip-CBT-Ada/CD-M , which is able to target mannose receptor-overexpressing macrophages via multivalent ligand-receptor recognition. After uptake, Cip-CBT-Ada/CD-M undergoes caspase-1 (an overexpressed enzyme during S. aureus infection)-initiated CBT-Cys click reaction to self-assemble into ciprofloxacin nanoparticle Nano-Cip . In vitro and in vivo experiments demonstrate that, compared with ciprofloxacin or Cip-CBT-Ada , Cip-CBT-Ada/CD-M shows superior intracellular bacteria elimination and inflammation alleviation efficiency in S. aureus-infected RAW264.7 cells and mouse infection models, respectively. This work provides a supramolecular platform of tandem guest-host-receptor recognitions to precisely guide antibiotics to eliminate intracellular S. aureus infection efficiently.     

Efficient Visible-Light-Activated Ultra-Long Room-Temperature Phosphorescence Triggered by Multi-Esterification

The development of ultra-long room-temperature phosphorescence (UL-RTP) in processable amorphous organic materials is highly desirable for applications in flexible displays, anti-counterfeiting, and bio-imaging. However, achieving efficient UL-RTP from amorphous materials remains a challenging task, especially with activation by visible light and a bright afterglow. Here we report a general and rational molecular-design strategy to enable efficient visible-light-excited UL-RTP by multi-esterification of a rigid large-plane phosphorescence core. Notably, multi-esterification minimizes the aggregation-induced quenching and accomplishes a ′four birds with one stone′ possibility in the generation and radiation process of UL-RTP: i) shifting the excitation from ultraviolet light to blue-light through enhancing the transition dipole moment of low-lying singlet-states, ii) facilitating the intersystem crossing process through the incorporation of lone-pair electrons, iii) boosting the decay process of long-lived triplet excitons resulting from a significantly increased transition dipole moment, and iv) reducing the intrinsic triplet nonradiative decay by substitution of high-frequency vibrating hydrogen atoms. All these factors synergistically contribute to the most efficient and stable visible-light-stimulated UL-RTP (lifetime up to 2.01 s and efficiency up to 35.4 % upon excitation at 450 nm) in flexible films using multi-esterified coronene, which allows high-tech applications in single-component time-delayed white light-emitting diodes and information technology based on flashlight-activated afterglow encryption.     

LyP-1 peptide-functionalized gold nanoprisms for SERRS imaging and tumor growth suppressing by PTT induced-hyperthermia

The gold nanoprisms (GNPs) have exhibited special plasmonic properties for biomedical applications because of their unique shapes and dimensions. Based on their optical performance, the NIR dye IR780 not only enabled the GNPs-based nanosystem as SERRS nanoparticles for Raman-encoded molecular imaging, but also enhanced the plasmonic photothermal property by laser irradiation. Meanwhile, the GNPs/IR780-Lyp-1 by introduction of tumor-homing peptide segment LyP-1, which presents high affinity to p32 protein, demonstrated the increased enrichment in tumor region and enhanced photothermal therapy efficacy.     

RE2CuO4的热力学稳定性（RE=La,Nd,Sm,Eu）

构筑了ＭｇＯ部分稳定的ＺｒＯ２基固体电解质电化学电池测量ＥＡＦ的实验装置，测定了Ｓｍ２ＣｕＯ４的标准Ｇｉｂｂｓ生成自由能。结果表明化合物ＲＥ２ＣｕＯ２３（ＲＥ＝Ｌａ，Ｎｄ，Ｓｍ，Ｅｕ）随着镧系元素离子半径减小，热力学稳定性下降，并用晶体场理论解释了这一规律。     

Acid‐treated g‐C3N4‐Cu2O composite catalyst with enhanced photocatalytic activity under visible‐light irradiation

Acid‐treated g‐C₃N₄‐Cu₂O was prepared by hydrothermal reduction followed by high temperature calcination and acid exfoliation. The structures and properties of as‐synthesized samples were characterized using a range of techniques, such as X‐ray photoelectron spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy, Photoluminescence Spectroscopy and the Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) theory. The photocatalytic activity was evaluated by measuring the photodegradation of methyl orange under visible‐light irradiation. Based on the results of TEM, XPS, EPR and other techniques, it was verified that a heterojunction was formed. The acid treatment process can increase the specific surface area to form abundant heterojunction interfaces as channels for photo‐generated carrier separation, thereby enhancing its light utilization and quantum efficiency. Results indicate that acid‐treated g‐C₃N₄‐Cu₂O possesses a large specific surface area, which provides plentiful activated sites for heterojunctions to form; in addition, it showed a high visible light effect and the minimum charge‐transfer resistance. Furthermore, the g‐C₃N₄‐Cu₂O material exhibits high levels of effectiveness and stability. Electron paramagnetic resonance and a series of radical trapping experiments demonstrate that the holes and ?O₂^? could be the main active species in methyl orange photodegradation. This work could provide new insights into the fabrication of composite materials as high‐performance photocatalysts, and facilitate their application in addressing environmental protection issues.     

Nondestructive Discrimination of Pharmaceutical Preparations Using Near-Infrared Spectroscopy and Partial Least-Squares Discriminant Analysis

Metronidazole is a widely used antibacterial and amoebicide drug. The feasibility of the classification of metronidazole samples with respect to their brands was investigated by near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy along with chemometrics. A total of 92 samples of different lots and four brands were collected for measurements. First, principal component analysis was conducted to visualize the difference between metronidazole samples of different brands. Then, based on an effective classifier-independent method, i.e., joint mutual information, only the 30 most important variables were selected for modeling. From the independent test set, the partial least-squares discriminant analysis model based on the reduced variable set was compared with the corresponding full-spectrum model using all variables, which indicates the model based on the reduced variable set outperforms the full-spectrum model. It appears that the combination of NIR spectroscopy, joint mutual information, and partial least-squares discriminant analysis is a potential method for the classification of metronidazole from different brands and can, therefore, be used in the screening of counterfeit pharmaceutical products.     

Untargeted Identification of Black Rice by Near-Infrared Spectroscopy and One-Class Models

Black rice is one of the famous rare rice varieties in China. It is common to sell inferior black rice intentionally declared as famous brands due to economical motivation. There is an urgent need to develop an analytical method for untargeted identification of black rice. The present work focuses on exploring the feasibility of the untargeted identification of black rice by the combination of near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy and data driven-based class modeling and variable selection. A total of 142 samples of three brands were collected and used for measurements. The samples of a specific class were used as the target class. Principal component analysis was applied for the preliminary analysis. The model-independent variable selection method, i.e., joint mutual information, was used for spectral compression. Only the 10 most informative variables were picked from original variables based on which an optimal class-model for the target class was constructed and validated by means of an external test set. As a result, the model achieved 100% of sensitivity and specificity. It can be concluded that NIR spectroscopy combined with one-class modeling is a feasible tool for the untargeted identification of black rice.     

Hamiltonian Systems with Positive Topological Entropy and Conjugate Points

In this article, we consider the geodesic flows induced by the natural Hamiltonian systems $H(x,p)=\frac{1}{2}g^{ij}(x) p_{i}p_{j} + V(x) $ defined on a smooth Riemannian manifold$(M = \mathbb{S}^{1} \times N, g)$, where $\mathbb {S}^{1}$ is the one dimensional torus, N is a compact manifold, g is the Riemannian metric on M and V is a potential function satisfying $V \leq 0$. We prove that under suitable conditions, if the fundamental group $\pi_{1}(N)$ has sub-exponential growth rate, then the Riemannian manifold M with the Jacobi metric $(h-V)g$, i.e., $(M, (h-V)g)$, is a manifold with conjugate points for all h with $0 < h <\delta$, where $\delta$ is a small number.