Lateral-flow assays (LFAs), with its convenience and low cost, promise to become the in-home test format for early diagnosis and monitoring of tumor marker. However, the insufficient signal intensity was generated by signal reporters reducing the sensitivity of this format. In this study, a novel nanoscale signal reporter capable of amplifying the fluorescence signal is fabricated by encapsulating quantum dots (QDs) into modified tri-copolymer (poly(tert-butyl acrylate-co-ethyl acrylate-co-methacrylic acid)) (ODA-g-tri-copolymer). The amplified signal varied by simply adjusting the ratio of QDs to the ODA-g-tri-copolymer for obtaining QD nanospheres with high QD loading. They exhibits outstanding stability compared to the individual QDs both in the biological buffer and strong acid solutions. Here, human chorionic gonadotrophin (HCG) is employed as the model protein of LFAs. The results show that the detection limit of the QD nanospheres is pushed down to 0.016 IU/L, which is about ~?38.5 times enhanced compared to the individual QD-based LFAs without any signal amplifying. The ultrasensitive LFAs were attributed to the signal amplification strategy, and their efficiency and robustness demonstrated the great potential in clinical applications.
It is well known that when nanoparticles (NPs) are exposed to biological fluid, it results into formation of nanoparticle protein corona, which has been the subject of extensive studies for the development of targeted drug delivery. In this work, we demonstrated the dynamic light scattering, fluorescence, and UV-visible spectroscopy as quantitative and qualitative tools to monitor adsorption of BSA protein onto silver nanoparticles (AgNPs). The adsorption resulted in significant gradual increase in average hydrodynamic radius of BSA-AgNP corona from 24 to 35 nm and its attainment of equilibrium point (saturation) that correlated with albumin concentration enables condition for bound and unbound protein adsorption to be interpreted. Using DLS, the dissociation constant (KD) was obtained for soft corona to be 2.09?±?0.30 μM. The UV-visible and fluorescence spectroscopy results were correlated with DLS. Loss of percent helicity in secondary structure of adsorbed BSA was monitored in both coronas as compared to native protein. Both coronas were found to be biocompatible with RBC membrane. Further, the results of adsorption isotherm model were used to validate the multilayer formation of albumin protein on silver nanoparticles. The obtained results would be relevant in the drug design development for tumor-targeted therapy.
This work presents the synthesis of magnetite nanoparticle (MNP) coated with poly(N,N-diethylaminoethyl methacrylate)-b-poly(N-isopropyl acrylamide-st-thiolactone acrylamide) (PDEAEMA-b-P(NIPAAm-st-TlaAm) copolymer and its use in controlled drug release and bio-conjugation. TlaAm units in the copolymer were ring-opened with various alkyl amines to form thiol groups (-SH), followed by thiol-ene coupling reactions with acrylamide-coated MNP and then quaternized to obtain cationic copolymer-MNP assemblies (the size <?200 nm/cluster). The use of alkyl amines having various chain lengths (e.g., 1-propylamine, 1-octylamine, or 1-dodecylamine) in the nucleophilic ring-opening reactions of the thiolactone rings affected their magnetic separation ability, water dispersibility, and release rate of doxorubicin model drug. In all cases, when increasing the temperature, they showed a thermo-responsive behavior as indicated by the decrease in hydrodynamic size and the accelerated drug release rate. These copolymer-MNP assemblies could be used as a novel platform with thermal-triggering controlled drug release and capability for adsorption with any negatively charged biomolecules.
Ternary composites of BiFeO3/graphene nanoplatelet (GNP)/epoxy composites were synthesized and its electromagnetic and microwave absorbing properties were studied; the main absorbing mechanism was illustrated. The phase, microstructure, and microwave absorbing properties were characterized by X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscope, and vector network analyzer. The results indicated that the BiFeO3 was successfully synthesized and the GNP was uniformly distributed in the composites, and the complex permittivity of BiFeO3/GNP/epoxy composites increased with increasing the GNP content due to the interface polarization and conductance loss. The minimum reflection loss value was reached to ??45 dB at 9.25 GHz with the thickness of 1.4 mm when the GNP content was 2 wt%, and also the absorbing properties of (BiFeO3+GNP)/epoxy composites can be tailored by the GNP content and composite thickness, which may be used as a kind of absorbing materials with good absorbing performance and low density.
Graphical abstract The reflection loss curves and the simulated matching thickness of GNP-BiFeO3-epoxy composites with 2 wt% GNP content. As can be seen, the minimum reflection loss value was reached to ??45 dB at 9.25 GHz with the thickness of 1.4 mm, and also the quarter-wavelength matching theory can be used to illustrate the good absorbing properties of GNP-BiFeO3-epoxy composites.
A novel method of synthesizing Ti3+-doped TiO2 was proposed. Ti3+-doped TiO2 hollow spheres were prepared with different thickness of carbon shell by using atmospheric pressure plasma jet generated by dual-frequency power sources. The as-synthesized Ti3+-doped TiO2 hollow microspheres were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD) pattern, scanning electron microscope (SEM) images, high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) images, Raman spectra, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and UV–vis spectra. These results indicated that these samples had mixed phases of anatase and rutile and the structure of hollow sphere varied with different thickness of carbon shell. The Ti-O-C chemical bond was the connection between the TiO2 hollow sphere and carbon layer. Amount of Ti3+ ions were found, which were accompanied with the formation of oxygen vacancies. Meantime, the as-synthesized catalysts also display strong absorption in the visible light region and have a narrow band energy gap. Optical emission spectroscopy (OES) was used to observe different excited species in the discharge area. These results showed that the oxygen content had a significant impact on the number of oxygen vacancies. Finally, the photocatalytic activities of as-prepared samples were evaluated by decomposition of rhodamine B aqueous solution, which showed better photocatalytic activity under UV–vis light irradiation. 相似文献
Nanowires show amazing mechanical properties with respect to their bulk counterpart owing to their very high specific surface and/or interface area and, thus, are widely studied among several researchers. But it is difficult to study the mechanical properties of nanowires at atomistic level, and computational tools provide the required solution. Molecular dynamics simulation studies were carried out in this work to evaluate the mechanical properties of single crystal silver nanowire subjected to tensile deformation under varying wire diameter (4–14 nm), test temperature (100–500 K), and strain velocity (1–6 Å/ps). The simulation were carried out in analogous to real experiment, and the engineering stress and strain were calculated from the simulation result of load and displacement data. The mechanical properties like yield strength and Young’s modulus were calculated from the engineering stress-strain curve. The effect of different test parameters like wire diameter, equilibration temperature, and strain velocity on the mechanical properties were also thoroughly investigated. The result shows that single crystal silver nanowire shows excellent mechanical properties and, thus, can be used as a reinforcing agent to develop ultra-high strength advanced materials for defense and aerospace applications. 相似文献
A chaotic system is constructed on the basis of vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs), where a slave VCSEL subject to chaotic optical injection (COI) from a master VCSEL with the external feedback. The complex degree (CD) and time-delay signature (TDS) of chaotic signals generated by this chaotic system are investigated numerically via permutation entropy (PE) and self-correlation function (SF) methods, respectively. The results show that, compared with master VCSEL subject to optical feedback, complex-enhanced chaotic signals with TDS suppression can be achieved for S-VCSEL subject to COI. Meanwhile, the influences of several controllable parameters on the evolution maps of CD of chaotic signals are carefully considered. It is shown that the CD of chaotic signals for S-VCSEL is always higher than that for M-VCSEL due to the CIO effect. The TDS of chaotic signals can be significantly suppressed by choosing the reasonable parameters in this system. Furthermore, TDS suppression and high CD chaos can be obtained simultaneously in the specific parameter ranges. The results confirm that this chaotic system may effectively improve the security of a chaos-based communication scheme. 相似文献
To examine the effect of visual target blurring on accommodation.
Methods
We evaluated the objective refraction values when the visual target (asterisk; 8°) was changed from the state without Gaussian blur (15 s) to the state with Gaussian blur adapted [0(without blur)?→?10, 0?→?50, 0?→?100: 15 s each].
Results
In Gaussian blur 10, when blurring of the target occurred, refraction value did not change significantly. In Gaussian blur 50 and 100, when blurring of the target occurred, the refraction value became significantly myopic.
Conclusion
Blurring of the distant visual target results in intervention of accommodation.
