烷基链工程对两亲有机半导体热力学性能影响的研究

Due to their special polar structure, amphiphilic molecules are simple to process, low in cost and excellent in material properties. Thus, they can be widely applied in the preparation of functional film materials and bionics related to cell membranes. Therefore, amphiphilic organic semiconductor materials are receiving increasing attention in research and industrial fields. The structure of organic amphiphilic semiconductor molecules usually consists of three functional parts: a hydrophilic group, a hydrophobic group, and a linking group between them. The adjustment of their correlation to achieve the target performance is particularly important and needs experimental discussion regarding synthetic methodologies. In this work, we focused on the engineering of a substituent alkyl-chain, and an amphiphilic functional molecule (benzo[b]benzo[4, 5] thieno[2, 3-d]thiophene, named C_nPA-BTBT, n = 3–11) was proposed and synthesized. This molecule links the hydrophobic semiconductor backbone and hydrophilic polar group through alkyl chains of different lengths. Fundamental properties were investigated by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy (UV-Vis) to conform the structure and the band gap properties of the designed organic semiconductor. Thermodynamic features were investigated by thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and corresponding differential thermal gravity (DTG), which indicate that the functional molecule C_nPA-BTBT (n = 3–11) has a great stability in ambient conditions. Moreover, the results show that the binding ability of the amphiphilic molecule to water molecules was regulated by the odd-even alternating effect of the alkyl chain and the intramolecular coupling with BTBT. Furthermore, differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and polarized optical microscopy (POM) were used to study the material properties in detail. As the length of the alkyl chain increased, the functional molecule C_nPA-BTBT (n = 3–11) gradually changed from "hard" species with no thermodynamic changes to a transition one with a pair of thermodynamic peaks, and eventually to a "soft" one as a typical liquid crystal with clear observation of Maltese-cross spherulites. The cooling and freezing points were further studied, and the values and trends of their enthalpy and corresponding temperature fluctuated and alternated due to the volume effect, odd-even alternating effect, flexibility, and other functions of the alkyl chain. Three molecular models were proposed according to the thermodynamic study results, namely the brick-like model, transition model, and liquid crystal model. This work presents in-depth discussion on material structure and corresponding thermodynamic properties, and it is an experimental basis for the design, synthesis, optimization, and screening of target performance materials.     

Organic solar cells based on chlorine functionalized benzo[1,2-b:4,5-b′]difuran-benzo[1,2-c:4,5-c′]dithiophene-4,8-dione copolymer with efficiency exceeding 13%

Benzo[1,2-b:4,5-b′]dithiophene(BDT) has been widely used to construct donor-acceptor(D-A) copolymers in organic solar cells(OSCs). However, benzo[1,2-b:4,5-b′]difuran(BDF), an analogue of BDT, has received less attention than BDT. The photovoltaic performance of BDF copolymers has lagged behind that of BDT copolymers. Here, we designed and synthesized two BDF copolymers, PBF1-C and PBF1-C-2Cl. PBF1-C-2Cl, which is composed of BDF and benzo[1,2-c:4,5-c′]dithiophene-4,8-dione connected by a chlorinated thiophene π-bridge, displays a low-lying highest occupied molecular orbital energy level,which helps in yielding a high open-circuit voltage(V_(oc)) in OSCs. As a result, when blended with Y6, PBF1-C-2Cl-based devices showed a high V_(oc) of 0.83 V and a power conversion efficiency(PCE) of 13.10%. To the best of our knowledge, the PCE of 13.10% is among the highest efficiency values for OSCs based on BDF copolymers.     

Microfluidic adhesion analysis of single glioma cells for evaluating the effect of drugs

Cancer metastasis is one of the most serious problems for tumor therapy, which is closely related to cell adhesion and deadhesion process. Better comprehension of cell adhesion ability will benefit drug research. Here, a biomimetic microfluidic enzyme digestion method was proposed to gently measure the influence of drugs on cell-matrix adhesion ability at the single cell level.The method can selectively digest the extracellular matrix(ECM) that linked to a single cell, and the trypsin concentration around the cell is relatively uniform and constant, thus the measured cell adhesion strength should be precise. Commercially available anti-cancer agents including 5-fluorouracil(5-FU), actinomycin D(Act D), temozolomide(TMZ) and allicin were evaluated, and the data showed only TMZ and allicin can inhibit cell adhesion significantly under our experiment conditions. The influence of TMZ became more and more obvious as the increase of duration and the effect became prominent only after 6 h adhesion process, which could provide a quick evaluation of whether the drugs are effective to cancer cell(compared with Calcein-AM/PI cell viability test). The adhesion strength of U87 cells decreased when the concentration of TMZ increased, and the effect of TMZ can be effectively inhibited by adding lactic acid to culture medium, which indicated acidic tumor microenvironment could promote drug resistance of tumor cells. Different from conventional evaluation methods which focus on the drugs' influence on cellular viability or metabolism, this work provides a new perspective to study the effect of drugs, which is helpful to enrich the drug evaluation system.     

Understanding energetic disorder in electron-deficient-core-based non-fullerene solar cells

Recent advances in material design for organic solar cells(OSCs) are primarily focused on developing near-infrared nonfullerene acceptors, typically A-DA′D-A type acceptors(where A abbreviates an electron-withdrawing moiety and D, an electron-donor moiety), to achieve high external quantum efficiency while maintaining low voltage loss. However, the charge transport is still constrained by unfavorable molecular conformations, resulting in high energetic disorder and limiting the device performance. Here, a facile design strategy is reported by introducing the "wing"(alkyl chains) at the terminal of the DA′D central core of the A-DA′D-A type acceptor to achieve a favorable and ordered molecular orientation and therefore facilitate charge carrier transport. Benefitting from the reduced disorder, the electron mobilities could be significantly enhanced for the"wing"-containing molecules. By carefully changing the length of alkyl chains, the mobility of acceptor has been tuned to match with that of donor, leading to a minimized charge imbalance factor and a high fill factor(FF). We further provide useful design strategies for highly efficient OSCs with high FF.     

Autothermal reforming of methane over Ni catalysts supported over ZrO2-CeO2-Al2O3

Ni catalysts supported on Al2O3, ZrO2-Al2O3, CeO2-Al2O3 and ZrO2-CeO2-Al2O3 were prepared by coprecipitation method, and their catalytic performances for autothermal reforming of methane to hydrogen were investigated. The Ni-supported catalysts were characterized by XRD, TPR and XPS. The relationship between the structures and catalytic activities of the catalysts was discussed. The results showed that the catalytic activity and stability of the Ni/ZrO2-CeO2-Al2O3 catalyst was better than those of other catalysts with the highest CH4 conversion, H2/CO and H2/COx ratio at 750 ℃. The catalyst showed a little deactivation along the reaction time during its 72 h on stream with the mean deactivation rate of 0.08%/h. The catalytic performance of the Ni/ZrO2-CeO2-Al2O3 catalyst was also affected by reaction temperature, no2 ： nCH4 molar ratio and nH2O ： nCH4 molar ratio. TPR, XRD and XPS measurements indicated that the formation of ZrO2-CeO2 solid solution could improve the dispersion of NiO, and inhibit the formation of NiAl2O3, and thus significantly promoted the catalytic activity of the Ni/ZrO2-CeO2-Al2O3 catalyst.     

Solubilizing mutations used to crystallize one CFTR domain attenuate the trafficking and channel defects caused by the major cystic fibrosis mutation

Cystic fibrosis (CF) is caused by mutations in the CF transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) Cl(-) channel. F508del, the most frequent CF-causing mutation, disrupts both the processing and function of CFTR. Recently, the crystal structure of the first nucleotide-binding domain of CFTR bearing F508del (F508del-NBD1) was elucidated. Although F508del-NBD1 shows only minor conformational changes relative to that of wild-type NBD1, additional mutations (F494N/Q637R or F429S/F494N/Q637R) were required for domain solubility and crystallization. Here we show that these solubilizing mutations in cis with F508del partially rescue the trafficking defect of full-length F508del-CFTR and attenuate its gating defect. We interpret these data to suggest that the solubilizing mutations utilized to facilitate F508del-NBD1 production also assist folding of full-length F508del-CFTR protein. Thus, the available crystal structure of F508del-NBD1 might correspond to a partially corrected conformation of this domain.     

Liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry for metabonomics investigation of the biochemical effects induced by aristolochic acid in rats: the use of information-dependent acquisition for biomarker identification

The toxic effects of oral administrations of nephrotoxic and carcinogenic aristolochic acid (AA) to male Sprague-Dawley rats were investigated by using high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with a quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometer. Analysis of the urine and plasma samples revealed distinct changes in the biochemical patterns in the AA-dosed rats. After peak finding and alignment, principal component analysis (PCA) and partial least-squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) were used for multivariate data analysis. Potential biomarkers were studied by high-resolution mass spectrometry (MS) and tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) analyses. The MS/MS spectra of all endogenous metabolites satisfying the pre-defined criteria were acquired in a single information-dependent acquisition (IDA) analysis, demonstrating that IDA was an efficient approach for structural elucidation in metabonomic studies. Citric acid and a glucuronide-containing metabolite were observed as potential biomarkers in rat urine. A significant increase in plasma creatinine concentration was also observed in the AA-dosed rats, which indicated that AA induced an adverse effect on the renal clearance function.     

Highly efficient enrichment of phosphopeptides by magnetic nanoparticles coated with zirconium phosphonate for phosphoproteome analysis

The location of phosphorylation plays a vital role for the elucidation of biological processes. The challenge of low stoichiometry of phosphoproteins and signal suppression of phosphopeptides by nonphosphopeptides in mass spectrometry (MS) analysis makes the selective enrichment of phosphopeptides prior to MS analysis necessary. Besides the immobilized metal affinity chromatography (IMAC) method, some affinity methods based on nanoparticles displayed a higher enrichment efficiency for phosphopeptides such as Fe(3)O(4)/TiO2 and Fe(3)O(4)/ZrO(2) nanoparticles. To further improve the selectivity and compatibility of the affinity methods, a novel strategy based on magnetic nanoparticles coated with zirconium phosphonate for the enrichment of phosphopeptides has been developed in this study. Under optimized experimental conditions, 1 x 10(-9) M phosphopeptides in 50 microL tryptic digest of beta-casein could be enriched and identified successfully. Reliable results were also obtained for 1 x 10(-8) M phosphopeptides in 50 microL tryptic digest of beta-casein in the presence of nonphosphopeptides from a tryptic digest of bovine serum albumin (BSA) over 20 times in concentration. The performance of nanoparticles for use in a real sample was further demonstrated by employing the strong cation-exchange chromatography (SCX) fraction of a tryptic digest of a protein extract from Chang liver cells as a model sample. Experimental results show that the nanoparticles can be easily and effectively used for enrichment of phosphopeptides in low concentration. Most importantly, our approach is more compatible with commonly used SCX strategies than Fe(3+)-IMAC. The proposed method thus has great potential for future studies of large-scale phosphoproteomes.     

Ionic self-assembled organic nanobelts from the hexagonal phase complexes and their cyclodextrin inclusions

The supramolecular ionic self-assembly (ISA) strategy has been used to construct the long-range ordered hierarchical aggregates from the complexes of 1-adamantanamine hydrochloride (AdCl) and sodium bis(2-ethyl-1-hexyl)sulfosuccinate (AOT). The formed AOT-Ad complexes have been proved to possess a composition of equal molar ratio and a hexagonal columnar structure with Ad blocks as the core and AOT outside. More interestingly, the length, width, and thickness of the aggregates are on the order of milli-, micro-, and nanometer, respectively, and can thus be taken as one type of organic nanobelt. Such nanobelts are plastic and stable to resist breakage even bent to a circle, which makes them useful in the fields of novel nanomaterial fabrication. In addition, the ISA process of this aggregate can be tuned by including Ad blocks in beta-cyclodextrins to form a supramolecular complex, which is comparatively stable in the water and expected to self-assemble into some other ordered structures.     

Carbon supported CdSe nanocrystals

Insights to the mechanism of CdSe nanoparticle attachment to carbon nanotubes following the hot injection method are discussed. It was observed that the presence of water improves the nanotube coverage while Cl containing media are responsible for the shape transformation of the nanoparticles and further attachment to the carbon lattice. The experiments also show that the mechanism taking place involves the right balance of several factors, namely, low passivated nanoparticle surface, particles with well-defined crystallographic facets, and interaction with an organics-free sp2 carbon lattice. Furthermore, this procedure can be extended to cover graphene by quantum dots.