An Artificial Motion and Tactile Receptor Constructed by Hyperelastic Double Physically Cross-Linked Silk Fibroin Ionoelastomer

Ionotronic artificial motion and tactile receptor (i-AMTR) is essential to realize an interactive human-machine interface. However, an i-AMTR that effectively mimics the composition, structure, mechanics, and multi-functionality of human skin, called humanoid i-AMTR, is yet to be developed. To bridge this technological gap, this study proposes a strategy that combines molecular structure design and function integration to construct a humanoid i-AMTR. Herein, a silk fibroin ionoelastomer (SFIE) with double cross-linked molecular structure is designed to mimic the composition and structure of human skin, thereby resolving the conflict of stretchability, softness, and resilience, suffered by many previously reported ionotronics. Functionally, electromechanical sensing and triboelectricity-based tactile perception are integrated into SFIE, to enable simultaneous perception of both motion and tactile inputs. By further leveraging the machine learning and Internet of Things (IoT) techniques, the proposed SFIE-based humanoid i-AMTR precisely senses the movement of human body and accurately sortball objects made of different materials. Notably, the success rate for 610 sorting tests reaches as high as 92.3%. These promising results essentially demonstrate a massive potential of humanoid i-AMTR in the fields of sorting robots, rehabilitation medicine, and augmented reality.     

19.28% Efficiency and Stable Polymer Solar Cells Enabled by Introducing an NIR-Absorbing Guest Acceptor

Here, a near-infrared (NIR)-absorbing small-molecule acceptor (SMA) Y-SeNF with strong intermolecular interaction and crystallinity is developed by combining selenophene-fused core with naphthalene-containing end-group, and then as a custom-tailor guest acceptor is incorporated into the binary PM6:L8-BO host system. Y-SeNF shows a 65 nm red-shifted absorption compared to L8-BO. Thanks to the strong crystallinity and intermolecular interaction of Y-SeNF, the morphology of PM6:L8-BO:Y-SeNF can be precisely regulated by introducing Y-SeNF, achieving improved charge-transporting and suppressed non-radiative energy loss. Consequently, ternary polymer solar cells (PSCs) offer an impressive device efficiency of 19.28% with both high photovoltage (0.873 V) and photocurrent (27.88 mA cm⁻²), which is one of the highest efficiencies in reported single-junction PSCs. Notably, ternary PSC has excellent stability under maximum-power-point tracking for even over 200 h, which is better than its parental binary devices. The study provides a novel strategy to construct NIR-absorbing SMA for efficient and stable PSCs toward practical applications.     

Creating Atomic Ordering in Electrocatalysis

Catalysis always proceeds in a chaotic fashion. Therefore, identifying the working principles of heterogeneous catalysts is a challenging task. Creating atomic order in heterogeneous catalysts simplifies this task and also offers new opportunities for rationally designing active sites to manipulate catalytic performance. The recent rapid advances in heterogeneous electrocatalysis have led to exciting progress in the construction of atomically ordered materials. Here, the latest progress in electrocatalysts with the periodic atomic arrangement, including intermetallic compounds with long-range order and metal atom-array catalysts with short-range order is summarized. The synthesis principles and the intriguing physical and chemical properties of these electrocatalysts are discussed. Furthermore, the compelling prospects of atomically ordered catalysts in the frontier of catalyst research are outlined.     

Cell Development Enhanced Bionic Silk Hydrogel on Remodeling Immune Pathogenesis of Spinal Cord Injury via M2 Polarization of Microglial

Due to the complex spatial-temporal pathophysiology of spinal cord injury (SCI), effective modulation of SCI-specific inflammatory pathogenesis to achieve desirable therapeutic effects on functional recovery still remains challenging. Herein, cell-enhanced photocrosslinked silk fibroin hydrogels with extracellular matrix-mimicking cues of mechanical properties and RGD (Arg-Gly-Asp) signals are gelled in situ to fill the lesion site to modulate injury-induced neuroinflammation and promote neurite regrowth after SCI. The bionic hydrogel system provides biomimetic mechanical cues to promote neuronal differentiation of neural stem/progenitor cells (NPCs) and neurite growth by activating YAP nuclear expression. Importantly, favored by the strong capacity of silk fibroin hydrogels on macrophage/microglia recruitment, NPCs encapsulated hydrogel (NPCs@SFRGD0.1) effectively promotes recruited macrophages/microglia to M2 polarization in the lesion site by releasing S100A4 and thereby remodels the inflammatory microenvironment after SCI. Moreover, NPCs@SFRGD0.1 successfully reduces glial scar formation and accelerates corticospinal tract axon regrowth to improve locomotor recovery. Overall, this work contributes to illustrating the therapeutic mechanism of NPCs development based biomaterial therapies on modulating inflammatory microenvironment and this NPCs enhanced silk fibroin hydrogel provides a promising therapeutic strategy for SCI.     

Reinforced Wool Keratin Fibers via Dithiol Chain Re-bonding

Regenerated wool keratin fibers (RWKFs) have heretofore attracted tremendous interest according to environmental friendliness, ample resource, and intrinsic biocompatibility for broad applications. In this realm, both uncontrollable keratin fibril assembly procedure and resultant insufficient mechanical strength, have greatly hindered their large-scale manufacture and commercial viability. Herein, a continuous wet-spinning strategy is put forward to rebuild wool keratin into compact regenerated bio-fibers with improved strength via disulfide re-bonding. Dithiothreitol (DTT) has been introduced to renovate disulfide linkage inside keratin polypeptide chains, and bridge keratin fibrils via covalent thiol bonding to form a continuous backbone as mechanical support. A thus-derived RWKF manifests a tensile strength of 186.1 ± 7.0 MPa and Young's modulus of 7.4 ± 0.2 GPa, which exceeds those of natural wool, feathers, and regenerated wool or feather keratin fibers. The detailed wet-spinning technical parameters, such as coagulation, oxidation, and post-treatment, have been systematically optimized to guarantee the continuous preparation of high-strength regenerated keratin fibers. This work offers insight into solving the concurrent challenges for continuous manufacture of regenerated protein fibers and sustainability concerns about biomass waste.     

Electrocapacitive Deionization: Mechanisms,Electrodes, and Cell Designs

Capacitive deionization (CDI) is an emerging water desalination technology for removing different ionic species from water, which is based on electric charge compensation by these charged species. CDI is becoming popular because it is more energy-efficient and cost-effective than other technologies, such as reverse osmosis and distillation, specifically in dealing with brackish water having low or moderate salt concentrations. Over the past decade, the CDI research field has witnessed significant advances in the used electrode materials, cell architectures, and associated mechanisms for desalination applications. This review article first discusses ion storage/removal mechanisms in carbon and Faradaic materials aided by advanced in situ analysis techniques and computations. It then summarizes research progress toward electrode materials in terms of structure, surface chemistry, and composition. More still, it discusses CDI cell architectures by highlighting their different cell design concepts. Finally, current challenges and future research directions are summarized to provide guidelines for future CDI research.     

Solid Solvation Assisted Electrical Doping Conserves High-Performance in 500 nm Active Layer Organic Solar Cells

Organic solar cells (OSCs) process fascinating solution-printing capability to achieve low-cost and large-scale manufacture. However, the rapid power conversion efficiency (PCE) decay with active layer thickness enlargement inhibits the implement of OSCs’ potential advantages. To overcome the bottlenecks of PCE decay in thick active layer OSCs, the electrical doping with componential selectivity in bulk heterojunction (BHJ) film is achieved by introducing a solid solvation additive. Benefiting from the higher exciton splitting efficiency together with the longer drift (L_dr) and diffusion (L_diff) lengths, an OSC with 100 nm BHJ film demonstrates a PCE increment from 16.44% to 18.24% with prolonged dark and illuminated storage stabilities. Applying the solid solvation assisted (SSA) doping method in the OSCs with 500 nm active layer, the PCE significantly increases by 31.9%, from the original value of 11.79% to 15.55%. It further improves to 15.84% in a ternary blend thick-film device, which is the record value to the best of our knowledge. Besides, the SSA doping narrows the PCE gap between the 0.04 and 1 cm² devices. All improvements demonstrate the great potential of SSA doping for OSC commercial manufacture, since it optimizes the photovoltaic performance under all practical conditions of long-term, thick-film, and large-area.     

Regulation of Ionic Distribution and Desolvation Activation Energy Enabled by In Situ Zinc Phosphate Protective Layer toward Highly Reversible Zinc Metal Anodes

Despite the merits of high specific capacity, low cost, and high safety, the practical application of aqueous Zn metal batteries (AZMBs) is plagued by the dendritic growth and corrosion reaction of Zn metal anodes. To solve these issues, a Zn₃(PO₄)₂·4H₂O protective layer is in-situ constructed on Zn foil (Zn@ZnPO) by a simple hydrothermal method, avoiding the traditional slurry-casting process. The insulating and conformable ZnPO layer improves the wettability of Zn@ZnPO and aqueous electrolyte via decreasing the contact angle to 11.7^o. Compared with bare Zn, the Zn@ZnPO possesses a lower desolvation activation energy of 35.25 kJ mol^-1, indicating that the ZnPO fasters the desolvation of hydrated Zn²⁺ ions and thereby ameliorates their transport dynamics. Micro-morphology and structural characterization show that there are no dendrites forming on the post-cycling Zn@ZnPO anodes, and the interfacial ZnPO layer remains almost identical before and after cycles. It can be explained that the electrochemically stable ZnPO layer acts as an ionic modulator to enable the homogeneous distribution of Zn²⁺ ions, inhibiting the growth of Zn dendrites. Benefiting from these advantages, the Zn@ZnPO based symmetric and full cells deliver highly reversible Zn plating/stripping behavior and long cycling lifespans.     

Circularly polarized patch antenna with simultaneously wide frequency tuning range and high gain performance

A tunable circularly polarized square patch antenna with parasitic elements is designed for a wide frequency tuning range and high gain characteristics. The proposed antenna is constructed by one main patch and four semi-elliptic parasitic units. By loading four varactor diodes and adjusting their capacitance values, the tunable feature is performed to reallocate the corresponding working frequency. Moreover, the diagonal corners of the antenna are cut and loaded with varactor diodes, which provide the appropriate perturbation between the two orthogonality modes of the antenna, so as to ensure the circular polarization characteristic in the entire operating tuning band. The experimental results demonstrate that the reflection coefficient and axial ratio are less than −13 dB and 3 dB, respectively. The proposed antenna features a relatively wide continuously tuning range of 24% within 1.9-2.3 GHz and a stable gain of over 7 dBi with a radiation efficiency of above 85%.