Nano Trends最新文献

Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) has become one of the greatest public health problems threatening human health. HIV treatment presents a certain limit due to the complexity of the infection cycle and the low therapeutic target. New viral drug treatments should be developed for ameliorating the potentially toxic side effects and drug resistance. Nanomaterials with strong solubility and bioavailability show obvious merit in drug delivery, which can be an effective assistant to treat HIV. Herein, various novel nanomaterials were reviewed for drug delivery, including lipid nanoparticles, polymeric nanoparticles, metal nanoparticles, micelles, etc. We also discussed the advantages and the limitations of novel nanocarriers for HIV prevention, diagnosis and treatment and prospected potential materials for HIV.

The pharmaceutical industry has long sought efficient and environmentally sustainable methods for the synthesis of pharmaceutically significant molecules, particularly potent γ-amino butyric acid (GABA) derivatives. Photocatalysis has emerged as a promising approach, offering mild reaction conditions and utilizing renewable energy sources. In this study, we present a novel and sustainable photocatalytic strategy for the synthesis of (±)-pregabalin, a valuable GABA derivative, using carbon nitride derived from the complex of melamine and cyanuric acid (CN-MC) as the catalyst. Under visible light irradiation, CN-MC demonstrated outstanding photocatalytic performance, achieving an excellent 99% yield in the visible-light-driven decarboxylative radical conjugate addition. The formed β-substituted γ-lactam intermediate serves as a crucial building block for the synthesis of (±)-pregabalin. Moreover, the recyclability and scalability of CN-MC as a photocatalyst enhance the process's eco-friendliness, making it an appealing option for large-scale pharmaceutical synthesis.

3D printing and electrospinning are used to fabricate complex structures with improved properties. Combining 3D printing and electrospinning potentially creates composite structures with even superior properties for biomedical applications. However, there is limited research, use, and literature on this synergy. While 3D printing is used extensively in the biomedical and pharmaceutical industries, the 3D printed polymer strength can be limited due to the high cooling rate during the printing process, resulting in a lack of crystallinity. Additives such as crosslinkers and reinforcements such as particles, nanomaterials, and fibers are often incorporated into the polymer melt to improve its properties. One promising reinforcement is electrospun nanofibers, which have high aspect ratios, specific surface area, and porosity. However, electrospinning can result in variability in fiber size and morphology.

Further research is needed to optimize the technique and improve its reproducibility. This perspective provides an assessment of this synergistic technology. This study explores the potential for biomedical applications while offering opinions on the most recent research combining 3D printing and electrospinning. The fact that effective 3D printing and electrospinning integration can generate a powerful platform to develop nanomaterials with superstructures highlights the high significance of this perspective.

Epitaxy of nanostructured materials is a critical step in developing functional nanodevices. Electrochemical epitaxy has been shown robust and low-cost in advancing the deployment of nanomaterials. This paper offers a brief review on a wide category of nanostructured materials and phases synthesized via electrochemical epitaxy approaches over the past several decades. The review highlights the advantages of electrochemical approach over other high-temperature, high-vacuum technologies in terms of accessibility to target materials’ phases, morphologies and yield. Electrochemical epitaxy's extraordinary ability in enabling certain valence states which cannot be reached at vacuum condition could bring new concepts in developing a plethora of metastable functional materials. It also gives an overview on possible growth modes and mechanisms that may be employed in developing emerging materials and phases.

An emerging sustainable technology for the photocatalytic synthesis of hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂) from molecular oxygen and sunlight has garnered significant research interest. The addition of sacrificial agents often enhances O₂ reduction for H₂O₂ production but also results in the accumulation of their oxidized impurities in the reaction media. Exploring photo-oxidative reaction designs, therefore, is critical to improving photocatalytic H₂O₂ production. Herein, we report that controlling oxidative reaction media makes a significant difference in photocatalytic H₂O₂ production. The challenging toluene oxidation could be integrated with photocatalytic O₂ reduction, co-producing H₂O₂ as well as benzaldehyde. Covalent triazine frameworks (CTFs) were selected as platform photocatalysts, where the CTF with a thiophene linker exhibited a high H₂O₂ production (105 µmol) with toluene oxidation under simulated sunlight, which was 4.7- and 2.5-fold higher than that observed with H₂O (22.3 µmol) and H₂O/alcohol (42.4 µmol) oxidation, respectively. The theoretical calculation reveals that the binding affinities of toluene and O₂ on CTF surfaces enable the simultaneous production of benzaldehyde and H₂O₂, respectively. A dual-phase system composed of toluene and water layers allows simple separation of the two products with high purity. Our finding demonstrates the crucial influence of oxidative environments in photocatalytic O₂ reduction, showing the potential of toluene photo-oxidation as a cooperative reaction medium for H₂O₂ production.

Manganese-cobalt sulfide (MnCo₂S₄) based materials have shown immense potential in the field of energy storage which can be attributed to the high theoretical capacitance, cost-effectiveness, abundance, and feasibility in the synthesis. The present review is mainly classified into two categories of electrode materials: the pristine MnCo₂S₄ and the composites of MnCo₂S₄. Over the years, there have been numerous reports on this topic also comprised different experimentations. This report mainly reviews the advances that have taken place over time in MnCo₂S₄-based electrode materials alongside studying the effects of the morphology and the constituents of MnCo₂S₄. Moreover, the MnCo₂S₄ composites show higher performances than the pristine MnCo₂S₄, including a higher delivery of capacitance, energy density, and power density. Although the interest in this topic is constantly increasing, there is ample scope for the development of MnCo₂S₄-based materials on a large scale. The review also provides the current shortcomings in our observation and the possible solutions to overcome them.

Most recently, silver-metalated graphdiyne (GDY) nanomembranes have been fabricated using the wet-chemistry approach, with highly efficient response for light-driven decomposition of antibiotics (ACS Appl. Nano Mater. 2023, 6, 7395). Inspired by this exciting advance, herein for the first time we theoretically explore the key physical properties of the single-layer M-(N)GDY (M=Cu, Ag, Au) monolayers. Spin-polarized density functional theory (DFT) results reveal that metalated GDY monolayers favor a high-spin ground state, presenting a magnetic moment of 3 µB/unitcell. The sheets are characterized as small band gap magnetic semiconductors, ranging between 0.112 and 0.960 eV, in which only one spin contributes to the band gap. Ab-initio molecular dynamics results confirm the remarkable thermal stability of the constructed graphdiyne nanomembranes at 1000 K. The dynamical stability and mechanical properties at the ground state are furthermore investigated using machine learning interatomic potentials. The ultimate tensile strengths of the metalated graphdiyne lattices are found to be decent, over 6 GPa close to the ground state, but a few folds lower than the native metal-free counterparts. The presented first-principles results confirm remarkable thermal, dynamical and mechanical stability, and appealing electronic characteristics of the metalated graphdiyne nanosheets, attractive to design advanced light-weight energy storage/conversion and spintronic nanosystems.

Perovskite halide compounds are expected to provide various applications such as solar cells and light-emitting diodes. In the present work, structure models of ABX₃ (A = Rb, or Cs, B = Sn, Sr, or Ca, X = Cl, Br, or I) perovskite crystals were constructed, and the electronic structures and properties were analyzed by the first-principles calculations. It was found that halogen substitutions affected the energy gaps, and carrier mobilities of these perovskite crystals, and that the Sn-based perovskite crystals were predicted to have relatively low total energies and excellent carrier mobility. It was also found that the calculated total energies in this study are closely related with the tolerance factors, and the total energies decreased as the tolerance factors approach 1.

Doping carbon nitride with metal nanoparticles and metal single atoms is an efficient way to enhance the photocatalytic activity of the material for light-driven synthetic transformations. The metal-doped carbon nitride composites have also been recently demonstrated as one of the most powerful and sustainable metallaphotocatalysts in organic synthesis. A series of metals such as Pd, Ni, Cu, Fe, Co, and others have been incorporated into carbon nitride and used in photocatalytic reactions, such as cross-couplings, reductions, oxygenations, etc. These newly developed heterogeneous photocatalytic systems exhibit inherent advantages of easy separation and remarkable recyclability. In this review, we summarize the emergence, recent development, as well as unexplored aspects of the metal-doped carbon nitride in the heterogeneous photocatalytic organic transformations.

In recent decades, as the world has grappled with the twin challenges of environmental degradation and energy scarcity, the search for sustainable, efficient, and environmentally sound energy technologies has become more urgent than ever. Interest in carbon-based materials has surged in recent years because they are environmentally friendly, abundant, and chemically stable. As an emerging carbon allotrope, graphdiyne (GDY) is a promising candidate for next-generation energy devices due to its unique chemical structure, natural porosity (the pore diameter is 0.542 nm and the layer spacing is 0.365 nm), high conjugation, amazing charge mobility, excellent conductivity, and excellent stability. Here we reviewed the applications of GDY and its derivatives in electrochemical energy storage have been reviewed, including intrinsic GDY (GDY film, GDY with different aggregated morphologies, such as nanotubes, nanowires, and nanostrips), heteroatom doped GDY, GDY composite, and GDY derivates. The preparation strategies of those GDY-based materials and their performances applied in the electrochemical energy storage devices have been compared and discussed. GDY has been reported extensively to show great potential in various energy storage devices including lithium-ion batteries (LIBs), sodium-ion batteries (SIBs), and potassium-ion batteries (KIBs), of which the theoretical capacities are up to 2553 (LIBs), 2006 (SIBs), 1600 (KIBs) mAh/g, respectively. This review covers the latest developments, challenges and prospects of GDY based materials for the applications of various energy storage fields. Hopefully, this paper can provide valuable insights for the research of GDY and related carbon materials in electrochemical energy storage and promote the application of carbon materials.