Small Science最新文献

Chronic inflammatory diseases of bone and soft tissue pose significant clinical challenges due to their complex pathogenesis and the limitations of conventional therapies, which often fail to address immune microenvironment dysregulation. This review explores the pivotal roles of key immune cells (including mast cells, macrophages, neutrophils, T cells, B cells, and dendritic cells) in driving inflammatory progression and tissue damage through dynamic cellular interactions and cytokine networks. It systematically analyzes the molecular and structural foundations of immunomodulatory biomaterials, such as nanoparticles, hydrogels, and scaffolds, which offer precise spatiotemporal control over immune cell phenotypes and inflammatory mediators. By integrating advances in immunology and materials science, this review highlights how surface functionalization, controlled drug release, and composite material strategies synergistically restore immune homeostasis and promote tissue regeneration. Studies across common chronic inflammatory diseases (e.g., osteoporosis, osteomyelitis, osteoarthritis, diabetic wounds, spinal cord injury, and intervertebral disc degeneration) demonstrate the therapeutic potential of biomaterial-mediated immunomodulation, such as nanoparticle-driven macrophage polarization, cytokine-loaded hydrogel-mediated immune cell balance, and scaffold-guided immune cell recruitment. Challenges in clinical translation, including material biocompatibility and multicomponent synergy, are critically addressed. This review underscores the transformative potential of immunomodulatory biomaterials as next-generation precision therapies to overcome therapeutic bottlenecks in chronic inflammatory diseases.

Graphene, a pioneering 2D carbon nanomaterial, has attracted significant attention owing to its exceptional structural, mechanical, thermal, and electrical performances. These intrinsic properties position it as a promising material platform for nanoelectromechanical systems, flexible electronics, and biomedical devices. Despite numerous existing reviews on graphene, a comprehensive assessment across graphene variants remains limited. Addressing this critical gap, this review provides an in-depth overview of the structural configurations, physical properties, and application domains of key graphene forms-including monolayer, bilayer, few-layer, and multilayer graphene, as well as functionalized derivatives. The review systematically discusses fabrication and synthesis strategies. Furthermore, it delves into state-of-the-art methodologies for mechanical characterization, highlighting experimental and computational techniques, including in situ scanning electron microscopy and transmission electron microscopy, atomic force microscopy, nanoindentation, tensile testing, Raman spectroscopy, and multiscale simulations based on molecular dynamics, density functional theory, coarse-grained modeling, and continuum mechanics. A comparative analysis of experimentally measured and computationally predicted mechanical properties is presented, elucidating existing discrepancies among methods. Collectively, this review aims to serve as a comprehensive reference for researchers at the intersection of nanomaterials, mechanics, and multifunctional material systems, offering a critical foundation for future research and the application of graphene nanostructures in next-generation technologies.

Edge contacts offer significant potential for scaling down 2D transistors due to their minimal contact resistance and reduced contact length. However, their intricate fabrication complicates reproducible large-scale production and evaluation of electrical properties, particularly for p-type channels. Here, the wafer-scale production of p-type nanosheet transistors with pure edge contacts by leveraging the alloying-mediated phase engineering of 2D MoTe₂ is demonstrated. The relative 1T'-phase stability of W _x Mo_1-x Te₂ facilitates the one-pot growth of lateral polymorphic junctions by combining the 2H-single-crystalline MoTe₂ channels with W _x Mo_1-x Te₂ edge contacts. These edge-contact transistors exhibit improved carrier transfer, which is attributed to the impurity-free contact interface and suppressed metal-induced gap states. Consequently, their electrical performance is both exceptional and reproducible, compared with that of transistors fabricated using two-step metallization. Furthermore, irrespective of contact length scaling (8-15 nm), the contact resistivity remains consistently low (≈5.9 × 10^-7 Ω cm²) owing to edge-confined transport, providing a promising ultra-scaled contact scheme for Ångström-node 2D integrated circuits.

Proteinoid-quantum dot (QD) conjugates are a new class of bioquantum hybrid materials combining biological self-assembly with semiconductor nanocrystal electronic properties. This study describes the synthesis and analysis of $\text{Glu}-\text{Phe}-\text{Asp}-\text{Cys}$ proteinoid-QD networks using sulfosuccinimidyl 4-(N-maleimidomethyl)cyclohexane-1-carboxylate (sulfo-SMCC) cross-linking chemistry, achieving 80-90% conjugation efficiency. Scanning electron microscopy reveals a morphological transformation from spherical precursors to toroidal nanostructures with outer diameters of $145.2\pm 18.7\hspace{0.17em}\text{nm}$ and central cavities of $102.3\pm 15.2\hspace{0.17em}\text{nm}$ . The hybrid networks exhibit spontaneous electrochemical oscillations ( $0.03$ to $0.11\hspace{0.17em}\text{Hz}$ , $297$ - $485\hspace{0.17em}\hspace{0.17em}\text{mV}$ ) reproducible across trials. QD incorporation enhances signal amplitude 41-fold ( $1999\hspace{0.17em}\hspace{0.17em}\text{mV}$ vs. $48.8\hspace{0.17em}\hspace{0.17em}\text{mV}$ ) via surface plasmon coupling. Optimal charge transfer resistance for biosensing is ≈ $5250\hspace{0.17em}\hspace{0.17em}\Omega$ . Electron transfer kinetics follow first-order decay ( $\alpha =0.0032\hspace{0.17em}\hspace{0.17em}{\text{Hz}}^{-1}$ ). The networks respond to structured binary input over 5 days, displaying frequency synchronization at $f=0.022217\hspace{0.17em}\hspace{0.17em}\text{Hz}$ . Magnitude-squared coherence values are $0.90$ for pure proteinoids and $0.85$ for conjugates. The system exhibits adaptive response-like behavior through structural transformations, enabling applications in neuromorphic computing, adaptive biosensors, and information processing architectures.

The environmental instability of n-type semiconducting polymers remains a limitation for organic thin-film transistors (OTFTs), as oxygen diffusion and oxidation reduces device performance. Herein, a simple stabilization strategy using poly(2-vinylpyridine) (P2VP), a synthetically accessible, hygroscopic, insulating polymer, is shown. Building on earlier work showing short-term stabilization with this insulating additive, the molecular weight of P2VP is systematically varied and it is demonstrated that higher molecular weight chains form larger domains that reduce oxygen access to the crystalline regions of the benchmark n-type polymer P(NDI2OD-T2). Structural characterization reveals that P2VP domains absorb atmospheric moisture, which both decreases the free volume available for oxygen penetration and partitions oxygen away from semiconductor crystallites. As such, devices containing P2VP exhibit enhanced stability over seven days and can be regenerated by mild heating, whereas neat P(NDI2OD-T2) devices remain degraded. These findings provide mechanistic insight into how insulating polymer blends mediate oxygen-water interactions and highlight polymer blending as a scalable strategy for improving the operational stability of n-type OTFTs.

Protein secretion plays a crucial role in cell-to-cell communication, tissue homeostasis, and disease progression. Mapping secretomes from paired cells provides valuable insights into their interactions; however, existing approaches yield only semi-quantitative, endpoint data, lacking real-time and quantitative resolution. Herein, real-time spatiotemporal imaging of extracellular secretions from individual cells using a high-throughput integrative biosensing nanoplasmonic array (iBNA) within microfluidics is presented. The self-assembled iBNA, composed of precisely arranged gold nanostructures functionalized with aptamer receptors, enhances plasmonic resonance and significantly improves the spatiotemporal resolution and specificity of interleukin-6 (IL-6) imaging, surpassing conventional techniques. The iBNA's molecular recognition mechanism exploits biomolecular surface binding-induced localized plasmonic resonance shifts, correlating with cytokine concentration and enabling optoelectronic detection of transmitted light. Using iBNA, spatiotemporal resolution images of polarized cytokine-mediated cell-to-cell communication between Jurkat T cells and CD4+ T cells, which are essential to immune responses, are achieved. This transformative platform provides unprecedented insights into the spatiotemporal dynamics of protein secretion, offering significant potential for immunological research, cellular biology, and diagnostic applications in infectious diseases.

Solution-processed nanosheet networks show great promise for the field of printed electronics due to their inherent scalability and competitive electrical properties. However, recent progress has allowed for the production of nanosheet networks by a dry, roll-to-roll mechanical exfoliation process. While this method is promising for producing low-cost devices, the electrical properties of such networks are poorly understood and will require elucidation to enable optimization. Herein, the morphological and electrical properties of mechanically exfoliated networks of MoS₂ are investigated. 3D images reveal that the networks show low porosity (11 ± 2%) and a high degree of in-plane alignment. The network conductivity is dependent on annealing temperature and reaches a maximum of 11 ± 0.6 S m^-1, when annealed at 300 °C. The networks show n-type behavior with a mobility of 0.8 ± 0.1 cm² V^-1 s^-1. Electrical impedance spectroscopy measurements reveal that this relatively low network mobility is caused by a combination of high inter-nanosheet resistance (890 ± 150 kΩ) and low intrinsic mobility of the nanosheets (7 ± 2 cm² V^-1 s^-1). Temperature-dependent conductivity measurements show activated hopping as the internanosheet conduction mechanism near room temperature, with an activation energy of 61.9 ± 0.2 meV.

With the rapid development of highly integrated electronic devices, electromagnetic interference leakage through assembly gaps has become a critical challenge. Conductive rubber, combining electrical conductivity and elastic compressibility, is widely recognized as a core material for achieving electromagnetic compatibility. Carbon-based conductive rubbers are attractive for their lightweight and corrosion resistance, but they face the critical bottleneck of achieving high shielding efficiency at low filler loadings. To address this issue, research has shifted from single-component carbon fillers toward multicomponent synergistic systems and structural designs. This review systematically classifies synergistic systems into carbon-carbon, carbon-metal, and carbon-magnetic types, highlighting their conductive network architectures, shielding mechanisms, and performance trade-offs. It further emphasizes the coupled optimization between filler systems and rubber structures, which enables significant improvements in shielding effectiveness. Finally, the review outlines future directions, including service reliability, integrated structural-functional design, intelligent responsive materials, and multifunctional sustainable development, providing guidance for the advancement of high-performance carbon-based conductive rubbers.

The influence of solvent polarity on the self-assembly processes and its effect on the morphological outcome of self-assembled aggregates is another domain that requires a comprehensive study. The present investigation aims to address these issues by employing a unique "V-shaped" luminogen (TBNap, N-(3-pyridyl)-4-amino-1,8-naphthalimide Tröger's base), where the two 1,8-naphthalimide units are nearly orthogonal to each other. The TBNap is synthesized in high yield and fully characterized using standard characterization methods, including X-ray diffraction analysis, which reveals distinctly different structural arrangements of TBNap crystallized as different solvates in various solvent media. Furthermore, due to its internal charge transfer nature, the TBNap exhibits positive solvatochromism and solvent-guided morphogenesis. Given the unique structure, TBNap displays aggregation-induced emission enhancement in THF-H₂O medium and forms self-assembled fluorescent nanoaggregates as imaged using different microscopic imaging techniques such as scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and confocal fluorescence microscopy. Furthermore, the latter is employed to demonstrate the in situ real-time visualization of these fluorescent nanoaggregates formations in native conditions and correlate the morphological outcome with SEM imaging.

Pathological scar treatment remains a clinical challenge, and novel efficient and safe approaches are urgently needed. Regulation of cell fate transition has promising potential for disease treatment and tissue regeneration. Skin fibrosis is linked to a specific fibroblast subtype marked by dipeptidyl peptidase IV (DPP4⁺), by which various agents, including sitagliptin, an established antidiabetic medication, can inhibit. In this study, it is hypothesized that pharmacological inhibition of DPP4 with sitagliptin could redirect fibroblasts toward adipogenic lineages, consequently, preventing scar formation. Fibroblasts from human keloid tissues are first isolated and characterized, confirming their mesenchymal stem cell (MSCs) properties and termed them as keloid-derived MSCs (KMSCs). The analyses reveal that DPP4^- KMSCs exhibit enhanced adipogenic potential, whereas DPP4⁺ KMSCs display greater fibrotic potential. In KMSCs, sitagliptin promotes adipogenesis by inhibiting DPP4-mediated IGF1 truncation, thereby enhancing IGF1 signaling. Furthermore, sitagliptin-loaded microneedle patches are developed capable of sustained, controlled release of sitagliptin or IGF1 into cutaneous wounds, effectively reducing scar formation by promoting the conversion of fibroblasts into adipocytes in vivo. Overall, the findings propose a novel application for sitagliptin in preventing scar formation via cell fate modulation during wound healing, thereby advancing clinical treatment strategies for scars.