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Jin, Chang Min; Lee, Wooju; Kim, Dongchoul; Kang, Taewook; Choi, Inhee
doi: 10.1002/smll.201803055pmid: 30294867
Controlled assembly of colloidal nanoparticles onto solid substrates generally needs to overcome their thermal diffusion in water. For this purpose, several techniques that are based on chemical bonding, capillary interactions with substrate patterning, optical force, and optofluidic heating of light‐absorbing substrates are proposed. However, the direct assembly of colloidal nanoparticles on generic substrates without chemical linkers and substrate patterning still remains challenging. Here, photothermal convection lithography is proposed, which allows the rapid placement of colloidal nanoparticles onto the surface of diverse solid substrates. It is based on local photothermal heating of colloidal nanoparticles by resonant light focusing without substrate heating, which induces convective flow. The convective flow, then, forces the colloidal nanoparticles to assemble at the illumination point of light. The size of the assembly is increased by either increasing the light intensity or illumination time. It is shown that three types of colloidal gold nanoparticles with different shapes (rod, star, and sphere) can be uniformly assembled by the proposed method. Each assembly with a diameter of tens of micrometers can be completed within a minute and its patterned arrays can also be achieved rapidly.
Ponzoni, Mirco; Curnis, Flavio; Brignole, Chiara; Bruno, Silvia; Guarnieri, Daniela; Sitia, Leopoldo; Marotta, Roberto; Sacchi, Angelina; Bauckneht, Matteo; Buschiazzo, Ambra; Rossi, Andrea; Di Paolo, Daniela; Perri, Patrizia; Gori, Alessandro; Sementa, Angela R.;
Qin, Si‐Yong; Zhang, Ai‐Qing; Zhang, Xian‐Zheng
doi: 10.1002/smll.201802417pmid: 30247806
Efficacy and safety of chemotherapeutic drugs constitute two major criteria in tumor chemotherapy. Nanomedicines with tumor‐targeted properties hold great promise for improving the efficacy and safety. To design targeted nanomedicines, the pathological characteristics of tumors are extensively and deeply excavated. Here, the rationale, principles, and advantages of exploiting these pathological characteristics to develop targeted nanoplatforms for tumor chemotherapy are discussed. Homotypic targeting with the ability of self‐recognition to source tumors is reviewed individually. In the meanwhile, the limitations and perspective of these targeted nanomedicines are also discussed.
Han, Weidong; Cui, Fuhai; Si, Yang; Mao, Xue; Ding, Bin; Kim, Hakyong
doi: 10.1002/smll.201801963pmid: 30204281
Inorganic luminescent materials as one of the important high‐performance materials are widely used for industry and scientific research, mainly owing to their outstanding luminescence properties. However, inorganic luminescent materials are typically brittle and inelastic, which greatly limit their use in practical applications, particularly in flexible optoelectronic devices. In this work, it is shown that “plum‐pudding” like CsPbBr3/Cs4PbBr6 perovskite crystals anchor onto Al2O3‐La2O3 (CCAL) nanofibrous membranes, which are synthesized via a facile electrospinning and subsequent supersaturated recrystallization process. The as‐synthesized CCAL membranes exhibit outstanding mechanical flexibility and luminescence properties. Meanwhile, the crystal structure and luminous performance of the CCAL membranes are regulated by different molar ratios of CsBr/PbBr2. The photoluminescence reaches a maximum value for the CCAL membranes produced with a CsBr/PbBr2 ratio of 1, and shows a narrow emission line‐width of 18 nm. Furthermore, the potential applications of the CCAL nanofibrous membranes in green light devices through a remote nanofibrous membranes packaging approach are demonstrated. A pure green emission is achieved with the Commission Internationale de L'Eclairage color coordinates of (0.28, 0.65). This facile strategy would open a new avenue to flexible inorganic luminescent materials for the lighting and backlight display industries.
Zhou, Zaigang; Zhang, Baoli; Wang, Shushan; Zai, Wenjing; Yuan, Ahu; Hu, Yiqiao; Wu, Jinhui
doi: 10.1002/smll.201801694pmid: 30307696
Currently, limited tumor drug permeation and poor oxygen perfusion are two major bottlenecks that significantly impair the efficacy of existing antitumor drugs, especially oxygen‐sensitive antitumor drugs. One vital cause of these major bottlenecks is the abnormal tumor vessel barrier. To the best knowledge of the authors, platelets play a vital role in the maintenance of an abnormal tumor blood barrier through platelet–tumor interaction. Thus, platelet inhibition may present a new way to enhance drug delivery. In this study, it is originally discovered that perfluorotributylamine‐based albumin nanoparticles (PFTBA@HSA) possess excellent platelet inhibiting abilities, which then selectively disrupt the tumor vessel barrier, resulting in a remarkably enhanced intratumoral drug accumulation. Interestingly enough, the tumor hypoxia is also obviously relieved by enhanced oxygen carrier red blood cell distribution and PFTBA@HSA infiltration in the tumors. Finally, the efficacy of oxygen‐sensitive antitumor drugs is significantly amplified by PFTBA@HSA owing to enhanced drug permeation and relieved tumor hypoxia. Therefore, for the first time, it is demonstrated that PFTBA@HSA could be used as an effective way to improve the efficacy of existing tumor therapies by disrupting tumor vessel barriers through targeted platelet inhibition.
Liu, Ji; Zhang, Hao‐Bin; Xie, Xi; Yang, Rui; Liu, Zhangshuo; Liu, Yafeng; Yu, Zhong‐Zhen
doi: 10.1002/smll.201802479pmid: 30295015
2D transition metal carbides and nitrides (MXenes) have gained extensive attention recently due to their versatile surface chemistry, layered structure, and intriguing properties. The assembly of MXene sheets into macroscopic architectures is an important approach to harness their extraordinary properties. However, it is difficult to construct a freestanding, mechanically flexible, and 3D framework of MXene sheets owing to their weak intersheet interactions. Herein, an interfacial enhancement strategy to construct multifunctional, superelastic, and lightweight 3D MXene architectures by bridging individual MXene sheets with polyimide macromolecules is developed. The resulting lightweight aerogel exhibits superelasticity with large reversible compressibility, excellent fatigue resistance (1000 cycles at 50% strain), 20% reversible stretchability, and high electrical conductivity of ≈4.0 S m−1. The outstanding mechanical flexibility and electrical conductivity make the aerogel promising for damping, microwave absorption coating, and flexible strain sensor. More interestingly, an exceptional microwave absorption performance with a maximum reflection loss of −45.4 dB at 9.59 GHz and a wide effective absorption bandwidth of 5.1 GHz are achieved.
Yang, Zijiang; Pan, Jinlong; Liang, Yongqi; Li, Qi; Xu, Dongsheng
doi: 10.1002/smll.201802240pmid: 30294860
The power conversion efficiency of perovskite solar cells has been boosted rapidly, it has so far exceeded that of commercial polycrystalline silicon solar cells. This has prompted great interest in large‐scale production and deployment of perovskite solar cells. However, state‐of‐the‐art perovskite solar cells are fabricated inside gloveboxes and further annealing at high temperatures (typically at >100 °C for 30 min) is needed. These two required conditions are not compatible with, either in the respect to high‐throughput or thermal budget, a feasible industrial production process. By eliminating the two requirements, the deposition of perovskite films both at room temperature and under ambient air condition will make the scalable roll‐to‐roll fabrication scheme feasible. Here, the anti‐solvent (chloroform) washing is introduced to the previously developed hydrochloride‐assisted method and demonstrate that the room‐temperature method can be carried out under ambient air condition for MAPbI3 film deposition. Through this new procedure, a power conversion efficiency as high as 17.72% is achieved for MAPbI3 planar devices fabricated under a relative humidity of 30% at room temperature. Further, it is revealed that the room‐temperature process MAPbI3 films show a near monoexponential decay pathway with a long photoluminescence lifetime of >400 ns.
Gao, Qin; Zhang, Xiao; Yin, Wenyan; Ma, Dongqing; Xie, Changjian; Zheng, Lirong; Dong, Xinghua; Mei, Linqiang; Yu, Jie; Wang, Chaozhan; Gu, Zhanjun; Zhao, Yuliang
Showing 1 to 10 of 26 Articles
doi: 10.1002/smll.201802886pmid: 30294852
Targeted delivery of anticancer drugs with nanocarriers can reduce side effects and ameliorate therapeutic efficacy. However, poorly perfused and dysfunctional tumor vessels limit the transport of the payload into solid tumors. The use of tumor‐penetrating nanocarriers might enhance tumor uptake and antitumor effects. A peptide containing a tissue‐penetrating (TP) consensus motif, capable of recognizing neuropilin‐1, is here fused to a neuroblastoma‐targeting peptide (pep) previously developed. Neuroblastoma cell lines and cells derived from both xenografts and high‐risk neuroblastoma patients show overexpression of neuropilin‐1. In vitro studies reveal that TP–pep binds cell lines and cells derived from neuroblastoma patients more efficiently than pep. TP–pep, after coupling to doxorubicin‐containing stealth liposomes (TP–pep–SL[doxorubicin]), enhances their uptake by cells and cytotoxic effects in vitro, while increasing tumor‐binding capability and homing in vivo. TP–pep–SL[doxorubicin] treatment enhances the Evans Blue dye accumulation in tumors but not in nontumor tissues, pointing to selective increase of vascular permeability in tumor tissues. Compared to pep–SL[doxorubicin], TP–pep–SL[doxorubicin] shows an increased antineuroblastoma activity in three neuroblastoma animal models mimicking the growth of neuroblastoma in humans. The enhancement of drug penetration in tumors by TP–pep‐targeted nanoparticles may represent an innovative strategy for neuroblastoma.
The rising dangers of bacterial infections have created an urgent need for the development of a new generation of antibacterial nanoagents and therapeutics. A new near‐infrared 808 nm laser‐mediated nitric oxide (NO)‐releasing nanovehicle (MoS2‐BNN6) is reported through the simple assembly of α‐cyclodextrin‐modified MoS2 nanosheets with a heat‐sensitive NO donor N,N′‐di‐sec‐butyl‐N,N′‐dinitroso‐1,4‐phenylenediamine (BNN6) for the rapid and effective treatment of three typical Gram‐negative and Gram‐positive bacteria (ampicillin‐resistant Escherichia coli, heat‐resistant Escherichia faecalis, and pathogen Staphylococcus aureus). This MoS2‐BNN6 nanovehicle has good biocompatibility and can be captured by bacteria to increase opportunities of NO diffusion to the bacterial surface. Once stimulated by 808 nm laser irradiation, the MoS2‐BNN6 nanovehicle not only exhibits photothermal therapy (PTT) efficacy but also can precisely control NO release, generating oxidative/nitrosative stress. The temperature‐enhanced catalytic function of MoS2 induced by 808 nm laser irradiation simultaneously accelerates the oxidation of glutathione. This acceleration disrupts the balance of antioxidants, ultimately resulting in significant DNA damage to the bacteria. Within 10 min, the MoS2‐BNN6 with enhanced PTT/NO synergetic antibacterial function achieves >97.2% inactivation of bacteria. The safe synergetic therapy strategy can also effectively repair wounds through the formation of collagen fibers and elimination of inflammation during tissue reconstruction.