TiO2/MXene-Assisted LDI-MS for Urine Metabolic Profiling in Urinary Disease

Cancer remains an intractable medical problem. Rapid diagnosis and identification of cancer are critical to differentiate it from nonmalignant diseases. High-throughput biofluid metabolic analysis has potential for cancer diagnosis. Nevertheless, the present metabolite analysis method does not meet the demand for high-throughput screening of diseases. Herein, a high-throughput, cost-effective, and noninvasive urine metabolic profiling method based on TiO₂/MXene-assisted laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry (LDI-MS) is presented for the efficient screening of bladder cancer (BC) and nonmalignant urinary disease. Combined with machine learning, TiO₂/MXene-assisted LDI-MS enables high diagnostic accuracy (96.8%) for the classification of patient groups (including 47 BC and 46 ureteral calculus (UC) patients) from healthy controls (113 cases). In addition, BC patients can also be identified from noncancerous UC individuals with an accuracy of 88.3% in the independent test cohort. Furthermore, metabolite variations between BC and UC individuals are investigated based on relative quantification, and related pathways are also discussed. These results suggest that this method, based on urine metabolic patterns, provides a potential tool for rapidly distinguishing urinary diseases and it may pave the way for precision medicine.     

Flexible Porous Organic Polymer Membranes for Protonic Field-Effect Transistors

Artificial transistors represent an ideal means for meeting the requirements in interfacing with biological systems. It is pivotal to develop new proton-conductive materials for the transduction between biochemical events and electronic signals. Herein, the first demonstration of a porous organic polymer membrane (POPM) as a proton-conductive material for protonic field-effect transistors is presented. The POPM is readily prepared through a thiourea-formation condensation reaction. Under hydrated conditions and at room temperature, the POPM delivers a proton mobility of 5.7 × 10⁻³ cm² V⁻¹ s⁻¹; the charge carrier densities are successfully modulated from 4.3 × 10¹⁷ to 14.1 × 10¹⁷ cm⁻³ by the gate voltage. This study provides a type of promising modular proton-conductive materials for bioelectronics application.     

Low voltage operating organic light emitting transistors with efficient charge blocking layer

Charge injection/blocking layers play important roles in the performances of organic electronic devices. Their incorporation into organic light emitting transistors has been limitted, due to generally high operating voltages (above 60 V) of these devices. In this work, two hole blocking molecules are integrated into tris-(8-hydroxyquinoline) aluminum (Alq₃) based light emitting transistors under operating voltage as low as 5 V. The effects of hole blocking and electron injection are decoupled through the differences in the energy levels. Significantly improved optical performance is achieved with the molecule of suitable energy level for electron injection. Surprisingly, a decreased performance is observed in the case of another hole blocking molecule evidencing that charge injection overweighs charge blocking in this device architecture.     

Black phosphorus junctions and their electrical and optoelectronic applications

Black phosphorus(BP),an emerging two-dimensional material,is considered a promising candidate for next-genera-tion electronic and optoelectronic devices due to in-plane anisotropy,high mobility,and direct bandgap.However,BP devices face challenges due to their limited stability,photo-response speed,and detection range.To enhance BP with powerful electric-al and optical performance,the BP heterostructures can be created.In this review,the state-of-the-art heterostructures and their electrical and optoelectronic applications based on black phosphorus are discussed.Five parts introduce the perform-ance of BP-based devices,including black phosphorus sandwich structure by hBN with better stability and higher mobility,black phosphorus homojunction by dual-gate structure for optical applications,black phosphorus heterojunction with other 2D materials for faster photo-detection,black phosphorus heterojunction integration with 3D bulk material,and BP via As-doping tunable bandgap enabling photo-detection up to 8.2 μm.Finally,we discuss the challenges and prospects for BP electric-al and optical devices and applications.     

High-performance 2,9-DPh-DNTT organic thin-film transistor by weak epitaxy growth method

2,9-DPh-DNTT, an isomeric of diphenyl-dinaphtho[2,3-b:2′,3′-f]-thieno[3,2-b] thiophene (DPh-DNTTs), is an emerging candidate of high mobility organic semiconductor material. In this work, a high performance 2,9-DPh-DNTT organic thin-film transistor (OTFT) is fabricated by the method of weak epitaxy growth. The quality of 2,9-DPh-DNTT thin film was significantly improved when its epitaxial layer grows on an inducing layer of para-sexiphenyl (p-6P). Continuous large-area, highly ordered and terraced 2,9-DPh-DNTT polycrystalline thin films are obtained. The hole mobility of as-fabricated 2,9-DPh-DNTT thin-film transistor reaches up to 6.4 cm² V⁻¹s⁻¹. This simple process of preparing high mobility 2,9-DPh-DNTT thin-film transistor supplies a facile route of large-area OTFT fabrication.     

相场法模拟GaAs衬底上InGaAs异质结表面形貌

本工作采用相场法模拟GaAs衬底上生长的In_(0.3)Ga_(0.7)As多层异质结构薄膜表面。通过引入多序参量,使用半隐性傅里叶谱方法求解Cahn-Hilliard方程可以求得带缓冲层结构的薄膜表面形貌。计算结果模拟了薄膜生长过程,研究显示,使用In0.15-Ga0.85As缓冲层,厚度从1nm增加到4nm,薄膜表面临界波长从34nm提升到80nm。随着缓冲层的厚度从1nm增加到10nm,使用正弦波表面的模拟结果显示,薄膜表面粗糙度从2.87nm下降到0.43nm,随机叠加波表面的模拟结果也类似,表面粗糙度从1.21nm下降到0.18nm。热力学分析和应变分布分析可以解释缓冲层对薄膜表面形貌演化的作用。该模拟计算方式对设计缓冲层结构有很大的帮助,模拟计算的结果可以与实验相比对。     

Construction,structure and photocatalysis of janus nanofiber modified by g-C3N4 nanosheets heterostructure photocatalysts

The construction of photocatalyst with gradient band structure is guided by the principle of band gap engineering. Rational structural design is advanced and applied to construct a new-typed peculiarly structural and functional carbon-based [TiO₂/C]//[Bi₂WO₆/C] Janus nanofiber modified by g-C₃N₄ nanosheets heterostructure photocatalyst (denoted as TB-JgHP). The flexible carbon-based [TiO₂/C]//[Bi₂WO₆/C] Janus nanofiber with one side responding to ultraviolet light and the other capturing visible light is fabricated by conjugate electrospinning, and then g-C₃N₄ nanosheets are uniformly grown in-situ on the surface of the Janus nanofibers by using gas-solid reaction via gasification of urea. The optimized TB-JgHP possesses remarkable hydrogen evolution efficiency (17.48 mmol h⁻¹ g⁻¹) and methylene blue degradation rate (99.2%) under simulated sunlight illumination for 100 min, demonstrating prominent dual-functional characteristics. The enhanced photocatalytic performance benefits from the unique Janus structure as well as the synergistic effects among the triple heterostructures of TiO₂ and Bi₂WO₆, g-C₃N₄ and TiO₂, g-C₃N₄ and Bi₂WO₆. The formation of gradient band structure among heterostructures is more conducive to the multi-step separation of photo-induced electron-hole pairs and more effective absorption of light. Further, flexible self-standing carbon-based photocatalysts not only have outstanding electron transport performance, but also are easy to separate from solution with preeminent recyclable stability. Based on a series of characterization techniques, it is further proved that TB-JgHP has higher carrier separation efficiency than the counterpart contrast samples. The formation mechanism of TB-JgHP is proposed, and the construction technique is established. The design philosophy and construction technique presented in this work pave a new avenue for research and development of other heterostructure photocatalysts.     

Compiler compatible 5.66 Mb/mm2 8T 1R1W register file in 14 nm FinFET technology

1-read/1-write (1R1W) register file (RF) is a popular memory configuration in modern feature rich SoCs requiring significant amount of embedded memory. A memory compiler is constructed using the 8T RF bitcell spanning a range of instances from 32 b to 72 Kb. An 8T low-leakage bitcell of 0.106 μm² is used in a 14 nm FinFET technology with a 70 nm contacted gate pitch for high-density (HD) two-port (TP) RF memory compiler which achieves 5.66 Mb/mm² array density for a 72 Kb array which is the highest reported density in 14 nm FinFET technology. The density improvement is achieved by using techniques such as leaf-cell optimization (eliminating transistors), better architectural planning, top level connectivity through leaf-cell abutment and minimizing the number of unique leaf-cells. These techniques are fully compatible with memory compiler usage over the required span. Leakage power is minimized by using power-switches without degrading the density mentioned above. Self-induced supply voltage collapse technique is applied for write and a four stack static keeper is used for read Vmin improvement. Fabricated test chips using 14 nm process have demonstrated 2.33 GHz performance at 1.1 V/25 °C operation. Overall V_min of 550 mV is achieved with this design at 25 °C. The inbuilt power-switch improves leakage power by 12x in simulation. Approximately 8% die area of a leading 14 nm SoC in commercialization is occupied by these compiled RF instances.     

Using d-limonene as the non-aromatic and non-chlorinated solvent for the fabrications of high performance polymer light-emitting diodes and field-effect transistors

Aiming to environment protection, green solvents are crucial for commercialization of solution-processed optoelectronic devices. In this work, d-limonene, a natural product, was introduced as the non-aromatic and non-chlorinated solvent for processing of polymer light-emitting diodes (PLEDs) and organic field effect transistors (OFETs). It was found that d-limonene could be a good solvent for a blue-emitting polyfluorene-based random copolymer for PLEDs and an alternating copolymer FBT-Th₄(1,4) with high hole mobility (μ_h) for OFETs. In comparisons to routine solvent-casted films of the two conjugated polymers, the resulting d-limonene-deposited films could show comparable film qualities, based on UV–vis absorption spectra and observations by atomic force microscopy (AFM). With d-limonene as the processing solvent, efficient blue PLEDs with CIE coordinates of (0.16, 0.16), maximum external quantum efficiency of 3.57%, and luminous efficiency of 3.66 cd/A, and OFETs with outstanding μ_h of 1.06 cm² (V s)⁻¹ were demonstrated. Our results suggest that d-limonene would be a promising non-aromatic and non-chlorinated solvent for solution processing of conjugated polymers and molecules for optoelectronic device applications.     

In-plane light emission of organic light-emitting transistors with bilayer structure using ambipolar semiconducting polymers

The concept of using an ambipolar bilayer semiconducting heterostructure in organic light-emitting transistors (OLETs) is introduced to provide a new approach to achieve surface emission. The properties of top-gate-type bilayer OLETs with ambipolar materials based on two types of fluorene-type polymers used as an emissive layer and an electron blocking layer are investigated. Line-shaped yellow–green emission occurs near a hole-injection electrode. When hole transport is dominant in the upper layer which acts as an electron blocking layer, and electrons are injected into the lower layer, an in-plane light-emitting pattern is observed. The measured in-plane emission zone confirms that both hole and electron transport are determined to occur mainly along the different organic layers between the source and drain electrodes, and an in-plane recombination zone of electrons and holes exists near the bilayer organic interface. This work is anticipated to be useful for the development of in-plane light-emitting transistors.