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Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
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    Ultracompact three-dimensional tubular conductivity microsensors for ionic and biosensing applications
    (Washington, DC : American Chemical Society, 2014) Martinez-Cisneros, C.S.; Sanchez, S.; Xi, W.; Schmidt, O.G.
    We present ultracompact three-dimensional tubular structures integrating Au-based electrodes as impedimetric microsensors for the in-flow determination of mono- and divalent ionic species and HeLa cells. The microsensors show an improved performance of 2 orders of magnitude (limit of detection = 0.1 nM for KCl) compared to conventional planar conductivity detection systems integrated in microfluidic platforms and the capability to detect single HeLa cells in flowing phosphate buffered saline. These highly integrated conductivity tubular sensors thus open new possibilities for lab-in-a-tube devices for bioapplications such as biosensing and bioelectronics.
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    Tailor-made nanostructures bridging chaos and order for highly efficient white organic light-emitting diodes
    (London : Nature Publishing Group, 2019) Li, Y.; Kovačič, M.; Westphalen, J.; Oswald, S.; Ma, Z.; Hänisch, C.; Will, P.-A.; Jiang, L.; Junghaehnel, M.; Scholz, R.; Lenk, S.; Reineke, S.
    Organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) suffer from notorious light trapping, resulting in only moderate external quantum efficiencies. Here, we report a facile, scalable, lithography-free method to generate controllable nanostructures with directional randomness and dimensional order, significantly boosting the efficiency of white OLEDs. Mechanical deformations form on the surface of poly(dimethylsiloxane) in response to compressive stress release, initialized by reactive ions etching with periodicity and depth distribution ranging from dozens of nanometers to micrometers. We demonstrate the possibility of independently tuning the average depth and the dominant periodicity. Integrating these nanostructures into a two-unit tandem white organic light-emitting diode, a maximum external quantum efficiency of 76.3% and a luminous efficacy of 95.7 lm W−1 are achieved with extracted substrate modes. The enhancement factor of 1.53 ± 0.12 at 10,000 cd m−2 is obtained. An optical model is built by considering the dipole orientation, emitting wavelength, and the dipole position on the sinusoidal nanotexture.
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    A diuranium carbide cluster stabilized inside a C80 fullerene cage
    (London : Nature Publishing Group, 2018) Zhang, X.; Li, W.; Feng, L.; Chen, X.; Hansen, A.; Grimme, S.; Fortier, S.; Sergentu, D.-C.; Duignan, T.J.; Autschbach, J.; Wang, S.; Wang, Y.; Velkos, G.; Popov, A.A.; Aghdassi, N.; Duhm, S.; Li, X.; Li, J.; Echegoyen, L.; Schwarz, W.H.E.; Chen, N.
    Unsupported non-bridged uranium-carbon double bonds have long been sought after in actinide chemistry as fundamental synthetic targets in the study of actinide-ligand multiple bonding. Here we report that, utilizing I h(7)-C80 fullerenes as nanocontainers, a diuranium carbide cluster, U=C=U, has been encapsulated and stabilized in the form of UCU@I h(7)-C80. This endohedral fullerene was prepared utilizing the Krätschmer-Huffman arc discharge method, and was then co-crystallized with nickel(II) octaethylporphyrin (NiII-OEP) to produce UCU@I h(7)-C80·[NiII-OEP] as single crystals. X-ray diffraction analysis reveals a cage-stabilized, carbide-bridged, bent UCU cluster with unexpectedly short uranium-carbon distances (2.03 Å) indicative of covalent U=C double-bond character. The quantum-chemical results suggest that both U atoms in the UCU unit have formal oxidation state of +5. The structural features of UCU@I h(7)-C80 and the covalent nature of the U(f1)=C double bonds were further affirmed through various spectroscopic and theoretical analyses.
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    Engineering grain boundaries at the 2D limit for the hydrogen evolution reaction
    ([London] : Nature Publishing Group UK, 2020) He, Yongmin; Tang, Pengyi; Hu, Zhili; He, Qiyuan; Zhu, Chao; Wang, Luqing; Zeng, Qingsheng; Golani, Prafful; Gao, Guanhui; Fu, Wei; Huang, Zhiqi; Gao, Caitian; Xia, Juan; Wang, Xingli; Wang, Xuewen; Zhu, Chao; Ramasse, Quentin M.; Zhang, Ao; An, Boxing; Zhang, Yongzhe; Martí-Sánchez, Sara; Morante, Joan Ramon; Wang, Liang; Tay, Beng Kang; Yakobson, Boris I.; Trampert, Achim; Zhang, Hua; Wu, Minghong; Wang, Qi Jie; Arbiol, Jordi; Liu, Zheng
    Atom-thin transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) have emerged as fascinating materials and key structures for electrocatalysis. So far, their edges, dopant heteroatoms and defects have been intensively explored as active sites for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) to split water. However, grain boundaries (GBs), a key type of defects in TMDs, have been overlooked due to their low density and large structural variations. Here, we demonstrate the synthesis of wafer-size atom-thin TMD films with an ultra-high-density of GBs, up to ~1012 cm−2. We propose a climb and drive 0D/2D interaction to explain the underlying growth mechanism. The electrocatalytic activity of the nanograin film is comprehensively examined by micro-electrochemical measurements, showing an excellent hydrogen-evolution performance (onset potential: −25 mV and Tafel slope: 54 mV dec−1), thus indicating an intrinsically high activation of the TMD GBs.
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    Single molecule magnet with an unpaired electron trapped between two lanthanide ions inside a fullerene
    (London : Nature Publishing Group, 2017) Liu, F.; Krylov, D.S.; Spree, L.; Avdoshenko, S.M.; Samoylova, N.A.; Rosenkranz, M.; Kostanyan, A.; Greber, T.; Wolter, A.U.B.; Büchner, B.; Popov, A.A.
    Increasing the temperature at which molecules behave as single-molecule magnets is a serious challenge in molecular magnetism. One of the ways to address this problem is to create the molecules with strongly coupled lanthanide ions. In this work, endohedral metallofullerenes Y 2 @C 80 and Dy 2 @C 80 are obtained in the form of air-stable benzyl monoadducts. Both feature an unpaired electron trapped between metal ions, thus forming a single-electron metal-metal bond. Giant exchange interactions between lanthanide ions and the unpaired electron result in single-molecule magnetism of Dy 2 @C 80 (CH 2 Ph) with a record-high 100 s blocking temperature of 18 K. All magnetic moments in Dy 2 @C 80 (CH 2 Ph) are parallel and couple ferromagnetically to form a single spin unit of 21 μ B with a dysprosium-electron exchange constant of 32 cm -1. The barrier of the magnetization reversal of 613 K is assigned to the state in which the spin of one Dy centre is flipped.