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Yan Ji,1 Haorong Li,1 Jiguo Li,2 Guangqiang Yang,1 Wenli Zhang,1 Yan Shen,1 Bohui Xu,3 Jianping Liu,1 Jingyuan Wen,4 Wenting Song1 1Department of Pharmaceutics, School of Pharmacy, China Pharmaceutical University, Nanjing, People’s Republic of China; 2Nanjing Miaobang Meiye Enterprise Management Co, LTD, Nanjing, People’s Republic of China; 3School of Pharmacy, Nantong University, Nantong, 226001, People’s Republic of China; 4School of Pharmacy, Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, the University of Auckland, Auckland, New ZealandCorrespondence: Wenting Song, Department of Pharmaceutics, School of Pharmacy, China Pharmaceutical University, 639 Longmian Avenue, Jiangning District, Nanjing, 211198, People’s Republic of China, Email songwenting908@163.com Jingyuan Wen, School of Pharmacy, Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, the University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand, Email j.wen@auckland.ac.nzPurpose: Acne vulgaris is a chronic inflammatory skin disorder centered on hair follicles, making hair follicle-targeted delivery of anti-acne drugs a promising option for acne treatment. However, current researches have only focused on the delivering to healthy hair follicles, which are intrinsically different from pathologically clogged hair follicles in acne vulgaris.Patients and Methods: Azelaic acid (AZA) micro/nanocrystals with different particle sizes were prepared by wet media milling or high-pressure homogenization. An experiment on AZA micro/nanocrystals delivering to healthy hair follicles was carried out, with and without the use of physical enhancement techniques. More importantly, it innovatively designed an experiment, which could reveal the ability of AZA micro/nanocrystals to penetrate the constructed clogged hair follicles. The anti-inflammatory and antibacterial effects of AZA micro/nanocrystals were evaluated in vitro using a RAW264.7 cell model stimulated by lipopolysaccharide and a Cutibacterium acnes model. Finally, both the anti-acne effects and skin safety of AZA micro/nanocrystals and commercial products were compared in vivo.Results: In comparison to commercial products, 200 nm and 500 nm AZA micro/nanocrystals exhibited an increased capacity to target hair follicles. In the combination group of AZA micro/nanocrystals and ultrasound, the ability to penetrate hair follicles was further remarkably enhanced (ER value up to 9.6). However, toward the clogged hair follicles, AZA micro/nanocrystals cannot easily penetrate into by themselves. Only with the help of 1% salicylic acid, AZA micro/nanocrystals had a great potential to penetrate clogged hair follicle. It was also shown that AZA micro/nanocrystals had anti-inflammatory and antibacterial effects by inhibiting pro-inflammatory factors and Cutibacterium acnes. Compared with commercial products, the combination of AZA micro/nanocrystals and ultrasound exhibited an obvious advantage in both skin safety and in vivo anti-acne therapeutic efficacy.Conclusion: Hair follicle-targeted delivery of AZA micro/nanocrystals provided a satisfactory alternative in promoting the treatment of acne vulgaris.Keywords: acne vulgaris, azelaic acid, hair follicle, micro/nanocrystals, targeted delivery

Materials with efficient circularly polarized phosphorescences (CPPs) are of potential use in advanced data encryption and anti-counterfeiting, bioimaging, optoelectronic devices and so forth. Herein, a simple method is presented for the preparations of CPP-active micro/nanocrystals with large luminescence dissymmetry factors (glum), high phosphorescence quantum efficiencies (Φp) and tunable emission colors. Diastereomeric IrIII and RuII complexes with chiral (±)-camphorsulfonate counter-anions are readily synthesized and assembled into crystalline microrods, microplates or nanofibers with ordered morphologies. The chir-ality information of chiral counter-anions is efficiently transferred to the metal components to afford CPPs with cyan, green, yellow, or red emission colors and ΦP in the range of 5%–85%. The number of chiral anions is found to play a role in influencing the CPP magnitudes of these crystals. The dicationic RuII and tricationic IrIII complexes show glum values in the 10−2 order, which are much larger with respect to those of monocationic IrIII complexes. Single crystal X-ray analysis is performed to obtain information on the chirality transfer of these materials. In addition, circularly polarized photonic signal waveguiding is demonstrated using the microcrystals of an IrIII complex. This work demonstrates an appealing strategy of constructing chiral micro/nano-architectures for potential applications in chiral nanophotonics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The capture and recovery of precious metals like platinum, palladium, and gold from mine wastewater or secondary resources has raised concerns owing to the necessity and significance of environmental protection and sustainable development. Although two-dimensional layered materials exhibit great promise for capturing and removing noble metal ions due to highly exposed active sites, the laminar structure of two-dimensional materials with high specific surface energy readily induces the accumulation of nanosheets and structural damage during ion adsorption reactions, greatly impeding their practical application. Herein, for the first time we developed a one-pot synthetic strategy to construct hierarchical SnS micro/nanocrystals with three-dimensional (3D) and urchinlike architecture in which the SnS nanosheets generate on the surface of the SnS microcenter. Interestingly, altering the content of polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) can modulate the morphology of SnS, including nanoparticles, nanoflakes, urchinlike microstructure, and flowerlike microstructure. The hierarchical urchinlike SnS materials were applied to capture the precious metal ions. As expected, high selectivity and efficient capture were achieved with an order of Au3+ > Pd2+ > Pt4+. Specifically, the as-synthesized urchinlike SnS maintains high efficiency for the capture of Au3+, Pt4+, and Pd2+ under strong acid conditions. In addition, the excellent capture capacities for Au3+ (793.7 mg g–1) and high distribution coefficients (Kd) of 1.97 × 106 mL g–1 place the SnS at the top of the range of materials known for capture. Fast adsorption kinetics analysis displays a kinetic constant of 9.103 × 10–6 g mg–1 min–1 according to the second order kinetic reaction equation. There was no obvious morphology change for the as-prepared SnS material after the capture of noble metal ions, suggesting its robust stability. The 3D SnS micro/nanostructure was thus promising for efficient separation, high sensitivity detection, and removal of the noble metal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Molecular afterglow materials with ultralong-lived excited states have attracted considerable interest owing to their promise for light-emitting devices, optical imaging, and anti-counterfeiting applications. However, the realization of ultralong afterglow emission in low-dimensional micro/nanostructures has remained an open challenge, limiting progress toward new-generation photonic applications. In this work, new types of mono/binuclear metal-organic halide micro/nanocrystals with tunable afterglow properties, made possibly by the rational control over both ultralong-lived room-temperature phosphorescence and thermally activated delayed fluorescence, are developed. Interestingly, the mono/binuclear coordination complexes present excitation-dependent luminescence across a wide range (wavelength > 150 nm) with broad emission color differences from blue to yellow owing to the multiple long-lived excited states. The 1D binuclear metal-organic microrods further exhibit excitation-dependent optical waveguide and space/time dual-resolved afterglow emission properties, endowing them with great potential in wavelength-division multiplexing information photonics and logic gates. Therefore, this work not only communicates the first example of wide-range tunable ultralong afterglow of low-dimensional metal-organic micro/nanocrystals under ambient conditions but also provides a new route to achieve optical communications and photonic logic compilation at the micro/nanoscale., (© 2021 Wiley-VCH GmbH.)

Lead halide perovskites are considered as very promising photovoltaic materials due to their tunable direct bandgaps, large absorption coefficients, long carrier diffusion lengths, and ultralow trap state densities, etc. With these unique properties, the lead halide perovskites have also demonstrated great potential for use as semiconductor gain materials. In this review, a snapshot on the recent advances of lead halide perovskite micro‐ and nanolasers is given. The dependence of lasing performance on the perovskite dimensionality, crystal size, and operation temperature is systematically discussed. Furthermore, the development of continuous wave (cw) pumped perovskite lasers and lead‐free perovskite lasers is also summarized. In the final section, the challenges and future prospects of metal halide perovskite lasers are provided. These pieces of knowledge would help advancing the development of perovskite on‐chip coherent light sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Owing to extraordinary properties, small-molecule organic micro/nanocrystals are identified to be prospective system to construct new-generation organic electronic and optoelectronic devices. Alignment and patterning of organic micro/nanocrystals at desired locations are prerequisite for their device applications in practice. Though various methods have been developed to control their directional growth and alignment, high-throughput precise positioning and patterning of the organic micro/nanocrystals at desired locations remains a challenge. Here, we report a photoresist-assisted evaporation method for large-area growth of precisely positioned ultralong methyl-squarylium (MeSq) microwire (MW) arrays. Positions as well as alignment densities of the MWs can be precisely controlled with the aid of the photoresist-template that fabricated by photolithography process. This strategy enables large-scale fabrication of organic MW arrays with nearly the same accuracy, uniformity, and reliability as photolithography. Near-infrared (NIR) photodetectors based on the MeSq MW arrays show excellent photoresponse behavior and are capable of detecting 808 nm light with high stability and reproducibility. The high on/off ratio of 1600 is significantly better than other organic nanostructure-based optical switchers. More importantly, this strategy can be readily extended to other organic molecules, revealing the great potential of photoresist-assisted evaporation method for future high-performance organic optoelectronic devices.