Search

Advancements in wearable electronics and Internet of Things (IoT) sensors have catalyzed the need for effective micro‐energy harvesting. Piezoelectric nanogenerators (PENGs) are ideal due to their high conversion efficiency and durability. However, the contrast between the high piezoelectric coefficients of brittle inorganic ceramics and the lower coefficients of superior flexibility and biocompatibility of organic polymers poses a significant challenge. This work introduces a novel multilayer composite PENG, integrating a single‐crystal BaTiO3 (BTO) film between poly(vinylidene fluoride‐co‐trifluoroethylene) (PVDF‐TrFE) layers. The PVDF‐TrFE/BTO/PVDF‐TrFE PENGs demonstrate substantially improved energy harvesting performance, with outputs reaching up to 15.1 V, 2.39 µA, and power density of 17.33 µW cm−2 during bending deformation. This power density represents a significant increase compared to pure PVDF‐TrFE and nanoparticle BTO‐doped PVDF‐TrFE PENGs. Durability tests show consistent performance, with a stable ∼15.0 V output across 2000 bending cycles. Additionally, when attached to the human body, these PENGs efficiently convert body motions into electrical responses. This work demonstrates a significant enhancement in the performance of PENGs using sandwich‐structured composite of PVDF‐TrFE and freestanding single‐crystal BTO films, showing its potential to address the power requirements of wearable and flexible electronic devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lightweight high-entropy alloys (HEAs) are a new class of low-density, high strength-to-weight ratio metallic structural material. Understanding their corrosion behavior is crucial for designing microstructures for their practical applications. This work investigates the electrochemical corrosion behavior of lightweight HEAs AlCrTiV0.5Cux (x = 0, 0.2, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8, and 1.0) in a 0.6 M NaCl solution. These HEAs were produced by vacuum arc melting. In contrast to 304L stainless steel, all of the alloys exhibited lower current density levels caused by self-corrosion, with AlCrTiV0.5 demonstrating the highest corrosion resistance (0.131 μA/cm2). Corrosion resistance decreased along with the content of copper because copper segregation accelerated local corrosion throughout the alloy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ultrahigh flexibility and elasticity achieved in freestanding single-crystalline ferroelectric oxide membranes have attracted much attention recently. However, for antiferroelectric oxides, the flexibility limit and fundamental mechanism in their freestanding membranes are still not explored clearly. Here, we successfully fabricate freestanding single-crystalline PbZrO 3 membranes by a water-soluble sacrificial layer technique. They exhibit good antiferroelectricity and have a commensurate/incommensurate modulated microstructure. Moreover, they also have good shape recoverability when bending with a small radius of curvature (about 2.4 μm for the thickness of 120 nm), corresponding to a bending strain of 2.5%. They could tolerate a maximum bending strain as large as 3.5%, far beyond their bulk counterpart. Our atomistic simulations reveal that this remarkable flexibility originates from the antiferroelectric-ferroelectric phase transition with the aid of polarization rotation. This study not only suggests the mechanism of antiferroelectric oxides to achieve high flexibility but also paves the way for potential applications in flexible electronics., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Introduction: Preeclampsia is a life-threatening disorder of pregnancy unique to humans. Interleukin (IL)11 is elevated in serum from pregnancies that subsequently develop early-onset preeclampsia and pharmacological elevation of IL11 in pregnant mice causes the development of early-onset preeclampsia-like features (hypertension, proteinuria, and fetal growth restriction). However, the mechanism by which IL11 drives preeclampsia is unknown., Method: Pregnant mice were administered PEGylated (PEG)IL11 or control (PEG) from embryonic day (E)10-16 and the effect on inflammasome activation, systolic blood pressure (during gestation and at 50/90 days post-natal), placental development, and fetal/post-natal pup growth measured. RNAseq analysis was performed on E13 placenta. Human 1 st trimester placental villi were treated with IL11 and the effect on inflammasome activation and pyroptosis identified by immunohistochemistry and ELISA., Result: PEGIL11 activated the placental inflammasome causing inflammation, fibrosis, and acute and chronic hypertension in wild-type mice. Global and placental-specific loss of the inflammasome adaptor protein Asc and global loss of the Nlrp3 sensor protein prevented PEGIL11-induced fibrosis and hypertension in mice but did not prevent PEGIL11-induced fetal growth restriction or stillbirths. RNA-sequencing and histology identified that PEGIL11 inhibited trophoblast differentiation towards spongiotrophoblast and syncytiotrophoblast lineages in mice and extravillous trophoblast lineages in human placental villi., Discussion: Inhibition of ASC/NLRP3 inflammasome activity could prevent IL11-induced inflammation and fibrosis in various disease states including preeclampsia., Competing Interests: AM is an employee of and holds shares in Adiso Therapeutics. The remaining authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2023 Menkhorst, Santos, Zhou, Yang, Winship, Rainczuk, Nguyen, Zhang, Moore, Williams, Lê Cao, Mansell and Dimitriadis.)

The rapid development of spintronics requires the devices to be flexible, to be used in wearable electronics, and controllable, to be used with magnetoelectric (ME) structures. However, the clamping effect inevitably leads to a decreased ME effect on the rigid substrate, and it remains challenging to directly prepare high-quality ferroelectric (FE) membranes on the widely used flexible substrate such as MICA or polyimide (PI). Here, periodic wrinkle-patterned flexible (Co/Pt) 5 /BaTiO 3 (BTO) perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA) heterostructures were prepared using the water-soluble method. The high-quality single-crystal BTO membrane ensures that intricate wrinkles do not fracture and a high ME coefficient is achievable. The transferred sample that is released from the clamping effect shows an enhanced ME effect in both in-plane and out-of-plane directions, with the ME coefficient reaching up to 68 Oe °C -1 . The ferromagnetic resonance (FMR) field of the flexible sample can be tuned by tensile strain up to 272 Oe. The finely controlled wrinkle shows periodic strain variations at peak and valley regions that switch the PMA magnetic domain motion as an effective control method. The proposed ultraflexible wrinkle sample shows great potential for combining multiple magnetization tuning approaches, allowing it to potentially serve as a tunable high-density 3D storage prototype.