Search

Conventional single thermal nature of phase change materials (PCMs) seriously obstructs their frontier applications. Herein, we designed advanced carbon nanotube (CNT) bundles assembled flexible hierarchical framework based phase change material composites for high-performance thermotherapy of allergic rhinitis. Hierarchically interconnected 3D freestanding flexible CNT sponge was constructed via a facile organic solvent-free route using table salt as a sacrificial template. The resulting hierarchical CNT sponge serves as an ideal compatible supporting host and polyethylene glycol (PEG) serves as an excellent thermal energy guest. Subsequently, we designed advanced portable integrated functional mask consisting of outer air purification layer and inner thermal regulation layer for the thermotherapy of allergic rhinitis, in which pristine CNT sponge serves as an excellent particulate matter capturer and PEG-infiltrated CNT sponge serves as a superior thermal regulator. Strikingly, our uniquely constructed flexible CNT sponge-involved composite PCMs assisted by polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) harvest high-performance thermotherapy (~33 ​min of the plateau at ~43.5 ​°C). The corresponding medical results (HE staining and Wrights staining) further indicate that our designed thermotherapy mask can significantly reduce the inflammatory injury of nasal mucosa. Additionally, pristine hierarchical CNT sponge guarantees the inhaled air quality and enhances the thermotherapy effect. This synthetic strategy can be scaled up for large-scale production. This novel functional host-guest strategy creates an innovative platform for developing advanced multifunctional PCMs with multiple fascinating peculiarities and desired functional properties and teaches an old dog new tricks.

Dopamine D1 receptor (D1DR) is proved to be a promising target to prevent tumor metastasis, and our previous studies showed that QAP14, a potent anti-cancer agent, exerted inhibitory effect on lung metastasis via D1DR activation. Therefore, the purpose of the study was to establish count data models to quantitatively characterize the disease progression of lung metastasis and assess the anti-metastatic effect of QAP14. Data of metastatic progression were collected in 4T1 tumor-bearing mice. Generalized Poisson distribution best described the variability of metastasis counts among the individuals. An empirical PK/PD model was developed to establish mathematical relationships between steady plasma concentrations of QAP14 and metastasis growth dynamics. The latency period of metastasis was estimated to be 12 days after tumor implantation. Our model structure also fitted well to other D1DR agonists (fenoldopam and l-stepholidine) which had inhibitory impact on breast cancer lung metastasis likewise. QAP14 40 mg/kg showed the best inhibitory efficacy, for it provided the longest prolongation of metastasis-free periods compared with fenoldopam or l-stepholidine. This study provides a quantitative method to describe the lung metastasis progression of 4T1 allografts, as well as an alternative PD model structure to evaluate anti-metastatic efficacy.

Ultrathin Bimetal MOF nanosheets (BMOFNs) are regarded as effective electrocatalyst for Oxygen evolution reaction (OER) because of their abundance of coordinatively unsaturated metal atoms, enhanced mass permeability and coupling effect between bimetals, while the limited conductivity and stability severely hinders their widespread application. Here, we develop an in situ semi-sacrificial template-assisted strategy to grow ultrathin BMOFNs on NiCo-LDH to construct non-noble metal electrocatalysts that are both active and stable. The optimized NiCo-LDH@MOFs heterostructure exhibits a superior electrocatalytic activity with accelerated electronic transfer and significantly enhanced durability of over 300 h. An advanced AFM-IR technology is introduced for the first time to investigate the formation of the 2D-2D heterogeneous structure in NiCo-LDH@MOFs, providing insights into the morphology-structure-composition evolution of the electrocatalyst at a nanoscale. This work demonstrates an in-situ growth strategy to achieve high-performance ultrathin MOF-based electrocatalysts, and provides advanced combinatorial characterization techniques to monitor the material growth process.

Currently, most reported composite phase change materials (PCMs) are powdery shape, which require secondary processing for practical applications. Although some monolithic composite PCMs have been developed, their flexibility usually undergoes a remarkable reduction or even complete disappearance when supporting material s are infiltrated with PCMs. To solve this problem, we fabricated a flexible supporting material with a folded layer-bridge network structure by dispersing carbon nanotubes (CNTs) in acetic acid solution of chitosan (CS) with poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) using a directional freezing method. Then CS/PVA/CNTs (CPC) scaffold was infiltrated with polyethylene glycol (PEG) to prepare PEG@CPC composite PCM. The resulting flexible composite PCM displays excellent mechanical properties, such as high tensile strength of 2.42 MPa and bending resistance of >100 cycles. Moreover, it displays outstanding thermal properties, such as high crystallinity of close to 100% and encapsulation ratio of 92.6 wt%. This work provides a simple method for preparation of flexible monolithic composite PCMs for many potential applications, such as wearable fitting-skin temperature-controlled materials.

Currently, numerous studies are devoted to the pursuit of thermal conductivity enhancement of phase change materials (PCMs). On the contrary, few researches are reported to reduce the thermal conductivity of PCMs. Generally, the PCMs with reduced thermal conductivity have great potential in thermal protection application. Herein, we propose a novel in situ one-step strategy to facilely prepare monolithic silica aerogel-based composite PCMs. The silica aerogels possess low thermal conductivity and are used to encapsulate PCMs to prepare composite PCMs, such as polyethylene glycol (PEG) or octadecanol. Compare with PEG2000@silica aerogel, the resulting monolithic octadecanol@silica aerogel have low thermal conductivity (0.12 W m−1 K−1), high latent heat (127.73 J/g), large compressive strength (11 MPa), good hydrophobicity (contact angle 124°) and superior thermal cycling stability. This monolithic silica aerogel-based composite PCMs could prolong heat preservation duration due to the synergistic effect between low thermal conductivity and high latent heat of composite PCMs, showing potential promise for direct application to the thermal insulation and thermal protection device. More importantly, this in situ one-step synthesis strategy is universal for different types of PCMs.