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Carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) hydrogels have been used as adhesive materials for food and other newly emerged innovative applications. To increase the knowledge of CMC hydrogel-based adhesives and optimize the preparation and storage conditions in practical, we prepared CMC hydrogels for cigar wrapper application and investigated their adhesive performance as affected by different CMC type, concentration, pH, temperature, and storage time, etc. Two parameters, initial adhesiveness and peel strength were used to evaluate the adhesive behavior of CMC with paper and tobacco leaf. Sample C2 with relatively medium molecular weight and medium degree of substitution values showed the best adhesive performance. Hydrogels prepared using boiled water at neutral pH presented better adhesive behavior, which was not significantly affected by storage temperature (up to 13 days). The wettability, steady shear flow behavior, dynamic rheological properties, and stress recovery performance of CMC hydrogel were measured, and their correlations to the adhesive behavior were discussed.

Summary The static PN junction is the foundation of integrated circuits. Herein, we pioneer a high current density generation by mechanically moving N-type semiconductor over P-type semiconductor, named as the dynamic PN junction. The establishment and destruction of the depletion layer causes the redistribution and rebounding of diffusing carriers by the built-in field, similar to a capacitive charge/discharge process of PN junction capacitance during the movement. Through inserting dielectric layer at the interface of the dynamic PN junction, output voltage can be improved and designed numerically according to the energy level difference between the valence band of semiconductor and conduction band of dielectric layer. Especially, the dynamic MoS2/AlN/Si generator with open-circuit voltage of 5.1 V, short-circuit current density of 112.0 A/m2, power density of 130.0 W/m2, and power-conversion efficiency of 32.5% has been achieved, which can light up light-emitting diode timely and directly. This generator can continuously work for 1 h, demonstrating its great potential applications., Graphical Abstract, Highlights • High current density direct-current generator based on dynamic PN junctions • Dynamic equilibrium between establishment and destruction of the depletion layer • Capacitive discharge of PN junction capacitance caused by hot carriers rebounding • Enhance and design voltage numerically by inserting dielectric layer at the interface, Electrical Engineering; Energy Materials; Mechanical Engineering; Tribology

Summary Although perovskite has been widely explored in optoelectronic devices, it has been rarely explored as a Schottky junction. Here, we demonstrate a light- and mechanical-energy co-harvesting generator based on a dynamic metal/perovskite Schottky junction. In dark conditions, by moving Al over perovskite film (conductivity: 70.0 S/cm), output voltage and current density of −0.70 V and −41.1 A/m2, respectively, are achieved. As defects eliminate the photo-generated carriers in the static metal/perovskite junction under light illumination, the photoresponse is negligible. Strikingly, the output current of dynamic metal/perovskite junction under light illumination is enhanced by 3-fold compared with the dynamic junction in the dark condition. This nonlinear photo-enhanced effect is proposed as a result of strong interaction between the photo-generated and bound back carriers in the dynamic Schottky junction as well as the high light-absorption coefficient of perovskite. A flexible Al/perovskite generator has been demonstrated as a wearable energy-harvesting device.

The realization of p-type conduction in GaN and commercialized GaN light-emitting diodes (LED) is accepted as an advance in the development of human society. Conventionally, LED is based on PN junction and the quantum wells are introduced for confining electrons and holes, which improves the external quantum efficiency (EQE). Herein, we realized a graphene/AlGaN/GaN LED emitting double peaks at 430 nm and 560 nm. The blue peak at 430 nm is originated from the recombination process between holes injected from graphene/AlGaN heterostructure and electron produced from the tunnelling and avalanche multiplication process in p-type AlGaN/p-type GaN interface. Compared with the bare p-type AlGaN/GaN heterostructure without blue light emission, the graphene/p-AlGaN enhances the hole injection process through the band gap alignment and the mediate thickness of p-AlGaN is important taking the hole transport in AlGaN into consideration. The AlGaN/GaN interface confines the produced electrons and thus result in a high EQE of 55.8% under 5 mA current after intercalating an Al2O3 barrier at the interface between graphene and AlGaN/GaN. Moreover, the tunable graphene/AlGaN/GaN LED with different intensity of 430 nm has been demonstrated through changing the Fermi level of graphene by gating effect. The graphene/AlGaN heterostructure induced confinement effect can bring a novel type of LED, which can be optimized for special applications.

A type of broadband (325−980 nm) self-powered photodetector based on graphene/GaAs van der Waals heterojunction is reported. By simply spinning a layer of Ag nano-particles (Ag NPs) onto graphene/GaAs heterostructure, the responsivity and detectivity of our devices for the whole spectrum range are enhanced significantly. The maximum photocurrent responsivity of 210 mA W−1 (increased by 38%) and detectivity of 2.98 × 1013 Jones (increased by 202%) are achieved at 405 nm, which is about two or three orders of magnitude larger than other graphene based self-powered photodetectors. The mechanism of the improvement originates from the overlap the depletion region of graphene/GaAs heterostructure, the surface plasmon enhanced light field region below the surface and the light absorption region of the GaAs layer. The external quantum efficiency (EQE) measurement, transient photoluminescence (PL) test and the comparative theoretical simulation show that the surface plasmon enhancement should only be applicable for graphene/direct band gap semiconductor heterostructure, where the semiconductor should have a high optical absorption coefficient. The obtained high performance broadband photodetector with excellent detectivity is a promising candidate for many important optoelectronic applications, such as ultrasensitive image sensor in charge coupled displayer field, which requires colour sensors not only with high photo responsivity but also in a wide spectral range.

In this study, soybean protein isolate (SPI) and glucose (glc) were conjugated by wet Maillard reaction at 95 °C for 0–6 h with a mass ratio of 1:2. The degree of grafting and SDS-PAGE of SPI-conjugates were studied and a highest degree of grafting (23.14 %) was achieved at reaction time of 4 h. Gels were then prepared by crosslinking SPI-glc mixture or conjugates using transglutaminase, and their mechanical properties were charactered by hardness and gumminess. To further study the impact of conjugation on the gastrointestinal digestion of gel, rheological properties of gels after in vitro gastric and intestinal digestions were evaluated through amplitude and frequency sweep tests. Compared with SPI and SPI-glc mixture, gels formed by conjugates with 1 h and 4 h reaction time showed significantly higher viscosity, storage modulus (G') and complex modulus (G*) values after gastric digestion, indicating that these conjugate gels had slower gastric digestion kinetics. There were no significant differences among these samples in simulated intestinal digestion. Therefore, the SPI-glc conjugate gels may have great potential to be used for gastric delivery.

As a typical two-dimensional (2D) atomic thin material, the massless Dirac Fermions in graphene promise many unique physical properties, such as high carrier mobility and high light transmission. However, after a decade of research and a huge number of papers focusing on graphene, high performance graphene based optoelectronic devices is still lacked, which should be achieved for realizing competitive industrial graphene product. In this review, we point out high performance optoelectronic devices such as solar cells, photodetector and light emitting diodes can be demonstrated by properly marrying graphene with semiconductor. The fundamental physics of graphene/semiconductor heterostructure as well as its optoelectronic properties are comprehensively addressed. We suggest six strategies of improving the performance of graphene/semiconductor based optoelectronic devices. The outstanding light harvesting enhancement characteristic of surface plasmon is detailed represented to highlight its importance and potential. Especially, we indicate that graphene/semiconductor heterostructure solar cell can reach a power conversion efficiency of 30%.

There has been a great interest in utilization of plant protein such as dry edible bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) proteins as cost-effective biomaterials to replace animal proteins for delivery of nutrients in foods. The functional properties of bean proteins may be further improved by tuning the degree of enzymatic hydrolysis. In this study, the complexation of Great Northern bean hydrolysates (BPH) with curcumin was investigated. Compared to the micro-sized BPH globulins (1.2–1.5 μm in diameter), self-assembled nanocomplexation took place spontaneously after mixing with curcumin, with size ranging from 244.7 to 344.7 nm. BPH with 5% degree of hydrolysis (DH) showed the highest curcumin loading capacity value (9.97 μg/mg). By investigating the intrinsic fluorescence quenching and curcumin fluorescence enhancement, we found that the binding affinity was increased at low DH but decreased at the DH of 7% or higher, compared to pristine protein. BPH-5 showed the highest loading capacity (9.97 μg/mg), relatively small particle size (286.9 nm) and low PDI value (0.359), and optimal storage stability, which was mainly attributed to its relatively high binding affinity and surface hydrophobicity. The findings in this study provide insight on fabricating, optimizing and selecting plant protein-based delivery systems in functional foods.