Search

Chemical solution deposition (CSD)-based thin-film fabrication techniques for solid electrolytes are important for accelerating the commercialization of all-solid-state lithium-ion batteries. Post-treatments, typically heat treatments at high temperatures, are applied to obtain a pure crystal structure with a dense morphology for high electrochemical performance. However, lithium evaporates at high temperatures, leading to changes in the material composition and decrease in performance. In this study, a novel rapid sintering method, namely flash-light sintering (FLS), was applied as a post-treatment for spin-coated lithium lanthanum titanate (LLTO) thin films to prevent lithium evaporation and obtain fully dense thin films with perovskite structures. The flash-light-sintered LLTO thin film exhibited negligible lithium loss with pore-free morphologies and a pure cubic perovskite structure, whereas the thermally sintered LLTO thin film exhibited significant lithium evaporation. The lithium-preserved cubic LLTO dense thin films prepared by FLS showed an outstanding total ionic conductivity of ∼6 × 10−5 S cm−1, the highest recorded for CSD-based LLTO thin films. We demonstrated that the FLS method could be successfully applied for LLTO thin-film fabrication while maintaining the lithium stoichiometry and ensuring a highly densified film and cubic structure, which has a higher ionic conductivity than those of structures such as tetragonal or orthorhombic unit cells. The rapid FLS method not only simplifies the fabrication of LLTO thin films but also provides opportunities for its wide application to materials containing lithium or other elements with low melting points. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coordination-driven self-assembly of metal–ligand complexes is a powerful nanoarchitectonic tool for particle engineering, but its usability is limited when using two immiscible coating components. This paper reports that simple vortexing of a biphasic system of Fe3+ ions in water and flavonoids in oil forms nanoshells on individual particles, thereby enabling the utilization of water-insoluble ligands as coating materials. Mechanistic studies suggest that the biphasic mass-transfer equilibrium of flavonoid-Fe3+ species controls the shell formation, with the oil phase acting as a reservoir of coating precursors for continuous coating. The versatility and convenience of our method expand the chemical toolbox for modulating particle–material interfaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rapid degradation of Fe3+-tannic acid films is achieved under mild conditions via ascorbic acid-mediated Fe3+ reduction, which overcomes the problems in the disassembly of a metal–organic complex including slow reaction rates and reaction incompatibility with living cells. The strategy of reductive disassembly is applied to degradable single-cell nanoencapsulation, providing an advanced tool for tightly controlling and manipulating the cell–material interface. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, single-cell molecular analysis has been leveraged to achieve unprecedented levels of biological investigation. However, a lack of simple, high-throughput single-cell methods has hindered in-depth population-wide studies with single-cell resolution. We report a microwell-based cytometric method for simultaneous measurements of gene and protein expression dynamics in thousands of single cells. We quantified the regulatory effects of transcriptional and translational inhibitors on cMET mRNA and cMET protein in cell populations. We studied the dynamic responses of individual cells to drug treatments, by measuring cMET overexpression levels in individual non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) cells with induced drug resistance. Across NSCLC cell lines with a given protein expression, distinct patterns of transcript–protein correlation emerged. We believe this platform is applicable for interrogating the dynamics of gene expression, protein expression, and translational kinetics at the single-cell level – a paradigm shift in life science and medicine toward discovering vital cell regulatory mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coordination-driven self-assembly of metal-ligand complexes is a powerful nanoarchitectonic tool for particle engineering, but its usability is limited when using two immiscible coating components. This paper reports that simple vortexing of a biphasic system of Fe 3+ ions in water and flavonoids in oil forms nanoshells on individual particles, thereby enabling the utilization of water-insoluble ligands as coating materials. Mechanistic studies suggest that the biphasic mass-transfer equilibrium of flavonoid-Fe 3+ species controls the shell formation, with the oil phase acting as a reservoir of coating precursors for continuous coating. The versatility and convenience of our method expand the chemical toolbox for modulating particle-material interfaces.

Rapid degradation of Fe 3+ -tannic acid films is achieved under mild conditions via ascorbic acid-mediated Fe 3+ reduction, which overcomes the problems in the disassembly of a metal-organic complex including slow reaction rates and reaction incompatibility with living cells. The strategy of reductive disassembly is applied to degradable single-cell nanoencapsulation, providing an advanced tool for tightly controlling and manipulating the cell-material interface.

The cytoprotection of individual living cells under in vitro and daily-life conditions is a prerequisite for various cell-based applications including cell therapy, cell-based sensors, regenerative medicine, and even the food industry. In this work, we use a cytocompatible two-step process to encapsulate Saccharomyces cerevisiae in a highly uniform nanometric (<100 nm) shell composed of organic poly(norepinephrine) and inorganic silica layers. The resulting cell-in-shell structure acquires multiple resistance against lytic enzyme, desiccation, and UV-C irradiation. In addition to the UV-C filtering effect of the double-layered shell, the biochemical responses of the encapsulated yeast are suggested to contribute to the observed UV-C tolerance. This work offers a chemical tool for cytoprotecting individual living cells under multiple stresses and also for studying biochemical behavior at the cellular level.