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Coordination polymers (CPs) are a class of crystalline solids that are considered brittle, due to the dominance of directional coordination bonding, which limits their utility in flexible electronics and wearable devices. Hence, engineering plasticity into functional CPs is of great importance. Here, we report plastic bending of a semiconducting CP crystal, Cu-Trz (Trz = 1,2,3-triazolate), that originates from delamination facilitated by the discrete bonding interactions along different crystallographic directions in the lattice. The coexistence of strong coordination bonds and weak supramolecular interactions, together with the unique molecular packing, are the structural features that enable the mechanical flexibility and anisotropic response. The spatially resolved analysis of short-range molecular forces reveals that the strong coordination bonds, and the adaptive C–H···π and Cu···Cu interactions, synergistically lead to the delamination of the local structures and consequently the associated mechanical bending. The proposed delamination mechanism offers a versatile tool for designing the plasticity of CPs and other molecular crystals. Coordination polymers are normally considered to be brittle due to the dominance of directional coordination bonding. Here the authors report the plastic bending in a semiconducting coordination polymer crystal enabled by delamination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In China, ninety percent of the varieties of V. vinifera are protected from the cold by burying the vines for safe over-wintering, a labor-intensive practice that restricts the sustainable development of the grape and wine industry. An alternative solution is to breed cold-resistant varieties that can tolerate the local climatic conditions. The conventional cold-resistant breeding of grapes worldwide is mainly performed by the cross-breeding of wild species or V. labrusca and V. vinifera, so that new varieties obtain major cold-resistance genes from wild species or V. labrusca but maintain the high-quality genes of V. vinifera. However, there seems to be a close linkage between the major cold-resistance genes and the genes that control the poor characteristics of wild species or V. labrusca. The fruit traits of the hybrid progenies were unable to completely overcome the inheritance of the inferior traits of the wild parent or American parent. For grape genetic improvement for quality and disease-resistance, we propose use of minor-polygenes substitution and accumulation (MPSA) and intraspecific recurrent selection in V. vinifera (IRSV). "Ecolly" bred by this method has strong disease-, cold-, and drought- resistance, and is an excellent variety for brewing dry white wine and distilled spirits. At − 20 °C, the freezing damage degree of 50% winter buds of Ecolly ranged from 0.7 to 1.0, while the damage degree of Chardonnay ranged from 1.7 to 2.0. Thus, the variety is widely cultivated in many soil-burial over-wintering areas, but does not need to be buried to survive over-wintering. In summary, Ecolly is a successful case demonstrating the effectiveness of MPSA and IRSV for cold-resistance grape breeding, which provide a new thought for breeding new grapevine variety with cold resistance and quality brewing characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A compact directional backlight module of time-multiplexed auto-stereoscopic display based on side-glowing polymer optical fiber (SGPOF) is proposed. The optical system is mainly composed of SGPOF array and cylindrical lens array. Spatial crosstalk is reduced by inserting a grating film as multi-slit diaphragm between the SGPOF array and the cylindrical lens array. A theoretical model is constructed based on the imaging optics principle of the off-axis ray. In the experiments, the cylindrical lens array concentrates a small number of views on three different view zones, the display can provide high luminance. The measurement results show that the luminance uniformity of the backlight module is up to 89.6%, and in the viewing zone the crosstalk is lower than 10%. The backlight module is compacted that the thickness being only 7 mm. The full-resolution and low-crosstalk 3D images are realized by using SGPOF backlight. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]