Search

In this work, a highly stretchable and sensitive strain sensor using silver nanowires (Ag NWs)/multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) on hair band is proposed. The fabrication process of such sensors enabled scalable and facile production with low cost by dipping hair band into Ag NWs/MWCNTs composites suspension. The sensing performance of the sensors was optimized by tuning the Ag NWs/MWCNTs mass ratio. The hair band based strain sensor with Ag NWs/MWCNTs mass ratio of 30 exhibited the best performance with high sensitivity of 416.0 and good stretchability up to 70%. Moreover, great repeatability and long-term stability could be achieved over 7500 cycles of stretch-release. This Ag NWs/MWCNTs-hair band sensor can be used for monitoring human motions and swallowing action.

Gd and Si co-doped HfO2 gate dielectric thin films were prepared by atomic layer deposition (ALD), while Gd[N(SiMe3)2]3, Hf[NEtMe]4, and H2O are chosen to be precursors. The Gd and Si were successfully co-doped into HfO2 films using only one doping precursor Gd[N(SiMe3)2]3. The doping concentration can be facilely tuned by controlling ALD recipe. The atomic percentages of Si/(Si + Gd + Hf) and Gd/(Si + Gd + Hf) increase from 11.5 to 28.9% and from 6.8 to 28.4% when changing the ALD cycle ratio of GdxSiyO to HfO2 from 1:9 to 1:1. The band gap and band alignment were investigated by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. The results imply that the band gap of Gd/Si co-doped HfO2 films has a positive relation with doping concentration. Moreover, the valence band offset decreases with doping concentration first but then increases, while the change of conduction band offset is opposite. The (1:6)-HfxGdySizO films with 11.6 at.% Gd/(Gd + Hf) exhibit the maximum accumulation capacitance and dielectric constant, which are only slightly smaller than those of the HfO2 films. Compared to HfO2 films, the leakage current density of (1:6)-HfxGdySizO films is decreased by at least one order of magnitude. Therefore, Gd and Si co-doping can improve the electrical properties of HfO2 films.

In this work, commercial anatase TiO2 powders were modified using ultrathin Fe2O3 layer by atomic layer deposition (ALD). The ultrathin Fe2O3 coating having small bandgap of 2.20 eV can increase the visible light absorption of TiO2 supports, at the meantime, Fe2O3/TiO2 heterojunction can effectively improve the lifetime of photogenerated electron–hole pairs. Results of ALD Fe2O3 modified TiO2 catalyst, therefore, showed great visible light driven catalytic degradation of methyl orange compared to pristine TiO2. A 400 cycles of ALD Fe2O3 (~ 2.6 nm) coated TiO2 powders exhibit the highest degradation efficiency of 97.4% in 90 min, much higher than pristine TiO2 powders of only 12.5%. Moreover, an ultrathin ALD Al2O3 (~ 2 nm) was able to improve the stability of Fe2O3-TiO2 catalyst. These results demonstrate that ALD surface modification with ultrathin coating is an extremely powerful route for the applications in constructing efficient and stable photocatalysts.

To solve the poor cyclability of faradic supercapacitors (SCs), the authors reported a unique porous carbon (PC) coating with “gap shell” structure on carbon fiber cloth (CFC)/NiS2 materials. This gap shell PC coating was fabricated by combining atomic layer deposition (ALD) Al2O3 and molecular layer deposition alucone, followed by carbonization and etching. The as-prepared CFC/NiS2/PC composites were directly used as binder-free electrodes for SCs. Benefited from its novel nanostructure, the CFC/NiS2/PC electrode shows a large specific capacitance of 1034.6 F/g at 1 A/g and considerable rate capability of 67% capacitance, retaining ratio within 1–20 A/g. The cyclability of the CFC/NiS2/PC electrode is enhanced by 50% relative to the mere CFC/NiS2 after 2000 cycles, which is attributed to the gap and electrically conductive PC coating. Hence, this work provides a promising approach to design gap shell layer for improved cyclability of faradic SCs and other practical applications in energy storage electronics.

A dense Al2O3 interlayer was inserted into TiN to enhance the tribological and anti-corrosion properties of TiN hard coating via a hybrid process of magnetron sputtering and atomic layer deposition (ALD). The influence of the ALD-Al2O3 layer on the microstructure, mechanical, tribological and anti-corrosion properties of TiN was examined. The TiN-Al2O3 coating exhibits low friction coefficient and specific wear rate, due to the structure change and columnar refinement caused by the addition of amorphous ALD-Al2O3 interlay which improves the mechanical properties of hard coating. The improved corrosion properties of TiN are attributed to the fact that the insulating ALD-Al2O3 used as a sealing layer can prevent the corrosive chlorine ions migrating into the lower TiN layer and block the charge transport in coatings. Moreover, raising the insertion position of ALD-Al2O3 layer away from the steel substrate results in a further increase in the anti-corrosion property of TiN-Al2O3 composite coating.

Uniform C-Al2O3 composite coating with homogeneous thickness was adopted to improve the electrochemical properties of LiNi0.6Co0.2Mn0.2O2 by the pyrolysis of molecular layer deposited alucone in argon. Compared with LiNi0.6Co0.2Mn0.2O2 coated atomic layer deposited Al2O3, C-Al2O3 coated electrode delivered high discharge capacity, good rate capability and durable cyclic stability, even at elevated temperature. Such enhanced electrochemical performance could be attributed to the synergistic effect between the amorphous Al2O3 and conductive carbon in the dual-functional C-Al2O3 composite coating, resulting in the improved structural stability and electrochemical kinetics of LiNi0.6Co0.2Mn0.2O2 cathode. The network of carbon in C-Al2O3 composite coating supplied high electrical conductivity, and lowers the charge transfer resistance on the surface of electrode. Meanwhile, the uniform amorphous Al2O3 with its flexible structure improved the structural stability of cathode and favored the diffusion of Li+ ions.

The wide applications of ultrathin group IV metal oxide films (TiO2, ZrO2 and HfO2) probably expose materials to potentially reactive etchants and solvents, appealing for extraordinary chemical stability and corrosion resistance property. In this paper, TiO2 ultrathin films were deposited on Si at 200 °C while ZrO2 and HfO2 were grown at 250 °C to fit their growth temperature window, by thermal atomic layer deposition (TALD) and plasma-enhanced ALD (PEALD). A variety of chemical liquid media including 1 mol/L H2SO4, 1 mol/L HCl, 1 mol/L KOH, 1 mol/L KCl, and 18 MΩ deionized water were used to test and compare chemical stability of all these as-deposited group IV metal oxides thin films, as well as post-annealed samples at various temperatures. Among these metal oxides, TALD/PEALD HfO2 ultrathin films exhibit the best chemical stability and anti-corrosion property without any change in thickness after long time immersion into acidic, alkaline and neutral solutions. As-deposited TALD ZrO2 ultrathin films have slow etch rate of 1.06 nm/day in 1 mol/L HCl, however other PEALD ZrO2 ultrathin films and annealed TALD ones show better anti-acid stability, indicating the role of introduction of plasma O2 in PEALD and post-thermal treatment. As-deposited TiO2 ultrathin films by TALD and PEALD are found to be etched slowly in acidic solutions, but the PEALD can decrease the etching rate of TiO2 by ~41%. After post-annealing, TiO2 ultrathin films have satisfactory corrosion resistance, which is ascribed to the crystallization transition from amorphous to anatase phase and the formation of 5% Si-doped TiO2 ultrathin layers on sample surfaces, i.e. Ti-silicate. ZrO2, and TiO2 ultrathin films show excellent corrosion endurance property in basic and neutral solutions. Simultaneously, 304 stainless steel coated with PEALD-HfO2 is found to have a lower corrosion rate than that with TALD-HfO2 by means of electrochemical measurement. The pre-treatment of plasma H2 to 304 stainless steel can effectively reduce interfacial impurities and porosity of overlayers with significantly enhanced corrosion endurance. Above all, the chemical stability and anti-corrosion properties of IV group metal oxide coatings can be improved by using PEALD technique, post-annealing process and plasma H2 pre-treatment to substrates.

In the semiconductors and related industries, the fabrication of nanostructures and nanopatterns has become progressive demand for achieving near-atomic accuracy and selectivity in etching different materials, particularly in ultra-thin gate dielectrics and ultra-thin channels used in field-effect transistors and other nanodevices below 10 nm scale. Atomic layer etching (ALE) is a novel technique for removing thin layers of material using sequential and self-limiting reactions. Different from most ALE processes using plasma-enhanced or other energetic particles-enhanced surface reactions, thermal ALE realizes isotropic atomic-level etch control based on sequential thermal-drive reaction steps that are self-terminating and self-saturating. Thermal ALE can be viewed as the reverse of atomic layer deposition (ALD), both of which define the atomic layer removal and growth steps required for advanced semiconductor fabrication. In this review, we focus on the concept and basic characteristics of the thermal ALE in comparison with ALD. Several typical thermal ALE mechanisms including fluorination and ligand-exchange, conversion-etch, oxidation and fluorination reactions are intensively introduced. The pros and cons of thermal ALE, plasma ALE, and traditional plasma etching are compared. Some representative materials and their typical thermal ALE processes are summarized. Finally, the outlook and challenges of thermal ALE are addressed. Keywords: Thermal atomic layer etching, Atomic layer deposition, Self-limiting, Reaction mechanism, Atomic-scale precision

The introduction of metal nanocrystals (NCs) has been confirmed to improve electrical uniformity of oxide-based resistive random access memory (RRAM) devices significantly; however, the current reports do not systematically elucidate the relationship between the size/distribution of NCs and the electrical uniformity of RRAM devices. In this paper, we focused on the impact of metal NCs size and areal density on the resistive switching (RS) performances of oxide RRAM by atomic layer deposition (ALD) based on the experimental results and theoretical calculation. The dependence of ALD cycles of 50–130 during Pt or CoPt x NCs growth on the RS parameters of Al2O3 or HfO2 memory units has been evaluated systematically. The RRAM embedded Pt or CoPt x NCs shows the trends: with increasing ALD cycles, the forming voltage, set/reset voltage, the resistance in off and on state, and ${R}_{ \mathrm{\scriptscriptstyle OFF}}/{R}_{ \mathrm{\scriptscriptstyle ON}}$ ratio entirely first decrease, then flatten, and increase later with a minimum value at about 100 cycles. Although all metal NCs with various sizes enhance the electric field strength compared to at the planar region, only metal NCs with proper NCs size and areal density (9 nm/6– $10\times 10^{\textsf {11}}$ /cm2 in this paper) can effectively produce stronger localized electric field at the tip of metal NCs, leading to optimal RS behavior.

In this work, TiN film deposited by plasma enhanced atomic layer deposition (PEALD) is adopted to modify the commercial anatase TiO2 powders. A series of analyses indicate that the surface modification of 20, 50 and 100 cycles of TiN by PEALD does not change the morphology, crystal size, lattice parameters, and surface area of TiO2 nano powders, but forms an ultrathin amorphous layer of nitrogen doped TiO2 (TiOxNy) on the powder surfaces. This ultrathin TiOxNy can facilitate the absorption of TiO2 in visible light spectrum. As a result, TiOxNy coated TiO2 powders exhibit excellent photocatalytic degradation towards methyl orange under the visible light with good photocatalytic stability compared to pristine TiO2 powders. TiOxNy (100 cycles PEALD TiN) coated TiO2 powders exhibit the excellent photocatalytic activity with the degradation efficiency of 96.5% in 2 hours, much higher than that of pristine TiO2 powder of only 4.4%. These results clearly demonstrate that only an ultrathin surface modification layer can dramatically improve the visible light photocatalytic activity of commercial TiO2 powders. Therefore, this surface modification using ALD is an extremely promising route to prepare visible light active photocatalysts.

We pioneered to employ room temperature atomic layer deposition (RTALD) to fabricate flexible Al-Ti-O based metal-insulator-metal (MIM) capacitors on three polymer substrates of polyethylene terephthalate (PET), polyimide (PI) and epoxy resin (epoxy) without any post-processing. Zn was introduced to Al-Ti-O dielectrics to tune its electrical properties through varying ALD cycle ratio and cycle number. Under the optimal processing, the flexible MIM capacitors of Al1.56Ti0.47Zn0.06O3 exhibits comprehensively better performance such as higher capacitance density of 7.4 fF/μm2, smaller leakage current density of 2 × 10−8 A/cm2 at 3 V, and reasonable quadratic voltage linearity of 422 ppm/V2. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy analyses reveal that the incorporation of a slight amount of Zn into Al-Ti-O dielectrics significantly decreases the oxygen vacancy concentration from 6.7% to 0.8%, beneficial for the improvement of electrical performance. Furthermore, our 2 × 2 cm2 flexible MIM capacitors could bear 4000 bending cycles at bending radius of 8.2 mm, showing better electrical stability. These results indicate that RTALD-derived Al-Ti-Zn-O dielectrics are competitive MIM capacitor candidates for flexible electronics and wearable devices. RTALD technology exhibits exciting potentials in flexible electronic device fabrication.

Introduction The aim of this study is to investigate the feasibility of the application of the laparoscopic technique in perihilar cholangiocarcinoma. Methods A total of nine cases of patients who received laparoscopic perihilar cholangiocarcinoma surgery from January 2007 to May 2014 were retrospectively analyzed. The Bismuth subtypes consisted of one case of type I, three cases of type II, two cases of type IIIb, and three cases type IV. Results Radical resection was conducted in six cases: two cases (type II) with the caudate lobe resection, and two cases (type IIIb) with the left hepatectomy and caudate lobe resection. The mean operation time was 7.3 h (5.5–8.5 h), the mean blood loss was 503 ml (150–850 ml). The pathological tests showed two cases of poorly differentiated adenocarcinoma, three cases of moderately differentiated adenocarcinoma, and four cases of highly differentiated adenocarcinoma. Conclusion Laparoscopic technology in the surgical treatment of perihilar cholangiocarcinoma is an option for the resection approach.

The HfO2/TiO2/HfO2 trilayer-structure resistive random access memory (RRAM) devices have been fabricated on Pt- and TiN-coated Si substrates with Pt top electrodes by atomic layer deposition (ALD). The effect of the bottom electrodes of Pt and TiN on the resistive switching properties of trilayer-structure units has been investigated. Both Pt/HfO2/TiO2/HfO2/Pt and Pt/HfO2/TiO2/HfO2/TiN exhibit typical bipolar resistive switching behavior. The dominant conduction mechanisms in low and high resistance states (LRS and HRS) of both memory cells are Ohmic behavior and space-charge-limited current, respectively. It is found that the bottom electrodes of Pt and TiN have great influence on the electroforming polarity preference, ratio of high and low resistance, and dispersion of the operating voltages of trilayer-structure memory cells. Compared to using symmetric Pt top/bottom electrodes, the RRAM cells using asymmetric Pt top/TiN bottom electrodes show smaller negative forming voltage of −3.7 V, relatively narrow distribution of the set/reset voltages and lower ratio of high and low resistances of 102. The electrode-dependent electroforming polarity can be interpreted by considering electrodes’ chemical activity with oxygen, the related reactions at anode, and the nonuniform distribution of oxygen vacancy concentration in trilayer-structure of HfO2/TiO2/HfO2 on Pt- and TiN-coated Si. Moreover, for Pt/HfO2/TiO2/HfO2/TiN devices, the TiN electrode as oxygen reservoir plays an important role in reducing forming voltage and improving uniformity of resistive switching parameters.

In situ-formed SiO2 was introduced into HfO2 gate dielectrics on Ge substrate as interlayer by plasma-enhanced atomic layer deposition (PEALD). The interfacial, electrical, and band alignment characteristics of the HfO2/SiO2 high-k gate dielectric stacks on Ge have been well investigated. It has been demonstrated that Si-O-Ge interlayer is formed on Ge surface during the in situ PEALD SiO2 deposition process. This interlayer shows fantastic thermal stability during annealing without obvious Hf-silicates formation. In addition, it can also suppress the GeO2 degradation. The electrical measurements show that capacitance equivalent thickness of 1.53 nm and a leakage current density of 2.1 × 10−3 A/cm2 at gate bias of Vfb + 1 V was obtained for the annealed sample. The conduction (valence) band offsets at the HfO2/SiO2/Ge interface with and without PDA are found to be 2.24 (2.69) and 2.48 (2.45) eV, respectively. These results indicate that in situ PEALD SiO2 may be a promising interfacial control layer for the realization of high-quality Ge-based transistor devices. Moreover, it can be demonstrated that PEALD is a much more powerful technology for ultrathin interfacial control layer deposition than MOCVD.

Ultrathin ZnO coatings with different thicknesses are successfully deposited onto the layered Li-rich oxide Li 1.2 Mn 0.54 Ni 0.13 Co 0.13 O 2 via atomic layer deposition (ALD) technology, followed by annealing in Ar. The influence of ZnO layer on the structural and electrochemical performances of Li 1.2 Mn 0.54 Ni 0.13 Co 0.13 O 2 cathode material is systematically investigated. In comparison with the pristine one, the ultrathin ZnO-coated electrodes exhibit the significantly improved discharge capacity and cycleability, particularly the LMNCO@ALD-ZnO-20 sample. The remarkably improved electrochemical performance of the coated sample is ascribed to the homogeneous ZnO coatings with high-quality, which could improve the electrode/electrolyte interface stability and the structural stability at high voltage, suppress the increasing charge transfer resistance during cycling, and favour the Li + diffusion.

In this work, we designed ZnO/TiO2 nanolaminates by atomic layer deposition (ALD) as anode material for lithium ion batteries. ZnO/TiO2 nanolaminates were fabricated on copper foil by depositing unit of 26 cycles ZnO/26 cycles TiO2 repeatedly using ALD. ZnO/TiO2 nanolaminates are much more stable than pristine ZnO films during electrochemical cycling process. Therefore, ZnO/TiO2 nanolaminates exhibit excellent lithium storage performance with an improved cycling performance and superior rate capability compared to pristine ZnO films. Moreover, coulombic efficiency (CE) of ZnO/TiO2 nanolaminates is above 99%, which is much higher than the value of pristine ZnO films. Excellent ultralong-life performance is gained for ZnO/TiO2 nanolaminates, retaining a reversible capacity of ~667 mAh g−1 within cut-off voltage of 0.05-2.5 V after 1200 cycles of charge-discharge at 500 mA g−1. Constructing nanolaminates structures via ALD might open up new opportunities for improving the performance of anode materials with large volume expansion in lithium ion batteries.

A simple method to prepare TiO2/g-C3N4 nanocomposite photocatalysts by atomic layer deposition (ALD) has been developed. A uniform ultra-thin TiO2 coating was coated conformally on g-C3N4 powders via ALD. After 500 °C annealing process, amorphous TiO2 turns into anatase nanocrystals and forms heterojunctions between TiO2 and g-C3N4, which greatly improves the separation efficiency of photo-generated carriers of g-C3N4. Moreover, an exfoliation phenomenon of g-C3N4 based on ALD is also observed with dramatically increased specific surface areas from 10.4 m2/g (g-C3N4) to 31.2 m2/g (annealed TiO2/g-C3N4), providing a new way for the exfoliation of layered materials. As a result, annealed 50TiO2/g-C3N4 nanocomposite exhibits the best photocatalytic activity with the methyl orange degradation efficiency of 98.2% in 90 min under visible light irradiation, much better than pure g-C3N4 with only 45% degradation efficiency. The first-order reaction rate constant of annealed TiO2/g-C3N4 nanocomposite is 0.0406 min−1 with the half-life period of only 17 min, which is 5.8 times higher than that of the pure g-C3N4 powders. The enhanced photocatalytic performance of annealed TiO2/g-C3N4 nanocomposites can be ascribed to the synergetic effect of heterojunctions between crystalline TiO2 and g-C3N4 and the increased specific surface areas. Above all, ALD may be a kind of promising and feasible method to fabricate g–C3N4–based nanocomposite powders for photocatalytic applications.

Ultrathin ZrO2 coatings are successfully adopted to modify the surface of the layered LiNi0.5Co0.2Mn0.3O2 cathode material via atomic layer deposition (ALD) technology. Compared with the bare LiNi0.5Co0.2Mn0.3O2, the ultrathin ZrO2-coated cathode materials exhibited a significantly improved discharge capacity and cycleability. Among all of the samples, ZrO2-coated LiNi0.5Co0.2Mn0.3O2 electrode with 5 ALD layers showed highest initial Coulombic efficiency, excellently electrochemical cycleability and high rate capability in the voltage range of 2.5–4.5 V at room temperature. Furthermore, this sample showed a discharge capacity of 155.1 mAh g−1 with a high retention of 88.1% at the current of 1000 mA g−1 (5C) after 60 cycles at the elevated temperature of 55 °C, which demonstrated a remarkable enhancement about 150% over that of the bare one. Such enhanced electrochemical performance can be attributed to the high-quality ultrathin ALD metal oxide coating for the cathode material, which protects the cathode material from the undesirable side reaction with the electrode and suppresses the increasing impedance in order to facilitate the diffusion of lithium ion into the host oxide.

Atomic layer deposition (ALD) technology is used to deposit TiO2 coating on the nickel-rich material LiNi0.8Co0.15Al0.05O2. The ultrathin and thickness-controlled coating shell serves as a physical barrier which protects the structure of the core and thereby enhances the electrochemical performance of the coated material. Coating shells of TiO2 with different thicknesses corresponding to different ALD cycles are obtained and detected via transmission electron microscope (TEM) analysis. A TiO2-coated sample with 138 ALD cycles reveals optimal electrochemical performance in the voltage range of 2.8–4.5 V. After 100 cycles, discharge capacities of 171.36 and 154.69 mA h g−1 at room (25 °C) and elevated (55 °C) temperatures are observed, with higher cycle-ability of 90.21% and 73.21%, in comparison with those of 50.13% and 43.97% for pristine samples at the same temperatures. The improvements in electrochemical characterizations are ascribed to the stable structure and interface modified by the high-quality dense, ultrathin and amorphous ALD TiO2 coating layer, which can protect the cathode particles from hydrofluoric acid attack.

The development of narrow-bandgap (E

Hydrogen gas (H2) is used as an alternative renewable and eco-friendly energy source to replace the fossil fuel. However due to its explosive risks in air, the H2 production, storage and transportation are greatly limited. Hence, H2 sensor with quick response, highly sensitive and selective detection is of importance. Recently, zinc oxide (ZnO) as n-type semiconductor has attracted much attention in the field of H2 detection because of its easy synthesis, chemical/thermal stability and extremely abundant nanostructures. The recent advances in resistive-type H2 gas sensors based on ZnO nanostructures are reviewed in this paper. According to zero-dimension, one-dimension, and two-dimension, the H2 sensing properties and related mechanism of various kinds of pristine ZnO nanostructures-based sensors, such as nanowires, nanotubes, and nanofibers are summarized and compared. Furthermore, this paper focuses on strategies to improve the performance of H2 sensors (sensitivity, response speed, operation temperature, and limit of detection) by the surface modification, metal doping, formation of composite, and post-treatment of ZnO nanomaterials. Especially, the selectivity of ZnO nanosturctures-based H2 sensors to H2 in the presence of interfering gases is highlighted and the related enhancement approaches are discussed. Finally, the outlook and challenges on the ZnO nanostructures-based H2 sensors are addressed as well.

ZnO nano-clips with better monodispersion were prepared successfully using zinc acetate hydrate (Zn(OAc)2·nH2O) as Zn source and ethylene glycol (EG) as solvent by a simple solution-based route-polyol process. The effect of solution concentration on the formation of ZnO nano-clips has been investigated deeply. We first prove that the 0.01 M Zn(OAc)2·nH2O can react with EG without added water or alkaline, producing ZnO nano-clips with polycrystalline wurtzite structure at 170 °C. As-synthesized ZnO nano-clips contain a lot of aggregated nanocrystals (~ 5 to 15 nm) with high specific surface area of 88 m2/g. The shapes of ZnO nano-clips basically keep constant with improved crystallinity after annealing at 400–600 °C. The lower solution concentration and slight amount of H2O play a decisive role in ZnO nano-clip formation. When the solution concentration is ≤ 0.0125 M, the complexing and polymerization reactions between Zn(OAc)2·nH2O and EG predominate, mainly elaborating ZnO nano-clips. When the solution concentration is ≥ 0.015 M, the alcoholysis and polycondensation reactions of Zn(OAc)2·nH2O and EG become dominant, leading to ZnO particle formation with spherical and elliptical shapes. The possible growth mechanism based on a competition between complexing and alcoholysis of Zn(OAc)2·nH2O and EG has been proposed. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s11671-018-2458-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma is the most common form of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma. Multiple approaches have been applied to treat this type of cancer; however, no significant improvement in survival rate has been achieved. In the present study, the role of nemo-like kinase (NLK) in human laryngeal carcinoma Hep-2 cells was investigated. NLK has been identified as an important regulator of cell growth, patterning and cell death in a variety of organisms. Lentivirus-mediated-shRNA was employed to silence endogenous NLK expression. Downregulation of the expression of NLK following lentivirus infection was confirmed using reverse transcription quantitative polymerase chain reaction and western blot analysis. The effects of NLK downregulation on Hep-2 cell proliferation and cell cycle progression were analyzed using an MTT assay and flow cytometry, respectively. Downregulation of NLK also inhibited tumorigenesis and regulated the expression of cell cycle protein expression levels. Therefore, it was hypothesized that NLK is necessary for cell survival and tumorigenesis in laryngeal cancer cells. Furthermore, the absence of NLK may lead to cancer cell death. Collectively, the results of the present study demonstrated that the lentivirus-mediated targeted disruption of NLK may be a promising therapeutic method for the treatment of laryngeal cancer.

The study aimed to dissect the molecular mechanism of pancreatic cancer by a range of bioinformatics approaches. Three microarray datasets (GSE32676, GSE21654, and GSE14245) were downloaded from Gene Expression Omnibus database. Differentially expressed genes (DEGs) with logarithm of fold change (|logFC|) >0.585 and p value

To enhance the electrochemical performance of LiNi 0.5 Co 0.2 Mn 0.3 O 2 cathode, especially at elevated temperature, atomic layer deposition (ALD) technology has facilely used to deposit an ultrathin amorphous ZnO coating onto LiNi 0.5 Co 0.2 Mn 0.3 O 2 with precise thickness-control at atomic scale. The coated cathode material with 8 ALD cycles exhibits the significantly improved discharge capacity and cycleability, as compared with those of the bare one. Such enhanced electrochemical performance of the coated sample is ascribed to its high-quality ultrathin amorphous ALD oxide coating, which can protect the active material from HF attack, reduce the dissolution of metal ions in the electrode and favor the lithium diffusion of the oxide proved by the electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) tests. The simple ALD process provides a potential new approach for the battery industry to fabricate novel electrodes with high performances even cycled at high rate at elevated temperature.

N-doped ZnO/g-C3N4 composites have been successfully prepared via a facile and cost-effective sol-gel method. The nanocomposites were systematically characterized by XRD, FE-SEM, HRTEM, FT-IR, XPS, and UV-vis DRS. The results indicated that compared with the pure N-doped ZnO, the absorption edge of binary N-doped ZnO/g-C3N4 shifted to a lower energy with increasing the visible-light absorption and improving the charge separation efficiency, which would enhance its photocatalytic activity. Compared with the pure g-C3N4, ZnO, N-doped ZnO and the composite ZnO/g-C3N4, the as-prepared N-doped ZnO/g-C3N4 exhibits a greatly enhanced photocatalytic degradation of methylene blue and phenol under visible-light irradiation. Meanwhile, N-doped ZnO/g-C3N4 possesses a high stability. Finally, a proposed mechanism for N-doped ZnO/g-C3N4 is also discussed. The improved photocatalysis can be attributed to the synergistic effect between N-doped ZnO and g-C3N4, including the energy band structure and enhanced charge separation efficiency.