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Cisplatin is a chemotherapeutic agent widely used in the treatment of various cancers. However, cisplatin can induce nephrotoxicity and neurotoxicity, limiting its dosage and usage. Galangin, a natural flavonol, has been found to exhibit anti-oxidant and anti-inflammatory effects in vivo. Here, we investigated the effects of galangin on cisplatin-induced acute kidney injury (AKI) and its molecular mechanisms in mice. Galangin administration reduced the cisplatin-induced oxidative stress by decreasing renal MDA and 3-NT formations. Galangin administration also increased renal anti-oxidative enzyme activities (SOD, GPx, and CAT) and GSH levels depleted by cisplatin. Furthermore, galangin administration inactivated stress-induced Nrf2 protein and its downstream products, HO-1 and GCLC. In terms of the inflammatory response, galangin administration reduced IκBα phosphorylation, NF-κB phosphorylation and nuclear translocation, and then inhibited cisplatin-induced secretions of pro-inflammatory TNF-α, IL-1β and IL-6. In addition, cisplatin-induced ERK and p38 phosphorylations were inhibited by galangin administration. In terms of cell death, galangin administration reduced levels of p53, pro-apoptotic Bax and activated caspase-3 to inhibit the cisplatin-induced apoptosis. Galangin administration also reduced the expression levels of RIP1 and RIP3 to inhibit cisplatin-induced RIP1/RIP3-dependent necroptosis. Therefore, galangin administration significantly ameliorates cisplatin-induced nephrotoxicity by attenuating oxidative stress, inflammation, and cell death through inhibitions of ERK and NF-κB signaling pathways. Galangin might be a potential adjuvant for clinical cisplatin therapy.

We systematically investigate the effects of surface roughness on the characteristics of ultraviolet zinc oxide plasmonic nanolasers fabricated on aluminium films with two different degrees of surface roughness. We demonstrate that the effective dielectric functions of aluminium interfaces with distinct roughness can be analysed from reflectivity measurements. By considering the scattering losses, including Rayleigh scattering, electron scattering, and grain boundary scattering, we adopt the modified Drude-Lorentz model to describe the scattering effect caused by surface roughness and obtain the effective dielectric functions of different Al samples. The sample with higher surface roughness induces more electron scattering and light scattering for SPP modes, leading to a higher threshold gain for the plasmonic nanolaser. By considering the pumping efficiency, our theoretical analysis shows that diminishing the detrimental optical losses caused by the roughness of the metallic interface could effectively lower (~33.1%) the pumping threshold of the plasmonic nanolasers, which is consistent with the experimental results.

We investigate the enhancement of acousto-optic (AO) coupling using a Ag/GaAs heterogeneous phoxonic crystal nanobeam cavity. Because of the Ag layer, the cavity structure hybridizes surface plasmons and photons, squeezing the optical energy into a smaller region near the GaAs/Ag interface. The photonic cavity modes highly match the phononic cavity modes in space in the cavity. Because of the mode similarity, the AO coupling is stronger at near-infrared wavelengths. We show that the interface effect by the acoustic displacement field dominates the AO coupling enhancement. Small photonic mode volume and high spatial matching between the phononic and photonic cavity modes enhance the photonic resonance wavelength shift by one order of magnitude. The proposed structure enables applications of strong AO and photon-phonon interaction in subwavelength nanostructures.

We demonstrate dynamic modulation of a hybrid plasmonic-photonic crystal nanocavity through using monochromatic coherent acoustic phonons formed by ultrahigh-frequency surface acoustic waves to achieve strong optomechanical coupling. As a result, optical resonance wavelength shift and a large modulation bandwidth are shown at telecommunication wavelength for the hybrid nanocavity.

In this letter, the efficient generation of tunable optical band gaps with the help of acousto-optic (AO) interactions in the deep subwavelength regime is proposed. The optical system consists of a thin dielectric slab and a metal surface separated by a nanoscale air gap. This structure allowed for the confinement of hybridized plasmonic-photonic gap modes, which are highly guided within the air gap. The enhanced AO interaction originated from the disturbance of the acoustic Lamb waves of the slab that can strongly boost the AO interface effect and scatter the optical fields. Therefore, wide optical band gaps and forbidden transmissions were observed in hybrid gap modes at telecommunication wavelengths.

We demonstrate that the photonic band gaps in silicon slab waveguides are generated through the acousto-optic (AO) interaction. By exciting the acoustic eigenmodes of slab waveguides, the refractive indices and interfaces of silicon slab can be modulated periodically to perturb the guided optical waves and open up the photonic band gaps. We find that the occurrence of the strong forbidden effect to form the band gaps is due to nonlinear interactions between the guided optical and acoustic modes. Using the finite-element method, we calculate the photonic band structures of TE waves and TM waves under the perturbation of the lowest three acoustic eigenmodes, respectively. The results show that the fundamental symmetric acoustic slab mode can create Bragg photonic band gaps of tunable width. With generating acoustic-wave amplitude of 1.0 % of the slab thickness, photonic band gaps from 61.58 – 61.92 THz for TE and 89.10 – 89.24 THz for TM are demonstrated. Applications include the design of optomechanical and AO devices and micro and nanolasers.