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Controllable three-dimensional villose titanium dioxide architectures grown on carbon textiles are fabricated by a facile one-step in-situ hydrothermal method at low temperatures. It has in fact been proven to be an effective method to reduce self-aggregation and promote lithium-ion intercalate/extract via building 3D architectures based on 2D conductive materials. More importantly, the freestanding electrodes without any addition of conductive agents and polymeric binders reveal significant improvement in high-rate capacity and cycling performance.

Herein, we demonstrate a sustainable strategy for scalable production of α-Fe2O3 nanocrystals on flexible carbon textiles via controllable chemical bath deposition process. The assembly of α-Fe2O3 nanocrystals is densely anchored onto the carbon textiles, and the temperature-dependent mass loading and crystal size of α-Fe2O3 are systematically investigated. As an integrated electrode for lithium-ion batteries, the optimized Fe2O3@CTs with ultrathin three-dimensional interconnected porous architectures achieves significantly enhanced cycling performance and rate capability attributing to the improved stability, electronic interconnection, and shortened solid state diffusion pathway for Li+ ions/electrons. After the reactivation of the precursor, the Li-ion batteries based on the recycled Fe2O3@CTs exhibits electrochemical performance with no decay compared to that of the devices based on the fresh products. This sustainable methodology, considering material abundance, eco-efficiency, synthetic approach and scalability, is of crucial importance to both academy and industry for achieving high-performance lithium-ion batteries.

This study demonstrates a robust and ultra-stable sodium infiltrated Fe2O3 coated carbon textile (SFCT) anode with excellent machinability. The obtained SFCT anode overcomes the disadvantage of Na electrodes, which is not easily processable, and exhibits more flat voltage profiles, lower stripping/plating overpotential, and better cycling stability in an additive-free carbonate-based electrolyte compared with bare Na electrodes.

We have demonstrate a facile strategy to achieve the controllable morphology transformation of TiO2 induced by the introduction of multi-walled carbon nanotubes. The intervention of functionalized carbon nanotubes (CNTs) is key to the formation of TiO2 nanopompons. Furthermore, the size of the obtained TiO2 nanopompons can be controlled by modulating the CNT amounts. The obtained TiO2 nanopompon-embedded CNT hybrid networks (TNP@CNT HNs) incorporate the advantages of hierarchical nanostructures and 3D interconnected conductive networks, including high surface area, uniform particle/pore size, short Li+ ion/electron transport pathway, and high electronic conductivity. These TNP@CNT HN-based anodes achieve a significant improvement in the insertion/extraction of Li+ ions and electrochemical performances via optimizing the CNT amounts and the size of the TiO2 nanopompons. The lithium-ion batteries based on the optimized TNP@CNT HNs exhibit excellent cycling stability (keeping approximately 200 mA h g−1 after 500 cycles at 2C rate, 1C = 170 mA g−1) and rate performance (approximately 125 mA h g−1 at 20C rate with a capacity retention of 77% after 2000 cycles).

Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSCs) have attracted widespread attention in recent years, attributed to their low production costs, facile fabrication and tunable optical properties. In order to achieve competitive conversion efficiencies, the sunlight harvesting capacities of DSCs should be improved over a broad range of wavelengths and incidence angle. Here, we demonstrate a facile strategy to enhance the light absorptions of the devices via employing self-organized cholesteric liquid crystal (CLC) polymer films as transparent and flexible back-reflectors for DSCs. The photonic band gap of these CLC films can be precisely tailored by modulating the helical pitch and twist sense. The selective light reflection of these CLC films gives rise to the possibility for increasing the optical path length of the light in particular wavelength region while retaining the cell transparency. The enhancement of photocurrent and power conversion efficiency (PCE) reveals strong wavelength dependence owing to the selective reflection of these CLC polymer films. The DSCs with proper combination of CLC back-reflectors yield the maximum enhancement over 21% in photocurrent and 17% in PCE. The work presented here provides new insights into the design of cell geometry for achieving extra absorption enhancement, which can also be compatible with other photovoltaic concepts.

The direct utilization of metallic lithium and sodium as the anodes for rechargeable batteries would be highly advantageous, which has been considered as one of the most promising choices for next-generation high-energy-density storage devices. Although the induced safety concerns, inferior rate, and cycling performance severely hinder the commercialization of lithium metal batteries (LMBs) and sodium metal batteries (SMBs), the recent development of nanotechnology-based solutions really revives the lithium/sodium metal anodes for high-energy batteries. In this work, an ultrastable carbon textile (CT)-based host with excellent infiltration for both metallic Li and Na has been designed and exhibits more flat voltage profiles, lower stripping/plating overpotential, and better cycling stability both in symmetric cell and full cell configurations, even in additive-free carbonate-based electrolyte compared with pure Li/Na electrodes. The highly conductive and mechanically robust three-dimensional CTs not only offer a stable scaffold against hyperactive lithium and sodium but also enable uniform nucleation and growth during stripping/plating process, which effectively suppress the dendrite growth and stabilize the electrode dimension. This facile strategy provides new insights into the design of stable hosts with prestored alkali metal to address the multifaceted issues in LMBs and SMBs simultaneously.

This study was designed to determine the differential profiles of long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) between rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and gouty arthritis (GA), which may lead to the discovery of specific biomarkers for RA diagnosis and treatment in the future.The profiles of lncRNAs were determined by Agilent microarray. Bioinformatics analyses, including Gene Ontology (GO) terms and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) analyses, of the large dataset obtained from microarray experiments were performed.A total of 765 lncRNAs and 2,808 mRNAs were significantly and differentially expressed in RA samples as compared to GA samples. Moreover, of 2,808 differentially expressed mRNAs, 178 upregulated mRNAs and 21 downregulated mRNAs were identified to be strongly correlated with lncRNAs examined in this study. Bioinformatics analyses revealed the tumor-like phenotype of synovial cells in RA and the involvement of immune system process in GA. In addition, this study demonstrated the significantly different molecular origins of two Chinese Medicine syndrome patterns of RA patients -- blood stasis and non-blood stasis.Our study showed for the first time the differentially expressed lncRNA profiles in synovial tissues between RA and GA and between two clinical phenotypes of RA patients differentiated by Chinese Medicine. This study helps achieving personalized medicine in RA. Larger-scale studies are required to validate the data presented.

Three-dimensional branched TiO2 architectures (3D BTA) with controllable morphologies were synthesized via a facile template-free one-pot solvothermal route. The volume ratio of deionized water (DI water) and diethylene glycol in solvothermal process is key to the formation of 3D BTA assembled by nanowire-coated TiO2 dendrites, which combines the advantages of 3D hierarchical structure and 1D nanoscale building blocks. Benefiting from such unique structural features, the BTA in full bloom achieved significantly increased specific surface areas and shortened Li(+) ion/electrons diffusion pathway. The lithium-ion batteries based on BTA in full bloom exhibited remarkably enhanced reversible specific capacity and rate performance, attributing to the high contact area with the electrolyte and the short solid state diffusion pathway for Li(+) ion/electrons promoting lithium insertion and extraction.