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Chiral dialkyl carbinols and their derivatives are significant synthetic building blocks in organic chemistry and related fields. The development of convenient and efficient methods to access these...

Emerin (EMD) plays diverse roles in cellular polarity organization, nuclear stability, and cell motility, however, the biological role of EMD relevant to the migration and invasion of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) cells has not yet been illustrated. In the present study, we initially found that the upregulation of EMD in HCC tissues, and EMD expression was negatively correlated with the spontaneous metastatic potential of HCC cell lines. Loss of EMD in HCC cells facilitated cell migration and invasion in vitro and metastasis in vivo. Meanwhile, we demonstrated that EMD knockdown induced EMT but enhanced p21 expression in HCC cells. Notably, silencing of EMD in HCC cells increased the cytoplasmic localization of p21 protein, whereas p21 knockdown partially abrogated the migratory and invasive ability, EMT, and the actin cytoskeleton rearrangement induced by EMD knockdown in HCC cells. Our results indicated a significant role of EMD knockdown in the HCC cell motility and metastasis through upregulating the cytoplasmic p21, unveiling a novel mechanism of cell motility regulation induced by EMD.

Although parasitoids can precisely locate hidden gall-inducing insects, the host location mechanism is unknown. In this study, our aim was to clarify the olfactory responses of the parasitoid Quadrastichus mendeli to eucalyptus volatiles induced by the gall wasp Leptocybe invasa.Q. mendeli preferred volatiles from gall-damaged plants compared with those produced by mechanically damaged and undamaged plants. Coupled gas chromatographic-electroantennographic detection results demonstrated that 3-carene, decanal, d-limonene, ethanone,1-(4-ethylphenyl)-, p-cymene and benzene,1-methyl-4-(1-methylpropyl)- from DH 201-2 (Eucalyptus grandis × Eucalyptus tereticornis) elicited significant antennal responses in Q. mendeli in all treatments. Q. mendeli was repelled by decanal and d-limonene and was attracted to 3-carene, benzene,1-methyl-4-(1-methylpropyl)-, ethanone,1-(4-ethylphenyl) and p-cymene. Quaternary blends containing 3-carene, p-cymene, benzene,1-methyl-4-(1-methylpropyl)- and ethanone,1-(4-ethylphenyl)- at a ratio of 1:1:1:1 were attractive to Q. mendeli. However, quaternary blends with added decanal and d-limonene alone or both together induced significant repellence in Q. mendeli.Our report is the first to demonstrate that volatiles produced by galls induced by L. invasa are attractive to Q. mendeli, which suggests that this parasitoid could utilize herbivore-induced plant volatiles to locate its host. The results are beneficial for understanding the function of plant volatiles in host searching by parasitoids of gall-forming insect pests. © 2022 Society of Chemical Industry.

Objective: The aim of the study was to investigate clinical evidence for defining the indications of prophylactic level IB radiotherapy (RT) in nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC). Methods: We conducted a phase 2 prospective study in 116 newly diagnosed patients with NPC treated by intensity-modulated RT. Whether level IB was irradiated is based on the risk score model (RSM). Two groups based on RSM were obtained: low risk and high risk. Omission of level IB irradiation was conducted in the low-risk group, otherwise level IB was contoured as part of the treatment target. Grade 2 or worse xerostomia at 12 months was assessed by the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) QLQ-H&N35 questionnaire. Results: At a median follow-up of 16 months (range, 1–26 months), none of the patients developed failures at level IB. The 1-year overall survival, locoregional recurrence-free survival, and distant metastasis-free survival rates were 98.3%, 97.2%, and 95.8%, respectively. At 12 months xerostomia side-effects were reported in 90 of 116 alive patients; grade 2 or worse xerostomia at 12 months was significantly lower in the low-risk group than in the high-risk group. Conclusion: Omission of level IB irradiation was feasible for patients with low-risk IB lymph nodes metastasis.

In the work, novel indium yttrium oxide (InYO) thin films are prepared by an environmentally friendly aqueous solution process. Y element is added to suppress the generation of oxygen vacancies. The effect of Y doping on the performance and stability of nontoxic water-induced InYO thin film transistors (TFTs) is firstly examined. With the increase of Y doping contents, off-state current is decreased and mobility decreases from 15.8 to 11.7 cm2 V−1 s−1. Furthermore, the stability under positive bias stress is also obviously improved. The device with 2 mol% Y element shows an optimized electrical performance and good stability, including mobility of 12.8 cm2/V s, threshold voltage of 1.4 V, subthreshold swing of 0.33 V/decade and threshold voltage shift of 2.31 V under positive voltage stress of 5 V for 10,000 s. The performance improvement is attributed to the decrease of oxygen vacancies and the decline of interface trap density by Y addition.

Metal oxide field-effect transistors (FETs) have potential applications in display, flexible electronic device. Here, we will report the advance of our OLED display, metal oxide FETs, and application in beyond display. We have paid more attention to the stability improvement, interface trap of MO-TFT, and application in CMOS circuit, artificial synapse and gas sensor.

Apigenin is an edible flavonoid with anticancer properties; however, the underlying mechanisms in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) remain to be clarified. In the present study, we demonstrated that apigenin decreased the viability of both SMMC-7721 and SK-Hep1 cells in a dose-dependent manner, and inhibited the migration and invasion of HCC cells with different metastatic potential by regulating actin cytoskeletal rearrangements. Moreover, we showed that apigenin decreased the expression of YAP, and subsequently reduced migration and invasion by modulating the expression of the epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) markers, and promoted the autophagy of HCC cells by regulating the expression of autophagy-related genes. Collectively, the present findings might provide a novel mechanism for the therapeutic application of apigenin in HCC.

Boron doped InZnO (BIZO) thin film has been fabricated via solution process and the effect of boron addition on the properties of BIZO thin film is investigated with the glancing incidence X-ray diffraction (GIXRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), the atomic force microscopy (AFM) and UV–vis spectrophotometer. The XPS spectra show that the oxygen vacancies in IZO semiconductor materials are effectively suppressed by boron contents due to high Lewis acid strength and strong bonding dissociation energy of B O. Moreover, the associated application in TFTs has also been fabricated by solution process and the thermal stability and electrical properties of solution processed BIZO-TFTs are investigated to confirm the decrease of oxygen vacancies in IZO materials. Meanwhile, the capacitance voltage measurement and the density of states are carried out to further investigate the enhanced electrical performance and thermal stability of TFTs due to the suppression of oxygen vacancies. Thus, the B doping is an effective method to suppress the generation of oxygen vacancies in IZO materials and to improve the thermal stability of solution processed BIZO-TFTs.

In this paper, solution-processed ZrO2 thin films are used to be as insulting layers for lanthanum indium oxide (LaInO) thin-film transistors (TFTs) with different La doping contents. The influence of La addition on the electrical properties and stability under bias stress and temperatures stress for LaInO TFTs is investigated in detail. With the improvement of La doping contents, the saturation mobility ( $\mu$ ) decreases from 48.8 to 32.7 cm2 $\cdot \text {V}^{-{1}}\text{s}^{-{1}}$ and the threshold voltage (VT) increases from 1.12 to 1.76 V. When La doping concentration is 10 mol%, LaInO TFT has a small subthreshold swing of 0.12 V/dec. Meanwhile, the stability is improved obviously. It is attributed to the strong bonding strength of La–O relative to that of In–O, resulting in the reduction of trap states. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy shows that the generation of oxygen vacancies can effectively be suppressed by La addition. The calculation of density of states and the measurement of the capacitance–voltage can also further confirm that the density of trap states is decreased by La addition, and thus the stability of LaInO TFTs can get an obvious improvement.

In this paper, boron-doped indium–zinc–oxide (InZnO) thin-film transistors (BIZO TFTs) were fabricated by solution process. The electrical performance and stability under the negative bias illumination stress (NBIS) have been greatly improved by B doping. The BIZO TFT with 5 mol.% B doping ratio shows a superior electrical performance with a field-effect mobility of 10.15 cm2/ $\textsf {V}\,\cdot \, \textsf {s}$ , a threshold voltage of 3.29 V, a subthreshold swing of 0.35 V/decade, and an ON/OFF ratio of 108. Furthermore, the 5 mol.% BIZO TFT shows only a −1.59 V shift of the threshold voltage, compared with a large negative shift of −4.24 V for pure IZO TFTs. The enhancement of electrical performance and stability under NBIS is due to the reduction of oxygen vacancies, which are suppressed by B doping. The density of states is calculated to further validate the improved electrical performance and NBIS stability of BIZO TFTs.

The high κ ZrAlOx gate insulators were deposited by atomic layer deposition on silicon and characterized by the different analytical techniques. The grazing incidence X-ray diffraction (GIXRD) verifies that ZrAlOx thin films show an amorphous structure. The X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) confirms that the form of ZrAlOx phase improves the electrical properties and stability of the associated devices. Then, all ZrAlOx thin films were integrated in metal-insulator-semiconductor structures to check the electrical capabilities. They all show a low leakage current density (about 1 × 10−8 A/cm2) under a high electric field of about 2.0 MV/cm, and exhibit a stable capacitance as a function of frequency. Their associated ZTO TFTs were deposited by a radio frequency sputtering, and the influence of the ZrAlOx thickness on the stabilities under positive bias stress and electrical properties is investigated. The 130 nm ZrAlOx based TFT shows the optimized electrical properties (its mobility, threshold voltage, sub-threshold voltage swing and on-off ratio are 12.5 cm2/V, 0.3 V, 0.15 V/dec. and 8 × 107 and the good stability with 2.5 V threshold voltage shift under the positive bias voltage stress. The better properties of 130 nm ZrAlOx based TFTs are attributed to a less interface trap states and surface scattering center.

This work reports an efficient route for enhancing the stability of amorphous InGaZnO (a-IGZO) thin film transistors (TFTs). It is clearly observed that the off-current in IGZO-TFT decreases by usi...

We investigate thermally induced instability of thin film transistors with incorporating sputtered InZnO and InGaZnO as the channel layer at room temperature, using density of states extracted from...

In this paper, we have fabricated the magnesium-doped indium oxide (MgInO) thin-film transistors (TFTs) by solution process and evaluate the electrical characteristics and stability under temperature stress and positive bias stress. The MgInO TFTs show a decrease of off-state current ( ${\text {I}}_{{\mathrm{\scriptscriptstyle off}}})$ and an increase of threshold voltage ( ${\text {V}}_{\mathrm {TH}})$ with the increase of Mg doping concentration. For MgInO TFT with 0.75 mol% Mg doping concentration, it shows an excellent electrical characteristic (the field effectmobility of 13.77 cm $^{2} {\text {V}}^{-1}~\text{s}^{-1}$ , the threshold voltage of 2.84 V, and subthreshold swing value of 0.85 V/decade) and a good stability of temperature stress and positive bias stress. The performance enhancement of MgInO TFTs is attributed to the reduced density of states and the lower interface trap density by the optimized Mg doping concentration, which is first verified by the temperature-dependent field effect measurement and capacitance–voltage method.

High dielectric constant TiSiOx thin films are produced by reactive sputtering under different oxygen partial pressure ratio (P O2 ) from 15% to 30%. All the TiSiOx films show an excellent transmittance value of almost 95%. The TiSiOx film has a low leakage current density by optimizing oxygen partial pressure, and the leakage current density of TiSiOx film under P O2 of 20% is 4.88×10 −7 A/cm 2 at electrical field strength of 2 MV/cm. Meanwhile, their associated InGaZnO thin-film transistors (IGZO-TFTs) with different P O2 TiSiOx thin films as gate insulators are fabricated. IGZO-TFTs under P O2 of 20% shows an optimized electrical performance, and the threshold voltage, sub-threshold swing, field effect mobility and I on /I off ratio of this device are 2.22 V, 0.33 V/decade, 29.3 cm 2 /V s and 5.03×10 7 , respectively. Moreover, the density of states (DOS) is calculated by temperature-dependent field-effect measurement. The enhancements of electrical performance and temperature stability are attributed to better active/insulator interface and smaller DOS.

The electrical degradation behavior in metal oxide thin film transistor (TFT) under negative bias-illumination stress (NBIS) is one of the biggest obstacles for its applications in flat panel display. In order to solve this issue, Sr and N are doped in In 2 O 3 thin film and significantly improve the NBIS stability of In 2 O 3 TFT. In addition, the doping of N can also reduce the degradation in electrical performance caused by Sr doping. The XPS of SrInON thin film is tested to prove the reduction of the oxygen vacancy.

This work reports an efficient route for enhancing the performance of amorphous InGaZnO (a-IGZO) thin film transistors (TFT). The mobility was greatly improved by about 38% by means of O2 plasma treatment. Temperature-stress was carried out to investigate the stability and extract the parameters related to activation energy (E a) and density-of-states (DOS). The DOS was calculated on the basis of the experimentally obtained E a, which can explain the experimental observation. A lower activation energy (E a, ~0.72 eV) and a smaller DOS were obtained in the O2 plasma treatment TFT based on the temperature-dependent transfer curves. The results showed that temperature stability and electrical properties enhancements in a-IGZO thin film transistors were attributed to the smaller DOS.

Double-channel structure HfZnSnO/ZnSnO thin-film transistors (HZTO/ZTO TFTs) with a high electrical property and a superior stability under negative bias illumination stress (NBIS) or temperature stress (TS) is fabricated by cosputtering. Double-channel structure HZTO/ZTO TFT only suffers from 1.4 V negative threshold voltage shift ( ${\Delta }V_{T})$ under the same NBIS and 6.3 V negative ${\Delta }V_{T}$ under the same TS, but its mobility can also stay appropriately 8 cm $^{\mathrm {2}}$ /Vs. The high performance, superior NBIS stability, and superior TS stability of HZTO/ZTO TFT are due to the effect of Hf doping on suppression of oxygen vacancies in HZTO top channel layer and high carrier concentration in a ZTO bottom channel layer, which can be confirmed by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) measurement and Hall effect measurement. In addition, based on the measurement of $I_{\mathrm{ DS}}$ – $V_{G}$ under various temperatures, the density of states (DOS) can be extracted from thermally excited drain current. The HZTO/ZTO TFT shows fewer DOSs than that of single ZTO TFT, and it is comparable with that of single HZTO TFT. This result can be well matched with the TS stability, NBIS stability, and XPS measurement.

Effects of ZrO 2 particle size (~50 nm and ~2 µm) on synthesis of ZrB 2 powders via conventional or new borothermal reduction were investigated. The conventional process was a one-step heat treatment at 1600 °C in vacuum. The newly developed process consisted of two-step heat treatment (first-step at 1000 °C and second-step at 1600 °C) plus intermediate step of water washing. Micron-sized ZrB 2 powders were prepared by conventional process, independent of initial ZrO 2 particle size. Based on new process, submicrometric ZrB 2 powders were synthesized using nano-size ZrO 2 . However, submicrometric ZrB 2 could also be synthesized using micron-size ZrO 2 by prolonging the holding time during first-step heat treatment. Therefore, results of present study suggested that fine ZrB 2 powders could be synthesized by controlling the time of first-step heat treatment of the new borothermal reduction process by converting ZrO 2 as completely as possible independent of initial particle size.

The novel hafnium added ZnSnO (ZTO) thin films were deposited by a dual-target magnetron co-sputtering system. The effect of hafnium doping content on the structure, surface morphology, chemical compositions, optical and electrical properties of HZTO thin films is studied. The HZTO thin films with high hafnium content show an amorphous structure, smooth surface, less carrier concentration and wider optical bandgap. XPS results show that oxygen vacancies as electron charge carrier are effectively suppressed by increasing Hf contents. In addition, their associated application in thin film transistors (TFTs) with Al 2 O 3 gate insulator were fabricated. The interface trap states between the gate insulator and HZTO thin films become fewer with increasing the hafnium doping content. Moreover, hafnium doping content has an important influence on the electrical property and bias stability of TFTs. Although the mobility decreases with increasing the hafnium doping content, the stability is improved obviously. The improved bias stability is attributed to a fewer bulk traps in channel and interface traps between the gate insulator and channel layer, which are commonly originated from oxygen vacancies in oxide-based semiconductors. Therefore, the hafnium ion is a good electron suppressor, and the hafnium doping can effectively suppress gate bias instability of TFTs.

In this paper, the highly improved negative bias illumination stress (NBIS) stability of zinc-tin-oxide (ZTO) thin-film transistors (TFTs) is achieved by Hf doping, using dual-target magnetron cosputtering system. Compared with a large negative threshold voltage shift ( $\vartriangle V_{T})$ of 9 V in pristine ZTO TFT, the Hf-doped ZTO TFTs shows superior stability and device D only shows 1.9 V negative $\vartriangle V_{T}$ under the same NBIS. The enhancement in NBIS stability of Hf-doped ZTO TFTs is attributed to a lower oxygen vacancy concentrations and a fewer interface trap states suppressed by Hf ion. The decrease of oxygen vacancy concentrations and interface trap states are confirmed by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy measurement and capacitance voltage ( $C$ – $V$ ) measurement, respectively. It is consistent with trap density extracted from temperature-dependent field-effect measurements, which verifies further the factor of the improvement of in NBIS stability of Hf-doped ZTO TFTs.