BACKGROUND Treatment of myocardial infarction with mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) has proven beneficial effects in both animal and clinical studies. Engineered silica nanoparticles (SiO2-NPs) have been extensively used as contrast agents in regenerative medicine, due to their resistance to degradation and ease of functionalization. However, there are still controversies on their effective biosaf...

The liver has been shown to be a primary target organ for SiO2 nanoparticles in vivo, and may be highly susceptible to damage by these nanoparticles. However, until now, research focusing on the potential toxic effects of SiO2 nanoparticles on mitochondria-associated energy metabolism in hepatocytes has been lacking. In this work, SiO2 nanoparticles 20 nm in diameter were evaluated for their ab...

Coatings of carbon nanoparticles dispersed in SiO2, ZnO and NiO matrices on aluminium substrates have been fabricated by a sol–gel technique. Spectrophotometry was used to determine the solar absorptance and the thermal emittance of the composite coatings with a view to apply these as selective solar absorber surfaces in solar thermal collectors. Cross-sectional high resolution transmission ele...

Surface enhanced spectroscopy such as surface enhanced Raman spectrum (SERS) and surface enhanced fluorescence have been investigated extensively in the past two decades. Herein, we present experimental evidence to demonstrate the existence of a new surface enhanced spectroscopy, namely, surface enhanced electrochemiluminescence (SEECL). Our investigation indicates that the electrochemiluminesc...

In amorphous SiO2 (a-SiO2), a technologically most important material, average structural properties of ion tracks have been inferred from macroscopic measurements, yet details of the track structure and inner morphology are difficult to retrieve due to the lack of sufficient contrast inherent with most techniques. Here we report on measurements of a fine structure in ion tracks in a-SiO2 using...

The biotemplating technique is an environmental-protective high-efficiency new technology by which the resulting TiO2 may simultaneously attain the duplication of structure and self-doping elements from biotemplate materials, which is highly desirable for photocatalytic applications. In this paper, aquatic plant leaves—including reed, water hyacinth, and duckweed—were used as both templates and...

Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) provides a unique non-destructive spectroscopic fingerprint for chemical detection. However, intrinsic differences in affinity of analyte molecules to metal surface hinder SERS as a universal quantitative detection tool for various analyte molecules simultaneously. This must be overcome while keeping close proximity of analyte molecules to the metal surf...

We have successfully demonstrated very high-performance PMOS and NMOS transistors with high-K/metal-gate gate stacks with the right threshold voltages for both p-and n-channels on bulk Si. We believe that high-K/metal-gate is an option for the 45nm high-performance logic technology node. 1. Introduction The silicon industry has been scaling SiO2 aggressively for the past 15 years for low-power,...

Controlled drug loading and release into tumor cells to increase the intracellular drug concentration is a major challenge for cancer therapy due to resistance and inefficient cellular uptake. Here a temperature and pH dually responsive PNiPAM/AA@SiO2 core-shell particles with internal controlled release were designed and fabricated for efficient cancer treatment, which could recognize the intr...

In the present study, we demonstrate the performance of Zinc oxide thin film transistors (ZnO TFTs) array subjected to the strain under high bending test and the reliability of TFTs was confirmed for the bending fatigue test of 2000 cycles. Initially, ZnO TFTs were fabricated on Si substrate and subsequently transferred on flexible PET substrate using transfer printing process. It was observed ...