Diabetic nephropathy (DN) is an important public health concern of increasing proportions and the leading cause of end-stage renal disease (ESRD) in diabetic patients. It is one of the most common long-term microvascular complications of diabetes mellitus that is characterized by proteinuria and glomerular structural changes. Angiogenesis has long been considered to contribute to the pathogenesis of DN, whereas the molecular mechanisms of which are barely known. Angiogenic factors associated with angiogenesis are the major candidates to explain the microvascular and pathologic finds of DN. Vascular endothelial growth factor A (VEGF-A), leucine-rich α-2-glycoprotein 1, angiopoietins and vasohibin family signal between the podocytes, endothelium, and mesangium have important roles in the maintenance of renal functions. An appropriate amount of VEGF-A is beneficial to maintaining glomerular structure, while excessive VEGF-A can lead to abnormal angiogenesis. LRG1 is a novel pro-angiogenic factors involved in the abnormal angiogenesis and renal fibrosis in DN. The imbalance of Ang1/Ang2 ratio has a role in leading to glomerular disease. Vasohibin-2 is recently shown to be in diabetes-induced glomerular alterations. This review will focus on current understanding of these angiogenic factors in angiogenesis and pathogenesis associated with the development of DN, with the aim of evaluating the potential of anti-angiogenesis therapy in patients with DN.

A back contact interface in a kesterite Cu 2 ZnSn(S,Se) 4 (CZTSSe) photovoltaic device plays an important role in fabricating high quality semiconducting photoactive layers and improving carrier extraction efficiency. However, uncontrolled decomposition reactions between the CZTSSe absorber layer and Mo electrode result in high series resistance and recombination at the back interface. The insertion of high work function MoO 3 as an interfacial layer is considered as a promising way to engineer the back contact. This highlights the importance of elucidating the chemistry and dynamics of MoO 3 at the Mo/kesterite interface in the CZTSSe annealing process. Herein, A detailed investigation of the elemental diffusion and chemistry of the back contact with the MoO 3 intermediate layer during selenization is carried out. The results demonstrate that the presence of the MoO 3 interfacial layer largely suppresses the chemical reaction between Mo and CZTSSe in the annealing process, inducing high quality CZTSSe absorbing films with fewer voids and reducing the thickness of MoSe 2 from 209 to 84 nm when the optimized thickness of MoO 3 is 10 nm. This finally leads to the increase in device efficiency from 9.02% to 10.92%, and the best performance where an efficiency of 11.37% is achieved.

Interfacial properties play a significant role in the photovoltaic performance of kesterite solar cells. Different from its predecessor of Cu(In,Ga)S(e) 2 , the interface between Cu 2 ZnSnS(e) 4 (CZTSSe) and the back contact electrode of Mo is chemically unstable during selenization of the absorbing layer at high temperature. Raman spectra reveal that the MoS 2 interfacial layer is easily formed because of more negative change of free energy. However, in reality, the band offset between CZTSSe and MoS 2 is unfavorable for hole transfer. By selenizing the Mo electrode, the as-prepared MoSe 2 interfacial layer can suppress the diffusion of S and improve the band structure, which is beneficial for charge carrier separation and transfer. Therefore, the conversion efficiency of CZTSSe solar cells is increased from 10.28 to 11.46%.

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