NiO is a p-type wide bandgap semiconductor of use in various electronic devices ranging from solar cells to transparent transistors. This work reports the controlling of conductivity and increase of work functions by Li doping.

HCV can be present in the circulating blood either as a free virus or as a virion-immunoglobulin (Ig) complex. All isotypes of Igs may form the virus complexes, but it remains unclear what specific role of each Ig plays in the clearance of HCV. In the present study, we have combined immuno-capture and RT±PCR, and developed a quick double-specificity method for detecting and distinguishing different HCV-Ig complexes. We compared our new method, the immuno-capture RT±PCR (iRT±PCR), with the conventional RT±PCR (cRT±PCR) for the sensitivity of detecting HCV in 35 clinically diagnosed patients with HCV infection. The results showed that 31 patients were detected to be positive by using iRT±PCR, whereas 16 patients were positive with the use of cRT±PCR. HCV-IgM, HCV-IgG, HCV-IgA could separately be detected by iRT±PCR and their positive rates were 66.7%, 51.0%, 62.7%, respectively. HCV bound to antibody was a common feature of hepatitis C (HC) and 86.3% of patients were positive at least by one of the HCV-Ig tests. The patterns of HCV RNA constituents varied according to disease categories. In summary, iRT±PCR is a valuable method for analysis of the composition of the immune complexes, which may provide new and valuable insights into HCV pathogenesis.

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is known for its ability to establish persistent infection and cause chronic hepatitis in most infected individuals. The antibody response to HCV in HCV-circulating immune complexes (CIC) is unknown. In the present study, we have characterized distinct changes in patterns of HCV-immunoglobulin (Ig) constituents with disease category, viral mutation and clinical markers. The number of samples positive for single HCV-Ig, HCV-IgG and HCV-IgA, HCV-IgM and HCV-IgA, HCV-IgM and HCV-IgG, HCV-IgM, HCV-IgG and HCV-IgA in 47 samples tested were 8 (17%), 1 (2.1%), 9 (19.1%), 4 (8.5%) and 17 (36.2%), respectively. The occurrence of HCV-IgM and HCV-IgA in combination of two isotypes of HCV-Ig became predominant. These results show that defective IgG in HCV-CIC may contribute to long-term viremia. Further analysis indicated that the frequency of HCV RNA/IgA-CIC in the abnormal aspartic aminotransferase (AST) group was significantly higher than that of the normal AST group, and HCV RNA/IgA-CIC frequency in the abnormal alanine aminotransferase (ALT) group was slightly higher than that in the normal ALT group. IgA complexes may reflect the damage degree of liver function during the course of HCV infection. We also found that there were more mutations in supernatant than in other constituents from single-strand conformation polymorphism (SSCP) analysis. Our results suggest that Ig-complexed virions and free virions may have different biological consequences, with the latter being elusive to immunological elimination. The findings in this study may provide some new insights into antibody response to HCV.

During the last two decades, III-nitride-based quantum dots (QDs) have attracted great attentions for optoelectronic applications due to their unique electronic properties. In this paper, we first present an overview on the techniques of fabrication for III-nitride-based QDs. Then various optoelectronic devices such as QD lasers, QD light-emitting diodes (LEDs), QD infrared photodetectors (QDIPs) and QD intermediate band (QDIB) solar cells (SCs) are discussed. Finally, we focus on the future research directions and how the challenges can be overcome.

Cavity-length dependence of the property of optically pumped GaN-based vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) with two dielectric distributed Bragg reflectors was investigated. The cavity lengths were well controlled by employing etching with inductively coupled plasma and chemical mechanical polishing. It was found that the lasing characteristics including threshold, slope efficiency and spontaneous emission coupling factor were substantially improved with reducing the cavity length. In comparison with the device pumped by a 400 nm pulsed laser, the lasing spectrum was featured by a red shift and simultaneous broadening with increasing the pumping energy of a 355 nm pulsed laser. Moreover, the lasing threshold was much higher when pumped by a 355 nm pulsed laser. These were explained by taking into account of the significant heating effect under 355 nm pumping. Our results demonstrate that a short cavity length and good heat-dissipation are essential to GaN-based VCSELs.