Perpendicularly oriented columnar structure was obtained for electropolymerized polypyrrole films formed from micellar solution of anionic surfactants. The surfactants used as dopants were a class of anionic surfactant, namely, sodium salts of dodecyl sulfate (SDS) and dodecylbenzene sulfonate (SDBS). The formation process of polypyrrole films on electrode surfaces was studied with in situ atomic force microscopy,(AFM) and electrochemical quartz crystal microbalance (EQCM) methods in order to monitor the submicron structure of the grown polymers. In EQCM measurement, the frequency shift (Δf) and the resonance resistance (ΔR) of the quartz crystal electrode were obtained simultaneously. An abrupt increase in ΔR was observed for both PPy/DS− and PPy/DBS− films at about 60–100 normalmC cm−2 . Such a drastic change in ΔR, which may be associated with the emergence of the viscoelastic properties of the films, could be explained by the formation of columnar structure. In situ AFM observation clearly indicated that such a structure started to form around these critical charges. The cyclic voltammograms for the PPy/DS− and PPy/DBS− films showed sharp redox couples observed around −0.5 to 0.6 V. The redox corresponds to a cation doping/undoping process. The diffusion rate of cations for the resulting films was studied with ac impedance measurement as a function of the concentration of surfactant dopants. As the PPy film was prepared in higher concentration of the surfactant dopant, where the micelles are formed in solution, the resulting film showed a considerably higher (ca. three orders of magnitude) diffusion coefficient compared to ordinary PPy films so far reported. Such an enhanced diffusivity of ions could be attributed to a special formation process of polypyrrole in micelle solution: the mechanism is discussed here.

The charging-discharging behavior of lithium/LiC104/polypyrrole battery was found to show a different dependence on the thickness of a polypyrrole film cathode prepared at various polymerization potentials. Lithium batteries constructed with a polypyrrole cathode formed at a higher potential show better charging-discharging performance characteristics than those with a film prepared at a lower potential. The electrode kinetics of electrochemically prepared polypyrrole were investigated in an attempt to clarify the interesting dependence of the behavior of Li/polypyrrole battery on the thickness of polypyrrole cathode as a function of formation potential. A potential step chronoamperometry, together with an ac impedance measurement, has evidenced that there is a strong relationship between the doping charges and the apparent diffusion coefficients of polypyrrole electrodes. In practice, the battery performance of Li/LiC1OJ polypyrrole cells was examined by varying the current density. The upper limit of the current density at which the coulombic yield in the charging-discharging curves remains at 100% was found for both thin and thick films of 1 and 5 C cm -2 film formation charges.) unless CC License in place (see abstract). ecsdl.org/site/terms_use address. Redistribution subject to ECS terms of use (see 128.255.6.125 Downloaded on 2015-06-20 to IP Vol. 134,No. 9 LITHIUM/POLYPYRROLE BATTERY 2097 trochemical properties of polypyrrole as a single electrode.

Circulating tumor cells (CTCs), defined as tumor cells circulating in the peripheral blood of patients with solid tumors, are relatively rare. Diagnosis using CTCs is expected to help in the decision-making for precision cancer medicine. We have developed an automated microcavity array (MCA) system to detect CTCs based on the differences in size and deformability between tumor cells and normal blood cells. Herein, we evaluated the system using blood samples from non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and small-cell lung cancer (SCLC) patients. To evaluate the recovery of CTCs, preclinical experiments were performed by spiking NSCLC cell lines (NCI-H820, A549, NCI-H23 and NCI-H441) into peripheral whole blood samples from healthy volunteers. The recovery rates were 70% or more in all cell lines. For clinical evaluation, 6 mL of peripheral blood was collected from 50 patients with advanced lung cancer and from 10 healthy donors. Cells recovered on the filter were stained. We defined CTCs as DAPI-positive, cytokeratin-positive, and CD45-negative cells under the fluorescence microscope. The 50 lung cancer patients had a median age of 72 years (range, 48–85 years); 76% had NSCLC and 20% had SCLC, and 14% were at stage III disease whereas 86% were at stage IV. One or more CTCs were detected in 80% of the lung cancer patients (median 2.5). A comparison of the CellSearch system with our MCA system, using the samples from NSCLC patients, confirmed the superiority of our system (median CTC count, 0 versus 11 for CellSearch versus MCA; p = 0.0001, n = 17). The study results suggest that our MCA system has good clinical potential for diagnosing CTCs in lung cancer.