No abstract

We fabricated a paraffin-infused porous graphene film with programmable wettability for the spatiotemporal droplet manipulation.

Bioinspired film with tunable wettability is developed for liquid manipulation based on a lubricant-infused shape-memory graphene sponge.

Clay-based nanomaterials, especially 2:1 aluminosilicates such as vermiculite, biotite, and illite, have demonstrated great potential in various fields. However, their characteristic sandwiched structures and the lack of effective methods to exfoliate two-dimensional (2D) functional core layers (FCLs) greatly limit their future applications. Herein, we present a universal wet-chemical exfoliation method based on alkali etching that can intelligently “capture” the ultrathin and biocompatible FCLs (MgO and Fe2O3) sandwiched between two identical tetrahedral layers (SiO2 and Al2O3) from vermiculite. Without the sandwich structures that shielded their active sites, the obtained FCL nanosheets (NSs) exhibit a tunable and appropriate electron band structure (with the bandgap decreased from 2.0 eV to 1.4 eV), a conductive band that increased from −0.4 eV to −0.6 eV, and excellent light response characteristics. The great properties of 2D FCL NSs endow them with exciting potential in diverse applications including energy, photocatalysis, and biomedical engineering. This study specifically highlights their application in cancer theranostics as an example, potentially serving as a prelude to future extensive studies of 2D FCL NSs.

Considerable efforts have been devoted to developing artificial micro/nanomotors that can convert energy into movement. A flow lithography integrated microfluidic spinning and spiraling system is developed for the continuous generation of bioinspired helical micromotors. Because the generation processes could be precisely tuned by adjusting the flow rates and the illuminating frequency, the length, diameter, and pitch of the helical micromotors were highly controllable. Benefiting from the fast online gelation and polymerization, the resultant helical micromotors could be imparted with Janus, triplex, and core-shell cross-sectional structures that have never been achieved by other methods. Owing to the spatially controlled encapsulation of functional nanoparticles in the microstructures, the helical micromotors can perform locomotion not only by magnetically actuated rotation or corkscrew motion but also through chemically powered catalytic reaction.