Flexible lithium-ion batteries are critical for the next-generation electronics. However, during the practical application, they may break under deformations such as twisting and cutting, causing their failure to work or even serious safety problems. A new family of all-solid-state and flexible aqueous lithium ion batteries that can self-heal after breaking has been created by designing aligned carbon nanotube sheets loaded with LiMn O and LiTi (PO ) nanoparticles on a self-healing polymer substrate as electrodes, and a new kind of lithium sulfate/sodium carboxymethylcellulose serves as both gel electrolyte and separator. The specific capacity, rate capability, and cycling performance can be well maintained after repeated cutting and self-healing. These self-healing batteries are demonstrated to be promising for wearable devices.

Pure polyaniline (PANI) films with different molecular chain packing states were successfully prepared by simply tuning the m-cresol content in the solvent.

Interleukin-8 (IL-8) is a common inflammatory factor, which involves in various non-specific pathological processes of inflammation. It has been found that increased endothelial permeability accompanied with high expression of IL-8 at site of injured endothelium and atherosclerotic plaque at early stages, suggesting that IL-8 participated in regulating endothelial permeability in the developing processes of vascular disease. The purpose of this study is to investigate the regulation effects of IL-8 on the vascular endothelial permeability, and the mRNA and protein expression of tight junction components (i.e., ZO-1, Claudin-5 and Occludin). Endothelial cells were stimulated by IL-8 with the dose of 50, 100 and 200 ng/mL, and duration of 2, 4, 6, 8h, respectively. The mRNA and protein expression level of tight junction components with IL-8 under different concentration and duration was examined by RT-PCR and Western blot, respectively. Meanwhile, the integrins induced focal adhesions event with IL-8 stimulation was also investigated. The results showed that IL-8 regulated the permeability of endothelium by down-regulation of tight junction in a dose- and time-dependence manner, but was not by integrins induced focal adhesions. This finding reveals the molecular mechanism in the increase of endothelial cell permeability induced by IL-8, which is expected to provide a new idea as a therapeutic target in vascular diseases.

No abstract

material has an ultra-high specifi c capacity but it suffers from a severe degradation during charge and discharge processes. Flexible LIBs mainly from carbon-based fl exible electrodes have been widely explored such as nanoporous CNTs, [ 31 ] graphene papers, [ 32 ] electrospun porous carbon nanofi bers, [ 33 ] and hollow CNT/carbon nanofi ber composite material. [ 34 ] However, the high contact resistance within the randomly dispersed CNTs or graphene sheets limits the full expression of their advantages. As a result, superior fl exible electrodes are still under pressing demands to enhance the overall performance of fl exible LIBs.In this Communication, a new family of aligned N-doped core-sheath carbon nanotube (N-CNT) fi lms has been synthesized and developed as fl exible and effective anodes of LIBs. The N-CNT fi lm is synthesized from a template of aligned CNT sheet by chemical vapor deposition ( Figure 1 a). Typically, N-doped graphene layers are coaxially grown around bare CNTs in the sheet, and the N-doped sheath can be well controlled by varying the growth time. These N-CNT fi lms exhibit high tensile strength of 690 MPa and electrical conductivity of 410 S cm −1 . In particular, the N-doped graphene layer favors the intercalation of lithium ions, so they can be used as new electrodes for highperformance LIBs. They display a high capacity of 390 mAh g −1 that retains 97% after 200 cycles at a high rate of 4C.To prepare the N-CNT fi lm, aligned CNT sheets that had been drawn out of the spinnable CNT array were stacked along the CNT length on a heat-resisted ceramic framework. It was then transferred to a tube furnace to regrow the nitrogen-doped graphene layers on the outer surfaces of CNTs using acetonitrile as both nitrogen and carbon sources. At high temperature of 1060 °C, acetonitrile decomposed into C-and N-containing fragments, which were attached onto the surface of the template CNT and reformed as new graphene sheets along with the radial direction. Due to the defects introduced by the N-doping, the new grown layers were less uniform compared with original CNT walls ( Figure S1, Supporting Information). The thickness of nitrogen-doped graphene was controlled by varying the reaction time (Figure 1 b). The N-CNT fi lms were compared for the reaction time of 10, 30, 60, and 90 min by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM)