Diabetic wound is a significant challenge for clinical treatment with high morbidity and mortality. Plenty of hydrogels with good biocompatibility have been widely used in diabetic wound healing. However, most of them cannot be directly absorbed and utilized by the wounds, which prolongs the regeneration time. Here a new type of healing hydrogel is developed that is based on histidine, a natural dietary essential amino acid that is significant for tissue formation. The amino acid is cross‐linked with zinc ions (Zn2+) and sodium alginate (SA) via dynamic coordinate and hydrogen bonds, respectively, forming a histidine‐SA‐Zn2+ (HSZH) hydrogel with good injectable, adhesive, biocompatible, and antibacterial properties. Application of this dual‐dynamic‐bond cross‐linked HSZH hydrogel accelerates the migration and angiogenesis of skin‐related cells in vitro. Furthermore, it significantly promotes the healing of infected diabetic wounds in vivo and uniquely allows a full repair of wounds within ≈13 days, while ≈27 days are required for the healing process of the control group. This work provides a new strategy for designing wound dressing materials, that weakly cross‐linked material based on tissue‐friendly micromolecules can heal the wounds more efficiently than highly cross‐linked materials based on long‐chain polymers.
Urea oxidation reaction (UOR) is an ideal replacement of the conventional anodic oxygen evolution reaction (OER) for efficient hydrogen production due to the favorable thermodynamics. However, the UOR activity is severely limited by the high oxidation potential of Ni-based catalysts to form Ni 3+ , which is considered as the active site for UOR. Herein, by using in situ cryoTEM, cryo-electron tomography, and in situ Raman, combined with theoretical calculations, a multistep dissolution process of nickel molybdate hydrate is reported, whereby NiMoO 4 •xH 2 O nanosheets exfoliate from the bulk NiMoO 4 •H 2 O nanorods due to the dissolution of Mo species and crystalline water, and further dissolution results in superthin and amorphous nickel (II) hydroxide (ANH) flocculus catalyst. Owing to the superthin and amorphous structure, the ANH catalyst can be oxidized to NiOOH at a much lower potential than conventional Ni(OH) 2 and finally exhibits more than an order of magnitude higher current density (640 mA cm −2 ), 30 times higher mass activity, 27 times higher TOF than those of Ni(OH) 2 catalyst. The multistep dissolution mechanism provides an effective methodology for the preparation of highly active amorphous catalysts.
Constructing the backbones of polymers with metal atoms is an attractive strategy to develop new functional polymeric materials, but it has yet to be studied due to synthetic challenges. Here, metal atoms are interconnected as the backbones of polymers to yield metal‐backboned polymers (MBPs). Rational design of multidentate ligands synthesized via an efficient iterative approach leads to the successful construction of a series of nickel‐backboned polymers (NBPs) with well‐defined lengths and up to 21 nickel atoms, whose structures are systematically confirmed. These NBPs exhibit strong and length‐depended absorption with narrow band gaps, offering promising applications in optoelectronic devices and semiconductors. We also demonstrate the high thermal stability and solution processsability of such nickel‐backboned polymers. Our results represent a new opportunity to design and synthesize a variety of new metal‐backboned polymers for promising applications in the future.
Patchy nanoparticles (NPs) show many important applications, especially for constructing structurally complex colloidal materials, but existing synthetic strategies generate patchy NPs with limited types of symmetry. This article describes a versatile copolymer ligand‐based strategy for the scalable synthesis of uniform Au‐(SiO2)x patchy NPs (x is the patch number and 1 ≤ x ≤ 5) with unusual symmetry at high yield. The hydrolysis and condensation of tetraethyl orthosilicate on block‐random copolymer ligands induces the segregation of copolymers on gold NPs (AuNPs) and hence governs the structure and distribution of silica patches formed on the AuNPs. The resulting patchy NPs possess unique configurations where the silica patches are symmetrically arranged at one side of the core NP, resembling the geometry of polar small molecules. The number, size, and morphology of silica patches, as well as the spacing between the patches and the AuNP can be precisely tuned by tailoring copolymer architectures, grafting density of copolymers, and the size of AuNPs. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that the Au‐(SiO2)x patchy NPs can assemble into more complex superstructures through directional interaction between the exposed Au surfaces. This work offers new opportunities of designing next‐generation complex patchy NPs for applications in such as biomedicines, self‐assembly, and catalysis.
Constructing the backbones of polymers with metal atoms is an attractive strategy to develop new functional polymeric materials, but it has yet to be studied due to synthetic challenges. Here, metal atoms are interconnected as the backbones of polymers to yield metal-backboned polymers (MBPs). Rational design of multidentate ligands synthesized via an efficient iterative approach leads to the successful construction of a series of nickel-backboned polymers (NBPs) with well-defined lengths and up to 21 nickel atoms, whose structures are systematically confirmed. These NBPs exhibit strong and length-depended absorption with narrow band gaps, offering promising applications in optoelectronic devices and semiconductors. We also demonstrate the high thermal stability and solution processsability of such nickel-backboned polymers. Our results represent a new opportunity to design and synthesize a variety of new metal-backboned polymers for promising applications in the future.
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