During the past few decades, bio‐inspired nanochannels have been well developed and applied in biosensing, energy transfer, separation, and so on. Here, inspired by the synergistic effect of biological nanopores, biomimetic solid‐state nanochannels with hydrophilic DNA probes at the inner wall (DNA@IWHydrophilic) and hydrophobic coating at the outer surface (None@OSHydrophobic) are designed. To demonstrate their prompted sensing properties, Hg2+ and its specific probe are selected as target and hydrophilic DNA probes, respectively. Compared with the traditional solid‐state nanochannels with hydrophilic probes distributed on both the inner wall and outer surface, the nanochannels with DNA@IWHydrophilic+None@OSHydrophobic significantly decrease the limit of detection (LOD) by 105‐fold. The obvious improvement of sensitivity (with LOD of 1 nM) is attributed to the synergistic effect: None@OSHydrophobic results in the nanochannel's effective diameter decrease and DNA@IWHydrophilic induces a specific sensing target. Meanwhile, nanomolar detection of Hg2+ in human serum and in vivo fish muscle are achieved. Through molecular dynamics simulation, the synergistic effect can be confirmed by ion fluxes increasement; the relative carbon nanotube increases from 135.64% to 135.84%. This work improves the understanding of nanochannels’ synergistic effect and provides a significant insight for nanochannels with improved sensitivity.
Continuous efforts on functional nanomaterials and flexible/stretchable devices, have promoted the laboratorial, cumbersome detection processes toward the wearable and portable intelligent sensing approaches. Responding to the challenge of multi-analytes, mixture,...
This tutorial review highlights the role of detection probes modified on the outer-surface of the nanochannels in enhancing sensitivity, broadening the range of detectable biomarkers, and clarifying the underlying detection mechanism.
Recently, flexible optical devices have triggered booming developments in various research fields, including display equipment, sensors, energy conversion, and so on, due to their high compatibility, portability, and wearability. With the advantages of strong design ability, high precision, and high integration, printing technologies have been recognized as promising methods to realize flexible optical devices. In this Perspective, recent progress on printing strategies for fabricating flexible optical devices are introduced systematically. First, through adjusting the composition of inks, selecting flexible substrates, and controlling external stimulation, fabrication of flexible optical devices based on inkjet printing is illustrated. Then, flexible optical devices fabricated by template-induced printing, 3D printing, slot-die printing, and screen printing are summarized. Finally, prospects and future development directions based on printing technology for flexible optical devices are proposed.
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