An efficient and mature inkjet printing technology is introduced for mass production of coffee-ring-free patterns of high-quality graphene at high resolution (unmarked scale bars are 100 μm). Typically, several passes of printing and a simple baking allow fabricating a variety of good-performance electronic devices, including transparent conductors, embedded resistors, thin film transistors, and micro-supercapacitors.

Eosinophil peroxidase (EPO) is one of the major oxidant-producing enzymes during inflammatory states in the human lung. The degradation of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) upon incubation with human EPO and H2O2 is reported. Biodegradation of SWCNTs is higher in the presence of NaBr, but neither EPO alone nor H2O2 alone caused the degradation of nanotubes. Molecular modeling reveals two binding sites for SWCNTs on EPO, one located at the proximal side (same side as the catalytic site) and the other on the distal side of EPO. The oxidized groups on SWCNTs in both cases are stabilized by electrostatic interactions with positively charged residues. Biodegradation of SWCNTs can also be executed in an ex vivo culture system using primary murine eosinophils stimulated to undergo degranulation. Biodegradation is proven by a range of methods including transmission electron microscopy, UV-visible-NIR spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy, and confocal Raman imaging. Thus, human EPO (in vitro) and ex vivo activated eosinophils mediate biodegradation of SWCNTs: an observation that is relevant to pulmonary responses to these materials.

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Core–shell magnetic nanostructures (MNS) such as Fe3O4–SiOx, are being explored for their potential applications in biomedicine, such as a T2 (dark) contrast enhancement agent in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Herein, we present the effect of silica shell thickness on its r2 relaxivity in MRI as it relates to other physical parameters. In this effort initially, monodispersed Fe3O4 MNS (nominally 9 nm size) were synthesized in organic phase via a simple chemical decomposition method. To study effect of shell thickness of silica of Fe3O4–SiOx core shell on r2 relaxivity, the reverse micro-emulsion process was used to form silica coating of 5, 10 and 13 nm of silica shell around the MNS, while polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxane was used to form very thin layer on the surface of MNS; synthesized nanostructures were characterized by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and high resolution TEM (HRTEM), superconducting quantum interference device magnetometry and MRI. Our observation suggests that, with increase in thickness of silica shell in Fe3O4–SiOx core–shell nanostructure, r2 relaxivity decreases. The decrease in relaxivity could be attributed to increased distance between water molecules and magnetic core followed by change in the difference in Larmor frequencies (Dx) of water molecules. These results provide a rational basis for optimization of SiOx-coated MNS for biomedical applications.