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Inulin-type fructans (ITFs) have been shown to possess various biological activities. However, studies on their safety and side effects are limited. Hence, we aimed to evaluate the possible effects of burdock ITFs on the physiological indices of healthy mice and their filial generation when fed for six months. Thirty-two C57BL/6J mice were randomly divided into two groups; a normal control (NC) and an ITFs group. The parental generations were kept in one cage with free access to a normal diet and double-distilled water (P-NC group) or burdock ITFs drinking water (P-ITFs group, 2% w/v). The filial generations (F-NC group and F-ITFs group) were kept separately and were fed as their parental generation. Behavior, organ/body weight, serum indices, histopathology, time of production, and number of pup births were observed. There were no significant adverse effects on these indices.Functional indices of the spleen, lung, heart, and pancreas of the ITFs groups were higher than those of the NC groups, respectively. Interestingly, the serum glucose (GLU), total cholesterol (TC), uric acid (UA) and creatine kinase (CK) levels of the ITFs groups were lower than those of the NC groups.Meanwhile, the pregnancy number and pup birth number of the P-ITFs group were more than those of P-NC group. Therefore, long-term consumption of burdock ITFs has no obvious adverse effects on the health of parental mice and their offspring, but may contribute to reproductive capacity, fatigue reduction, and risk reduction of renal disease.

In the process of PVT growth of AlN crystals, there is difficult to maintain ideal thermodynamic equilibrium conditions, causing crystal defects being inevitably generated. High temperature annealing technology has received much attention due to their effectiveness in improving crystal integrity. In this paper, AlN samples grown by PVT method were annealed at high temperature in N 2 atmosphere. In order to evaluate the crystalline quality and structural perfection of AlN before and after thermal annealing, high-resolution X-ray diffraction (HRXRD) and Raman spectrum were carried out. In addition, the impurity related band gap changes in the optical properties of AlN crystals were characterized by room temperature photoluminescence (PL) and absorption spectra. The crystal quality of these AlN crystals was significantly improved after annealing at 1400-1800 ℃. The full width at half maximum (FWHM) of the ( 1012) plane X-ray rocking curve decreased from 104.04 to 79.92 arcsec (1 arcsec=0.01592°) after annealing at 1400 ℃ . As the annealing temperature increases, the absorption was significantly enhanced and the band gap became larger, indicating that the annealing process was beneficial to improve the quality of AlN crystals. The results of secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) demonstrate that the annealing process reduces the C impurity, resulting in an increase in band gap of AlN crystal, which is consistent with the results of optical absorption.

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