Overcoming the trade-offs among power consumption, fabrication cost, and signal amplification has been a long-standing issue for wearable electronics. We report a high-gain, fully inkjet-printed Schottky barrier organic thin-film transistor amplifier circuit. The transistor signal amplification efficiency is 38.2 siemens per ampere, which is near the theoretical thermionic limit, with an ultralow power consumption of <1 nanowatt. The use of a Schottky barrier for the source gave the transistor geometry-independent electrical characteristics and accommodated the large dimensional variation in inkjet-printed features. These transistors exhibited good reliability with negligible threshold-voltage shift. We demonstrated this capability with an ultralow-power high-gain amplifier for the detection of electrophysiological signals and showed a signal-to-noise ratio of >60 decibels and noise voltage of <0.3 microvolt per hertz1/2at 100 hertz.

CuO nanoparticles with controllable facets are of great significance for photocatalysis. In this work, the surface termination and facet orientation of CuO nanoparticles are accurately tuned by adjusting the amount of hydroxylamine hydrochloride and surfactant. It is found that CuO nanoparticles with Cu-terminated (110) or (111) surfaces show high photocatalytic activity, while other exposed facets show poor reactivity. Density functional theory simulations confirm that sodium dodecyl sulfate surfactant can lower the surface free energy of Cu-terminated surfaces, increase the density of exposed Cu atoms at the surfaces and thus benefit the photocatalytic activity. It also shows that the poor reactivity of the Cu-terminated CuO (100) surface is due to the high energy barrier of holes at the surface region.

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and lung cancer, closely related to smoking, are major lung diseases affecting millions of individuals worldwide. The generated gas mixture of smoking is proved to contain about 4,500 components such as carbon monoxide, nicotine, oxidants, fine particulate matter, and aldehydes. These components were considered to be the principle factor driving the pathogenesis and progression of pulmonary disease. A large proportion of lung cancer patients showed a history of COPD, which demonstrated that there might be a close relationship between COPD and lung cancer. In the early stages of smoking, lung barrier provoked protective response and DNA repair are likely to suppress these changes to a certain extent. In the presence of long-term smoking exposure, these mechanisms seem to be malfunctioned and lead to disease progression. The infiltration of inflammatory cells to mucosa, submucosa, and glandular tissue caused by inhaled cigarette smoke is responsible for the destruction of matrix, blood supply shortage, and epithelial cell death. Conversely, cancer cells have the capacity to modulate the proliferation of epithelial cells and produce of new vascular networks. Comprehension understanding of mechanisms responsible for both pathologies is necessary for the prevention and treatment of COPD and lung cancer. In this review, we will summarize related articles and give a glance of possible mechanism between cigarette smoking induced COPD and lung cancer.

In this work, all ink-jet printed (IJP) low-voltage organic field-effect transistors (OFETs) on flexible substrate are reported. The OFETs use IJP silver (Ag) for source/drain/gate electrodes, poly(4-vinylphenol) (PVP) for gate dielectric, 6,13-bis(triisopropylsilylethynyl)-pentacene (TIPS-pentacene) blended with polystyrene (PS) as the semiconducting layer and CYTOP for encapsulation layer. All the printing processes were carried out in ambient air environment using a single laboratory ink-jet printer Dimatix DMP-2831. The all IJP device presents state-of-the-art performance with low operation voltage down to 3 V, small subthreshold swing (SS) of 0.155 V/decade, mobility of 0.26 cm 2 V-1 s-1 , threshold voltage (V th) of-0.17 V and on/off ratio of 3.1×10 5 , along with a yield of 62.5%. Through interface engineering and proper process optimization, this work demonstrates a promising low-voltage all IJP device platform for low-cost flexible printed electronics. Keywords Organic field effect transistors (OFETs); all ink-jet printed TFTs; low-voltage operation §: Linrun Feng and Chen Jiang contributed equally to this work.

This paper presents a flexible graphene/polyvinylidene difluoride (PVDF)/graphene sandwich for three-dimensional touch interactivity. Here, x-y plane touch is sensed using graphene capacitive elements, while force sensing in the z-direction is by a piezoelectric PVDF/graphene sandwich. By employing different frequency bands for the capacitive- and force-induced electrical signals, the two stimuli are detected simultaneously, achieving three-dimensional touch sensing. Static force sensing and elimination of propagated stress are achieved by augmenting the transient piezo output with the capacitive touch, thus overcoming the intrinsic inability of the piezoelectric material in detecting nontransient force signals and avoiding force touch mis-registration by propagated stress.

Herein, we describe a novel integrated biosensor for performing dielectric spectroscopy to analyze biological samples. We analyzed biomolecule samples with different concentrations and demonstrated that the solution's impedance is highly correlated with the concentration, indicating that it may be possible to use this sensor as a concentration sensor. In contrast with standard spectrophotometers, this sensor offers a low-cost and purely electrical solution for the quantitative analysis of biomolecule solutions. In addition to determining concentrations, we found that the sample solution impedance is highly correlated with the length of the DNA fragments, indicating that the sizes of PCR products could be validated with an integrated chip-based, sample-friendly system within a few minutes. The system could be the basis of a rapid, low-cost platform for DNA characterization with broad applications in cancer and genetic disease research.

In digital microfluidics, droplet generation is a fundamental operation for quantitative liquid manipulation. The generation of well-defined micro-droplets on a chip with restricted device geometries has become a real obstacle...

Background Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a severe public health problem. Cigarette smoke (CS) is a risk factor for COPD and lung cancer. The underlying molecular mechanisms of CS-induced malignant transformation of bronchial epithelial cells remain unclear. In this study, we describe a lung-on-a-chip to explore the possible mechanistic link between cigarette smoke extract (CSE)-associated COPD and lung cancer. Methods An in vitro lung-on-a-chip model was used to simulate pulmonary epithelial cells and vascular endothelial cells with CSE. The levels of IL-6 and TNF-α were tested as indicators of inflammation using an enzyme-linked immune sorbent assay. Apical junction complex mRNA expression was detected with qRT-PCR as the index of epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT). The effects of CSE on the phosphorylation of signal transduction and transcriptional activator 3 (STAT3) were detected by Western blotting. Flow cytometry was performed to investigate the effects of this proto-oncogene on cell cycle distribution. Results Inflammation caused by CSE was achieved in a lung-on-a-chip model with a mimetic movement. CSE exposure induced the degradation of intercellular connections and triggered the EMT process. CSE exposure also activated the phosphorylation of proto-oncogene STAT3, while these effects were inhibited with HJC0152. Conclusions CSE exposure in the lung-on-a-chip model caused activation of STAT3 in epithelial cells and endothelial cells. HJC0152, an inhibitor of activated STAT3, could be a potential treatment for CS-associated COPD and lung cancer.