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Improved health management is a key to provide a better health care [...]

A new method for pulsed laser deposition of plasmonic silver nanoparticle (NP) films in flowing gas at atmospheric pressure is described. The ablation was done using an excimer laser at 248 nm. Fast optical imaging shows that the ablation plume is captured by the flowing gas, and is expected to form a NP aerosol, which is carried 5-20 mm to the substrate. The dependence of the deposition rate on laser fluence, gas flow velocity, and target-substrate distance was investigated using electron microscopy and absorption spectroscopy of the deposited films. The NP films were annealed in argon and hydrogen at 400 °C, and in air for temperatures in the range 200 °C-900 °C, leading to strong enhancement, and narrowing of the surface plasmon resonance. The films were used for surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy of a 10 molar solution of Rhodamine 6G; films annealed in air at 400 °C were five times more sensitive than the as-deposited films.

Nanobiotechnology-enabled tissue engineering strategies have emerged as an innovative and promising technique in the field of regenerative medical science. The design and development of multifunctional smart biomaterials compatible to human physiology is crucial to achieve the required biological function with a reduced negative biological response. Several medical bioimplants have been tested to boost life expectancy and better-quality life. The concept of biocompatibility focuses on body acceptance and no harmful effects after implantation, which require shaping the properties of materials synthesis, surface functionalization, and biofunctionality. Such developed bioactive and biodegradable materials have been utilized to achieve the required function at a specific period and sustainability to withstand the surrounding tissues for treating severe injuries and diseases. Thus, exploring new approaches to design multifunctional biocompatible advanced nanostructures to develop next-generation therapies for tissue engineering, this mini-review is an attempt to summarize the advancements in biofunctional smart materials. The review focuses on bio-mimic materials, biomaterials, self-assembly biomaterials, bioprinting functional hydrogels, new polymeric architectures, and hybrid synthetic-natural hydrogels in the field of tissue engineering and regenerative medicine (TERM). This mini-review will serve as a guideline to design future research where the selection of a smart multifunctional biomaterial is crucial to obtain best TERM performance.

A floating emissive probe is applied in conjunction with pulsed laser photo-detachment of O − ions to enable measurement of the dynamic evolution in a plasma potential resulting from the presence of photoelectrons in a 13.56 MHz inductive radio-frequency oxygen discharge. The emissive probe emits thermionic electrons, allowing it to reach a saturation potential which is characterized as the local space potential of the plasma. After the photo-detachment pulse, the local space plasma potential in the illuminated region shoots up to a higher positive value and then relaxes to equilibrium in microsecond time scales. Using the relaxation time of the space potential, the negative ion temperature of O − is estimated over a 10-50 mTorr range and is found to be in the 0.19-0.03 eV range. The negative ion temperature measured by this method is found to be lower than that calculated from the time evolution in electron density resulting from photo-detachment which is independently measured using a resonance hairpin probe.

The increasing demands of environmentally sustainable, affordable, and scalable materials have inspired researchers to explore greener nanosystems of unique properties which can enhance the performance of existing systems. Such nanosystems, extracted from nature, are state-of-art highperformance nanostructures due to intrinsic hierarchical micro/nanoscale architecture and generous interfacial interactions in natural resources. Among several, bio-inspired nanosystems graphene nanosystems have emerged as an essential nano-platform wherein a highly electroactive, scalable, functional, flexible, and adaptable to a living being is a key factor. Preliminary investigation project bio-inspired graphene nanosystems as a multi-functional nanoplatform suitable for electronic devices, energy storage, sensors, and medical sciences application. However, a broad understanding of bio-inspired graphene nanosystems and their projection towards applied application is not well-explored yet. Considering this as a motivation, this mini-review highlights the following; the emergence of bio-inspired graphene nanosystems, over time development to make them more efficient, state-of-art technology, and potential applications, mainly biomedical including biosensors, drug delivery, imaging, and biomedical systems. The outcomes of this review will certainly serve as a guideline to motivate scholars to design and develop novel bio-inspired graphene nanosystems to develop greener, affordable, and scalable next-generation biomedical systems.

Epilepsy is a serious neurological disorder which affects every aspect of patients’ life, including added socio-economic burden. Unfortunately, only a few suppressive medicines are available, and a complete cure for the disease has not been found yet. Excluding the effectiveness of available therapies, the timely detection and monitoring of epilepsy are of utmost priority for early remediation and prevention. Inability to detect underlying epileptic signatures at early stage causes serious damage to the central nervous system (CNS) and irreversible detrimental variations in the organ system. Therefore, development of a multi-task solving novel smart biosensing systems is urgently required. The present review highlights advancements in state-of-art biosensing technology investigated for epilepsy diseases diagnostics and progression monitoring or both together. State of art epilepsy biosensors are composed of nano-enabled smart sensing platform integrated with micro/electronics and display. These diagnostics systems provide bio-information needed to understand disease progression and therapy optimization timely. The associated challenges related to the development of an efficient epilepsy biosensor and vision considering future prospects are also discussed in this report. This review will serve as a guide platform to scholars for understanding and planning of future research aiming to develop a smart bio-sensing system to detect and monitor epilepsy for point-of-care (PoC) applications.

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