Owing to their unique morphology, ultrasmall lateral sizes, and exceptional properties, graphene quantum dots (GQDs) hold great potential in many applications, especially in the fields of electrochemical biosensors, bioimaging, drug delivery, gene delivery, etc. Their biosafety and potential genotoxicity to human and animal cells have been a growing concern in recent years. Especially, the potential DNA damage caused by GQDs is very crucial but still unclear. In this study, the effect of GQDs on DNA damage has been evaluated by a combination of molecular dynamics (MD) simulations and density functional theory. Our results demonstrate that the DNA damaging mechanism of GQDs depends on the size of GQDs. The small GQDs (seven benzene rings) tend to enter into the interior of DNA molecules and cause a DNA base mismatch. The relatively large GQDs (61 benzene rings) tend to adsorb onto the two ends of a DNA molecule and cause DNA unwinding. Due to the strong interaction between guanine (G) and GQDs, the effect of GQDs is much larger on G than on the other three bases (A, C, and T). In addition, the concentration of GQDs could also affect the results of DNA damaging.

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Spin-valve heterojunction plays a vital role in many technologies such as non-volatile magnetic random-access memories (MRAMs) and high-density magnetic recording. In particular, spin-valve device based on two-dimensional van der Waals...

We demonstrated a feasible strategy to fabricate MoTe2/Ge heterojunction by direct growth of Ge flake on a MoTe2 film substrate with a two-step chemical vapor deposition method. A thin transition layer (∼4 nm) mainly composed of polycrystalline germanium at the MoTe2/Ge interface was verified during the Ge flake growth. The MoTe2/Ge heterojunction-based photodetector exhibits both the response speed with a rise/fall time of 7/4 μs and the photoresponsivity and detectivity with 4.87 A W−1 and 5.02 × 1011 Jones under zero bias in the near-infrared regime, respectively. The characteristics of device performance imply its practical applicability as building block for potential near-infrared integrated photonics.

The discovery of two-dimensional (2D) van der Waals (vdw) ferromagnets has provided a broad platform for the study of spintronics and many novel physical phenomena. However, vdw ferromagnetic crystals generally...