Increasing fresh water demand for drinking and agriculture is one of the grand challenges of our age. Graphene oxide (GO) membranes have shown a great potential for desalination and water purification. However, it is challenging to further improve the water permeability without sacrificing the separation efficiency, and the GO membranes are easily delaminated in aqueous solutions within few hours. Here, we report a class of reduced GO membranes with enlarged interlayer distance fabricated by using theanine amino acid and tannic acid as reducing agent and cross-linker. Such membranes show water permeance over 10,000 L m−2 h−1 bar−1, which is 10–1000 times higher than those of previously reported GO-based membranes and commercial membranes, and good separation efficiency, e.g., rhodamine B and methylene blue rejection of ~100%. Moreover, they show no damage or delamination in water, acid, and basic solutions even after months.

Compared with noble metals, semiconductors with surface plasmon resonance effect are another type of SERS substrate materials. The main obstacles so far are that the semiconducting materials are often unstable and easy to be further oxidized or decomposed by laser irradiating or contacting with corrosive substances. Here, we report that metallic MoO2 can be used as a SERS substrate to detect trace amounts of highly risk chemicals including bisphenol A (BPA), dichloropheno (DCP), pentachlorophenol (PCP) and so on. The minimum detectable concentration was 10−7 M and the maximum enhancement factor is up to 3.75 × 106. To the best of our knowledge, it may be the best among the metal oxides and even reaches or approaches to Au/Ag. The MoO2 shows an unexpected high oxidation resistance, which can even withstand 300 °C in air without further oxidation. The MoO2 material also can resist long etching of strong acid and alkali.

Isotopic labeling of cysteine residues with acrylamide was previously utilized for relative quantitation of proteins by MALDI-TOF. Here, we explored and compared the application of deuterated and (13)C isotopes of acrylamide for quantitative proteomic analysis using LC-MS/MS and high-resolution FTICR mass spectrometry. The method was applied to human serum samples that were immunodepleted of abundant proteins. Our results show reliable quantitation of proteins across an abundance range that spans 5 orders of magnitude based on ion intensities and known protein concentration in plasma. The use of (13)C isotope of acrylamide had a slightly greater advantage relative to deuterated acrylamide, because of shifts in elution of deuterated acrylamide relative to its corresponding nondeuterated compound by reversed-phase chromatography. Overall, the use of acrylamide for differentially labeling intact proteins in complex mixtures, in combination with LC-MS/MS provides a robust method for quantitative analysis of complex proteomes.

The design and development of multifunctional carriers for drug delivery based on hollow nanoparticles (HNPs) have attracted intense interests. Ordinary spherical HNPs are demonstrated to be promising candidates. However, the application of HNPs with special morphologies has rarely been reported. HNPs with sharp horns are expected to own higher endocytosis efficiencies than spherical counterparts. In this work, novel starlike hollow silica nanoparticles (SHNPs) with different sizes are proposed as platforms for the fabrication of redox-triggered multifunctional systems for synergy of gene therapy and chemotherapy. The CD-PGEA gene vectors (consisting of β-CD cores and ethanolamine-functionalized poly(glycidyl methacrylate) (denoted BUCT-PGEA) arms) are introduced ingeniously onto the surfaces of SHNPs with plentiful disulfide bond-linked adamantine guests. The resulting supramolecular assemblies (SHNP-PGEAs) possess redox-responsive gatekeepers for loaded drugs in the cavities of SHNPs. Meanwhile, they also demonstrate excellent performances to deliver genes. The gene transfection efficiencies, controlled drug release behaviors, and synergistic antitumor effect of hollow silica-based carriers with different morphologies are investigated in detail. Compared with ordinary spherical HNP-based counterparts, SHNP-PGEA carriers with six sharp horns are proven to be superior gene vectors and possess better efficacy for cellular uptake and antitumor effects. The present multifunctional carriers based on SHNPs will have promising applications in drug/gene codelivery and cancer treatment.