Owing to its excellent electrical, mechanical, thermal and optical properties, graphene has attracted great interests since it was successfully exfoliated in 2004. Its two dimensional nature and superior properties meet the need of surface plasmons and greatly enrich the field of plasmonics. Recent progress and applications of graphene plasmonics will be reviewed, including the theoretical mechanisms, experimental observations, and meaningful applications. With relatively low loss, high confinement, flexible feature, and good tunability, graphene can be a promising plasmonic material alternative to the noble metals. Optics transformation, plasmonic metamaterials, light harvesting etc. are realized in graphene based devices, which are useful for applications in electronics, optics, energy storage, THz technology and so on. Moreover, the fine biocompatibility of graphene makes it a very well candidate for applications in biotechnology and medical science.Comment: 84 pages, 26 figures, 5 tables. To appear in Mat.Sci.Eng.

The past few years have witnessed the great success of graphene in controlling the electromagnetic (EM) wave. As an important topic in both the physics and engineering fields, wavefront control has attracted more and more attention from the researchers. So far, most graphene-based wavefront control is studied in terahertz or higher frequencies. In the microwave band, relevant work is rarely reported, which is limited by the nearly purely resistive property of graphene, the lack of reactance makes phase control a difficult problem. In this paper, we present and experimentally realize the microwave programmable graphene metasurface (MPGM) for the first time. By analyzing the equivalent impedance, the necessary condition of achieving a binary element using resistive material is first derived. Inspired by which, the proposed structure can realize uniform reflection amplitude and opposite phase simultaneously through changing the voltage applied to graphene. Meanwhile, the patterned configuration makes it possible to control different elements independently. As a result, both simulated and measured results indicate that our MPGM can realize multiple functions such as beam redirecting and radar cross section reduction, paving the way for graphene in the application of designing tunable phase-based devices in the microwave band.

A simple facile synthesis of substituted purine derivatives has been developed by using Mitsunobu conditions for an alcohol and a respective nucleobase. A wide range of alcohols produces good to excellent yield (>90%). The resulting purine analogues show good regioselectivity with N-9 substitution as the dominant products in most of the cases. Application of diastereospecific alcohols reveals a complete inversion of the carbon stereogenic center giving a single diastereomer. More than two dozen novel nucleobase derivatives have been prepared in high yield.

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A Lewis base-catalyzed three-component cascade reaction was developed for the synthesis of 4,5-disubstituted-1,2,3-(NH)-triazoles. More than 25 new (NH)-triazoles were prepared in good to excellent yields under mild conditions. The availability of the C-4 vinyl group allows easy conversion into other triazole derivatives.

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Haematopoietic stem and progenitor cell (HSPC) research has significantly contributed to the understanding and harnessing of haematopoiesis for regenerative medicine. However, the methodology for real-time tracking HSPC in vivo is still lacking, which seriously restricts the progress of research. Recently, magnetic carbon nanotubes (mCNT) have generated great excitement because they have been successfully used as vehicles to deliver a lot of biomolecules into various cells. There is, however, no report about mCNT being used for tracking HSPC. In this paper, we investigated the uptake efficiency of fluorescein-isothiocyanate-labelled mCNT (FITC-mCNT) into HSPC and their effect on the cytotoxicity and differentiation of HSPC. We found that cellular uptake of FITC-mCNT was concentration-and time-dependent. The uptake of FITC-mCNT into HSPC reached up to 100% with the highest mean fluorescence (MF). More importantly, efficient FITC-mCNT uptake has no adverse effect on the cell viability, cytotoxicity and differentiation of HSPC as confirmed by colony-forming unit assay (CFU). In conclusion, the results reported here suggest the further tailoring of mCNT for their use in HSPC labelling/tracking in vivo or gene delivery into HSPC.

Recently, there has been strong interest in flexible and wearable electronics to meet the technological demands of modern society. Environmentally-friendly and scalable electronic textiles is a key area that is still significantly underdeveloped. Here, we describe a novel strain sensor composed of aligned cellulose acetate (CA) nanofibers with belt-like morphology and a reduced graphene oxide (RGO) layer. The unique spatial alignment, microstructure and wettability of CA nanofibrous membranes facilitate their close contact with deposited GO colloids. After a portable and fast hot-press process within 700 s at 150 °C, the GO on CA membrane can be facilely reduced to a conductive RGO layer. Moreover, the connection among contiguous CA nanofibers and the interaction between the GO and CA substrate were both highly enhanced, resulting in superior mechanical strength with Young's modulus of 1.3 GPa and small sheet resistance lower than 10 kΩ. Therefore, the conductive RGO/CA membrane was successfully utilized as a strain sensor in a broad deformation range and with versatile deformation types. Moreover, the distinctive mechanical strength under different stretch angles endowed the well-aligned RGO/CA film with intriguing sensitivity against stress direction. Such a cost-effective and environmentally-friendly method can be easily extended to the scalable production of graphene-based flexible electronic textiles.