High-performance stretchable conductive fibers are desired for the development of stretchable electronic devices. Here we show a simple spinning method to prepare conductive hydrogel fibers with ordered polymer chain alignment that mimics the hierarchically organized structure of spider silk. The as-prepared sodium polyacrylate hydrogel fiber is further coated with a thin layer of polymethyl acrylate to form a core–shell water-resistant MAPAH fiber. Owing to the coexistence and reversible transformation of crystalline and amorphous domains in the fibers, MAPAH fibers exhibit high tensile strength, large stretchability and fast resilience from large strain. MAPAH fiber can serve as a highly stretchable wire with a conductive hydrogel core and an insulating cover. The stretchability and conductivity of the MAPAH fiber are retained at −35 °C, indicating its anti-freezing property. As a prime example of stretchable conductive fibers, MAPAH fibers will shed light on the design of next generation textile-based stretchable electronic devices.
Soft ionic conductors show great promise in multifunctional iontronic devices, but currently utilized gel materials suffer from liquid leakage or evaporation issues. Here, a dry ion‐conducting elastomer with dynamic crosslinking structures is reported. The dynamic crosslinking structures endow it with combined advantageous properties simultaneously, including high ionic conductivity (2.04 × 10−4 S cm−1 at 25 °C), self‐healing capability (96% healing efficiency), stretchability (563%), and transparency (78%). With this ionic conductor as the electrode, two soft iontronic devices (electroluminescent devices and triboelectric nanogenerator tactile sensors) are realized with entirely self‐healing and stretchable capabilities. Due to the absence of liquid materials, the dry ion‐conducting elastomer shows wide operational temperature range, and the iontronic devices achieve excellent stability. These findings provide a promising strategy to achieve highly conductive and multifunctional soft dry ionic conductors, and demonstrate their great potential in soft iontronics or electronics.
There are declines in the protein expression of the NR2B (mouse ε2) and NR1 (mouse ζ1) subunits of the N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor in the cerebral cortex and hippocampus during aging in C57BL/6 mice. This study was designed to determine if there is a greater effect of aging on subunit expression and a stronger relationship between long-term spatial memory and subunit expression within the synaptic membrane than in the cell as a whole. Male, C57BL/6JNIA mice (4, 11 & 26 months old) were tested for long-term spatial memory in the Morris water maze. Frontal cortex, including prefrontal regions, and hippocampus were homogenized and fractionated into light and synaptosomal membrane fractions. Western blots were used to analyze protein expression of NR2B and NR1 subunits of the NMDA receptor. Old mice performed significantly worse than other ages in the spatial task. In the frontal cortex, the protein levels of the NR2B subunit showed a greater decline with aging in the synaptic membrane fraction than in the whole homogenate, while in the hippocampus a similar age-related decline was observed in both fractions. There were no significant effects of aging on the expression of the NR1 subunit. Within the middle-aged mouse group, higher expression of both NR2B and NR1 subunits in the synaptic membrane was associated with better memory. In the aged mice, however, higher expression of both subunits was associated with poorer memory. These results indicate that aging could be altering the localization of the NR2B subunit to the synaptic membrane within the frontal cortex. The correlational results suggest that NMDA receptor functions, receptor subunit composition, and/or the environment in which the receptor interacted in the hippocampus were not the same in the old animals as in younger mice and this may have contributed to memory declines during aging. Publisher's Disclaimer: This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final citable form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain. NIH Public Access Author ManuscriptNeuroscience. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2010 September 15. Published in final edited form as:Neuroscience. Memory is one of the earliest of the cognitive functions to show declines during aging (Albert and Funkenstein, 1992). Memory deficits associated with aging are seen in humans and nonhuman primates (see reviews Nicolle, 1993, Gallagher andRapp, 1997)), dogs (Head et al., 1995) and rodents (Gage et al., 1984, Rapp et al., 1987, Barnes, 1988, Zyzak et al., 1995. One type of memory that is important for how individuals cope with their environment is spatial memory. Humans show 30% to 80% drops in performance in spatial memor...
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