Carbon sandwich: When a pyrrole‐containing surfactant is polymerized between layers of silica (see picture; pyrrole is red), subsequent carbonization and removal of the silica template yields large, pure, single‐layer graphene sheets. The procedure, which employs mild conditions, is controllable and can be used to produce micrometer‐sized graphene sheets on a gram scale.

The integration of 3D-ordered macropores with poly(ionic liquid)s can significantly extend the functions of poly(ionic liquid)s, and afford a new type of material, which can serve as not only tunable photonic crystals and anion-directed molecular gating system, but also as a surface with enhanced tunable wettability and unique stable electro-optic switching.

A general protocol based on spontaneous adsorption of cucurbit[n]uril (CB[n]) molecules through a strong multivalence interaction between CB[n] and gold is described, by which the formation of self-assembled CB[n] monolayers on gold surfaces can be efficiently achieved.

Kohlenstoff‐Sandwich: Nach der Polymerisation eines pyrrolhaltigen Tensids zwischen zwei Siliciumoxidschichten (siehe Bild; Pyrrolringe in Rot) und anschließendem Carbonisieren und Entfernen der Siliciumoxidtemplate entstehen ausgedehnte Graphen‐Monoschichten. Unter milden Bedingungen sind so μm‐große, reine Graphen‐Schichten im Gramm‐Maßstab zugänglich.

The combination of poly (ionic liquid) and photonic structure affords a new class of self-reporting humidity sensory materials with excellent reversibility, which are able to rapidly, sensitively and visually indicate environmental humidity with colour change from blue to green, orange, and red, covering the whole visible range.

Molecular imprinting is an important tool for generating synthetic receptors with specific recognition sites.The resulting artificial receptor has been extensively used in areas that require molecular recognition.Nevertheless, various imprinted materials synthesized using conventional imprinting protocols have low binding capacities and slow binding kinetics because of difficulty in extracting the original templates and high resistance to mass transfer. The combination of molecular imprinting and nanostructured materials is expected to overcome such difficulties. In this work, template molecules were attached onto the electrospun fibers and by using electrospun nanofibers and attached molecules as sacrificial templates, surface molecularly imprinted membranes with bi-, tri-or tetramodal pore structures were fabricated in the absence or presence of SiO 2 nanoparticles in the molecular imprinting precursor. As a demonstration, bovine serum albumin (BSA) and hemoglobin from bovine blood (bHb) were chosen as template molecules and imprinted electrospun affinity membranes with multimodal pore structures were successfully fabricated for protein separation. Compared with the membrane with a bi-or trimodal pore structure, the tetramodal membrane, which consisted of tubule channels, imprinted nanocavities on the inner surface of tube wall, gaps between tubes and pores in the tube wall left by SiO 2 nanoparticles, exhibited a very favorable recognition property and efficient separation toward the template protein molecules in aqueous medium. In a two-protein system, the tetramodal membrane has also shown a very high specific recognition for the template proteins over the non-template proteins. Dynamic binding tests and reusability tests further revealed that tetramodal porous membranes had excellent selectivity, faster binding kinetics and good regenerability. These results indicate that in conjugation with the surface molecular imprinting technique the use of electrospun fibers as sacrificial templates could be used as an efficient strategy for development of high performance affinity membrane materials.

In this paper, novel multiaction antibacterial nanofibrous membranes containing apatite, Ag, AgBr and TiO2 as four active components were fabricated by an electrospinning technique. In this antibacterial membrane, each component serves a different function: the hydroxyapatite acts as the adsorption material for capturing bacteria, the Ag nanoparticles act as the release-active antibacterial agent, the AgBr nanoparticles act as the visible sensitive and release-active antibacterial agent, and the TiO2 acts as the UV sensitive antibacterial material and substrate for other functional components. Using E. coli as the typical testing organism, such multicomponent membranes exhibit excellent antimicrobial activity under UV light, visible light or in a dark environment. The significant antibacterial properties may be due to the synergetic action of the four major functional components, and the unique porous structure and high surface area of the nanofibrous membrane. It takes only 20 min for the bacteria to be completely (99.9%) destroyed under visible light. Even in a dark environment, about 50 min is enough to kill all of the bacteria. Compared to the four component system in powder form reported previously, the addition of the electrospun membrane could significantly improve the antibacterial inactivation of E. coli under the same evaluation conditions. Besides the superior antimicrobial capability, the permanence of the antibacterial activity of the prepared free-standing membranes was also demonstrated in repeated applications.

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