Search for: All records

The concentration of dopamine (DA) and tyrosine (Tyr) reflects the condition of patients with Parkinson's disease, whereas moderate paracetamol (PA) can help relieve their pain. Therefore, real-time measurements of these bioanalytes have important clinical implications for patients with Parkinson's disease. However, previous sensors suffer from either limited sensitivity or complex fabrication and integration processes. This work introduces a simple and cost-effective method to prepare high-quality, flexible titanium dioxide (TiO2) thin films with highly reactive (001)-facets. The as-fabricated TiO2 film supported by a carbon cloth electrode (i.e., TiO2–CC) allows excellent electrochemical specificity and sensitivity to DA (1.390 µA µM−1 cm−2), Tyr (0.126 µA µM−1 cm−2), and PA (0.0841 µA µM−1 cm−2). More importantly, accurate DA concentration in varied pH conditions can be obtained by decoupling them within a single differential pulse voltammetry measurement without additional sensing units. The TiO2–CC electrochemical sensor can be integrated into a smart diaper to detect the trace amount of DA or an integrated skin-interfaced patch with microfluidic sampling and wireless transmission units for real-time detection of the sweat Try and PA concentration. The wearable sensor based on TiO2–CC prepared by facile manufacturing methods holds great potential in the daily health monitoring and care of patients with neurological disorders. 

Abstract Many textbook physical effects in crystals are enabled by some specific symmetries. In contrast to such ‘apparent effects’, ‘hidden effect X’ refers to the general condition where the nominal global system symmetry would disallow the effect X, whereas the symmetry of local sectors within the crystal would enable effect X. Known examples include the hidden Rashba and/or hidden Dresselhaus spin polarization that require spin-orbit coupling, but unlike their apparent counterparts are demonstrated to exist in non-magnetic systems even in inversion-symmetric crystals. Here, we discuss hidden spin polarization effect in collinear antiferromagnets without the requirement for spin-orbit coupling (SOC). Symmetry analysis suggests that antiferromagnets hosting such effect can be classified into six types depending on the global vs local symmetry. We identify which of the possible collinear antiferromagnetic compounds will harbor such hidden polarization and validate these symmetry enabling predictions with first-principles density functional calculations for several representative compounds. This will boost the theoretical and experimental efforts in finding new spin-polarized materials. 

Aluminum nanocrystals (AlNCs) are of increasing interest as sustainable, earth-abundant nanoparticles for visible wavelength plasmonics and as versatile nanoantennas for energy-efficient plasmonic photocatalysis. Here, we show that annealing AlNCs under various gases and thermal conditions induces substantial, systematic changes in their surface oxide, modifying crystalline phase, surface morphology, density, and defect type and concentration. Tailoring the surface oxide properties enables AlNCs to function as all-aluminum-based antenna-reactor plasmonic photocatalysts, with the modified surface oxides providing varying reactivities and selectivities for several chemical reactions. 

SARS-CoV-2 vaccinations were initially shown to substantially reduce risk of severe disease and death. However, pharmacokinetic (PK) waning and rapid viral evolution degrade neutralizing antibody (nAb) binding titers, causing loss of vaccinal protection. Additionally, there is inter-individual heterogeneity in the strength and durability of the vaccinal nAb response. Here, we propose a personalized booster strategy as a potential solution to this problem. Our model-based approach incorporates inter-individual heterogeneity in nAb response to primary SARS-CoV-2 vaccination into a pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic (PK/PD) model to project population-level heterogeneity in vaccinal protection. We further examine the impact of evolutionary immune evasion on vaccinal protection over time based on variant fold reduction in nAb potency. Our findings suggest viral evolution will decrease the effectiveness of vaccinal protection against severe disease, especially for individuals with a less durable immune response. More frequent boosting may restore vaccinal protection for individuals with a weaker immune response. Our analysis shows that the ECLIA RBD binding assay strongly predicts neutralization of sequence-matched pseudoviruses. This may be a useful tool for rapidly assessing individual immune protection. Our work suggests vaccinal protection against severe disease is not assured and identifies a potential path forward for reducing risk to immunologically vulnerable individuals. 

Abstract Energy bands in antiferromagnets are supposed to be spin degenerate in the absence of spin–orbit coupling (SOC). Recent studies have identified formal symmetry conditions for antiferromagnetic crystals in which this degeneracy can be lifted, spin splitting,even in the vanishing SOC (i.e., non‐relativistic) limit. Materials having such symmetries could enable spin‐split antiferromagnetic spintronics without the burden of using heavy‐atom compounds. However, the symmetry conditions that involve spin and magnetic symmetry are not always effective as practical material selection filters. Furthermore, these symmetry conditions do not readily disclose trends in the magnitude and momentum dependence of the spin‐splitting energy. Here, it is shown that the formal symmetry conditions enabling spin‐split antiferromagnets can be interpreted in terms of local motif pairs, such as octahedra or tetrahedra, each carrying opposite magnetic moments. Collinear antiferromagnets with such a spin‐structure motif pair, whose components interconvert by neither translation nor spatial inversion, will show spin splitting. Such a real‐space motif‐based approach enables an easy way to identify and design materials (illustrated in real example materials) having spin splitting without the need for SOC, and offers insights into the momentum dependence and magnitude of the spin splitting.