Efficient control of phonons is crucial to energy-information technology, but limited by the lacking of tunable degrees of freedom like charge or spin. Here we suggest to utilize crystalline symmetry-protected pseudospins as new quantum degrees of freedom to manipulate phonons. Remarkably, we reveal a duality between phonon pseudospins and electron spins by presenting Kramers-like degeneracy and pseudospin counterparts of spin-orbit coupling, which lays the foundation for “pseudospin phononics”. Furthermore, we report two types of three-dimensional phononic topological insulators, which give topologically protected, gapless surface states with linear and quadratic band degeneracies, respectively. These topological surface states display unconventional phonon transport behaviors attributed to the unique pseudospin-momentum locking, which are useful for phononic circuits, transistors, antennas, etc. The emerging pseudospin physics offers new opportunities to develop future phononics.

Biomimetic giant membrane vesicles, with size and lipid compositions comparable to cells, have been recognized as an attractive experimental alternative to living systems. Due to the similarity of their membrane structure to that of body cells, cell-derived giant plasma membrane vesicles have been used as a membrane model for studying lipid/protein behavior of plasma membranes. However, further application of biomimetic giant membrane vesicles has been hampered by the side-effects of chemical vesiculants and the utilization of osmotic buffer. We herein develop a facile strategy to derive giant membrane vesicles (GMVs) from mammalian cells in biofriendly medium with high yields. These GMVs preserve membrane properties and adaptability for surface modification and encapsulation of exogenous molecules, which would facilitate their potential biological applications. Moreover, by loading GMVs with therapeutic drugs, GMVs could be employed for drug transport to tumor cells, which represents another step forward in the biomedical application of giant membrane vesicles. This study highlights biocompatible GMVs with biomimicking membrane surface properties and adaptability as an ideal platform for drug delivery strategies with potential clinical applications.

3D chirality of sandwich type of organic molecules has been discovered. The key element of this chirality is characterized by three layers of structures that are arranged nearly in parallel fashion with one on top and one down from the center plane. Individual enantiomers of these molecules have been fully characterized by spectroscopies with their enantiomeric purity measured by chiral HPLC. The absolute configuration was unambiguously assigned by X-ray diffraction analysis. This is the first multilayer 3D chirality reported and is anticipated to lead to a new research area of asymmetric synthesis and catalysis and to have a broad impact on chemical, medicinal, and material sciences in future.

Inspired by helical or spiral veins, which endow plants with excellent flexibility and elasticity to withstand storms, we present novel hollow microsprings with ionic liquid encapsulation for flexible and stretchable electronics. The microsprings were generated by using a coaxial capillary microfluidic device to consecutively spin poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF) presolution and an ionic liquid, which formed laminar flows in the coaxial injection microfluidic channels. The fast phase inversion of PVDF helps to form the core-shell structure of a microfiber and guarantees the in situ encapsulation of ionic liquid. The hybrid microfiber can then spiral and be further solidified to maintain the helical structure with increasing flow rates of the injection fluids. Because of the feasible and precise control of the injection fluids during the microfluidic spinning, the resultant microsprings have controlled core-shell structures, helical pitches, and corresponding electromechanical properties. By further embedding them into stretchable films, the simple paradigm of a flexible device shows great conductive performance in tensile tests and even motion cycles, which could be explored as a promising candidate in stretchable sensors, flexible electronics, and electronic skins.

Amorphous carbon is considered as a prospective and serviceable anode for the storage of sodium. In this contribution, we illuminate the transformation rule of defect/void ratio and the restrictive relation between specific capacity and rate capability. Inspired by this mechanism, ratio of plateau/slope capacity is regulated via temperature-control pyrolysis. Moreover, pore-forming reaction is induced to create defects, open up the isolated voids, and build fast ion channels to further enhance the capacity and rate ability. Numerous fast ion channels, high ion-electron conductivity, and abundant defects lead the designed porous hard carbon/Co₃O₄ anode to realize a high specific capacity, prolonged circulation ability, and enhanced capacity at high rates. This research deepens the comprehension of sodium storage behavior and proposes a fabrication approach to achieve high performance carbonaceous anodes for sodium-ion batteries.

The nitrocellulose (NC) membrane based lateral flow immunoassay device (LFID) is one of the most important and widely used biosensor platforms for point-of-care (PoC) diagnostics. However, the analytical performance of LFID has limitations and its optimization is restricted to the bioassay chemistry, the membrane porosity, and the choice of biolabel system. These bottom neck technical issues resulted from the fact that the conventional LFID design principle has not evolved for many years, which limited the LFID for advanced biosensor applications. Here we introduce a new dimension for LFID design and optimization based on geometric flow control (GFC) of NC membranes, leading to highly sensitive GFC-LFID. This novel approach enables comprehensive flow control via different membrane geometric features such as the width (w) and the length (l) of a constriction, as well as its input angle ({\theta }_1) and output angle ({\theta }_2). The GFC-LFID (w=0.5 mm, l=7 mm, {\theta }_1= 60°, {\theta }_2= 45°) attained a 10-fold increase in sensitivity for detection of interleukin-6 (IL-6), compared with conventional LFID, whereas reducing by 10-fold the antibody consumption. The GFC-LFID detects IL-6 over a linear range of 0.1–10 ng/mL with a limit of detection (LoD) of 29 pg/mL, which even outperforms some commercial IL-6 LFIDs. Such significant improvement is attained by pure geometric control of the NC membrane, without additives, that only relaying on a simple high throughput laser ablation procedure suitable for integration on regular large-scale manufacturing of GFC-LFIDs. Our new development on GFC-LFID with the combination of facile scalable fabrication process, tailored flow control, improved analytical performance, and reduced antibodies consumption is likely to have a significant impact on new design concept for the LFID industry.

The reason that the stoichiometry of gas to water in artificial gas hydrates formed on porous materials is much higher than that in nature is still ambiguous. Fortunately, based on our experimental thermodynamic and kinetic study on the gas hydrate formation behavior with classic ordered mesoporous carbon CMK-3 and irregular porous activated carbon combined with density functional theory calculations, we discover a microscopic pathway of the gas hydrate formation on porous materials. Two interesting processes including (I) the replacement of water adsorbed on the carbon surface by gas and (II) further replacement of water in the pore by gas accompanied with the gas condensation in the pore and growth of gas hydrate crystals out of the pore were deduced. As a result, a great enhancement of the selectivity and regeneration for gas separation was achieved by controlling the gas hydrate formation behavior accurately.

In this work, a numerical solution for the extrapolation problem of a discrete set of n values of an unknown analytic function is developed. The proposed method is based on a novel numerical scheme for the rapid calculation of higher order derivatives, exhibiting high accuracy, with error magnitude of O(10⁻¹⁰⁰) or less. A variety of integrated radial basis functions are utilized for the solution, as well as variable precision arithmetic for the calculations. Multiple alterations in the function’s direction, with no curvature or periodicity information specified, are efficiently foreseen. Interestingly, the proposed procedure can be extended in multiple dimensions. The attained extrapolation spans are greater than two times the given domain length. The significance of the approximation errors is comprehensively analyzed and reported, for 5832 test cases.

Transition-metal-doped tungsten semicarbide nanosheets (M-doped W₂C NSs, M=Fe, Co, and Ni) have been synthesized through carburization of the mixture of tungsten trioxide, polyvinylpyrrolidone, and metal dopant. The nanosheets grow directly on the W mesh and have the lateral dimension of several hundreds of nm to a few μm with a thickness of few tens nm. It is demonstrated that the M-doped W₂C NSs exhibit superior electrocatalytic activity for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). Impressively, the Ni-doped W₂C NSs (2 at\mathit{\text{\%}} Ni) with the optimized HER activity show extremely low onset overpotentials of 4, 9, and 19 mV and modest Tafel slopes of 39, 51, and 87 mV dec⁻¹ in acidic (pH=0), neutral (pH=7.2), and basic (pH=14) solutions, respectively, which is close to the commercial Pt/C catalyst. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations also demonstrate that the Gibbs free energy for H adsorption of Ni-W₂C is much closer to the optimal value ∆{\mathrm{G}}_{\mathrm{H}⁎} = -0.073 eV as compared to -0.16 eV of W₂C. Furthermore, nearly 100% Faradaic efficiency and long-term stability are obtained in those environments. This realization of highly tolerant metal semicarbide catalyst performing on par with commercial Pt/C in all range of pH offers a key step towards industrially electrochemical water splitting.

Sponges are open cellular materials with numerous interesting features. However, the potential of compartmentalized sponges has not been explored although many new properties and applications could be envisioned. We found that compartmentalized fibrous ultraporous polymer sponges with superhydrophobic surfaces could be designed as virtually wall-less reaction containers. With this, for example, the efficient removal of CO₂ from water and the controlled mineralization of calcium carbonate are possible. The high porosity (>99%) and superhydrophobicity make these sponges ideal candidates to hold alkanolamine solution for absorbing CO₂ and exchange gas through the walls of the sponges. The tubular sponge exhibits a much higher evaporation rate than a glass tube with the same diameter due to the much larger contact area between water and air. Therefore, the spongy reaction container also possesses a much faster adsorption rate, smaller equilibration time and higher efficiency for CO₂ adsorption than the glass tube container. In addition, these tubular sponges are also utilized to precipitate calcium carbonate by ammonium carbonate decomposition, which can control the deposition rates and products by tailoring the porosity and surface chemistry in the future. These new sponges provide an ideal basis for numerous new applications, for example, as breathable pipe lines for gas-liquid exchange, slag slurry carbonization, humidifier, and blood enricher.