Thomas Schneider

Semiconducting polymer dots (Pdots) represent a new class of ultrabright fluorescent probes for biological imaging. They exhibit several important characteristics for experimentally demanding in vitro and in vivo fluorescence studies, such as their high brightness, fast emission rate, excellent photostability, nonblinking, and nontoxic feature. However, controlling the surface chemistry and bioconjugation of Pdots has been a challenging problem that prevented their widespread applications in biological studies. Here, we report a facile yet powerful conjugation method that overcomes this challenge. Our strategy for Pdot functionalization is based on entrapping heterogeneous polymer chains into a single dot, driven by hydrophobic interactions during nanoparticle formation. A small amount of amphiphilic polymer bearing functional groups is co-condensed with the majority of semiconducting polymers to modify and functionalize the nanoparticle surface for subsequent covalent conjugation to biomolecules, such as streptavidin and immunoglobulin G (IgG). The Pdot bioconjugates can effectively and specifically label cellular targets, such as cell surface marker in human breast cancer cells, without any detectable nonspecific binding. Single-particle imaging, cellular imaging, and flow cytometry experiments indicate a much higher fluorescence brightness of Pdots compared to those of Alexa dye and quantum dot probes. The successful bioconjugation of these ultrabright nanoparticles presents a novel opportunity to apply versatile semiconducting polymers to various fluorescence measurements in modern biology and biomedicine.

Fabrication, characterization, and tests of the practical gradient microarray electronic nose with SnO(2) nanowire gas-sensing elements are reported. This novel device has demonstrated an excellent performance as a gas sensor and e-nose system capable of promptly detecting and reliably discriminating between several reducing gases in air at a ppb level of concentration. It has been found that, in addition to the temperature gradient across the nanowire layer, the density and morphological inhomogeneities of nanowire mats define the discriminating power of the electronic nose.

All aboard! A facile conjugation method allows covalent linking of functional molecules to semiconducting polymer dots for bioorthogonal labeling of cellular targets. Targeting of the polymer dots to newly synthesized proteins and glycoproteins in mammalian cells by click chemistry is highly efficient and specific. Detailed facts of importance to specialist readers are published as ”Supporting Information”. Such documents are peer-reviewed, but not copy-edited or typeset. They are made available as submitted by the authors. Please note: The publisher is not responsible for the content or functionality of any supporting information supplied by the authors. Any queries (other than missing content) should be directed to the corresponding author for the article.

Using space-, time-, and phase-resolved Brillouin light-scattering spectroscopy we investigate the difference in phase of the two counterpropagating spin waves excited by the same microwave microstrip transducer. These studies are performed both for backward volume magnetostatic waves and magnetostatic surface waves in an in-plane magnetized yttrium iron garnet film. The experiments show that for the backward volume magnetostatic spin waves (which are reciprocal and excited symmetrically in amplitude) there is a phase difference of $\ensuremath{\pi}$ associated with the excitation process and thus the phase symmetry is distorted. On the contrary, for the magnetostatic surface spin waves (which are nonreciprocal and unsymmetrical in amplitude) the phase symmetry is preserved (there is no phase difference between the two waves associated with the excitation). Theoretical analysis confirms this effect.

Droplet microfluidics, which involves micrometer-sized emulsion droplets on a microfabricated platform, is an active research endeavor that evolved out of the larger field of microfluidics. Recently, this subfield of microfluidics has started to attract greater interest because researchers have been able to demonstrate applications of droplets as miniaturized laboratories for biological measurements. This perspective explores the recent developments and the potential future biological applications of droplet microfluidics.