Data_Sheet_1_Epsilon poly-L-lysine as a novel antifungal agent for sustainable wood protection.PDF

There has been a growing interest in seeking natural and biobased preservatives to prevent the wood from deteriorating during its service life, thereby prolonging carbon storage in buildings. This study aims to assess the in vitro and in vivo antifungal properties of epsilon poly-L-lysine (EPL), a secondary metabolite from Actinomyces, against four common wood-inhabiting fungi, including two brown-rot fungi, Gloeophyllum trabeum (GT) and Rhodonia placenta (RP), and two white-rot fungi, Trametes versicolor (TV) and Irpex lacteus (IL), which has rarely been reported. Our results indicate that these fungi responded differently due to EPL treatment. From the in vitro study, the minimal inhibitory concentration of EPL against GT, TV, and IL was determined to be 3 mg/ml, while that of RP was 5 mg/ml. EPL treatment also affects the morphology of fungal hyphae, changing from a smooth surface with a tubular structure to twisted and deformed shapes. Upon EPL treatment with wood samples (in vivo), it was found that EPL could possibly form hydrogen bonds with the hydroxy groups in wood and was uniformly distributed across the transverse section of the wood samples, as indicated by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and fluorescence microscopy analyses, respectively. Compared with control wood samples with a mass loss of over 15% across different fungi, wood samples treated with 1% EPL showed negligible or very low (<8%) mass loss. In addition, the thermal stability of EPL-treated wood was also improved by 50%. This study suggests that EPL could be a promising alternative to traditional metallic-based wood preservatives.</p

Flash Ignition of Freestanding Porous Silicon Films: Effects of Film Thickness and Porosity

We report the first successful xenon flash ignition of freestanding porous Si films in air. The minimum flash ignition energy (<i>E</i>_min) first decreases and then increases with increasing the porous Si film thickness due to the competition between light absorption and heat loss. The <i>E</i>_min is lower for higher porosity film because high porosity reduces both the heat capacity and the thermal conductivity, facilitating the temperature rise. These results are important for initiating controlled porous Si combustion and preventing their unwanted combustion for safety reasons

Effect of Calcination Atmosphere on the Structure and Catalytic Behavior of Cr₂O₃/Al₂O₃ Catalysts for Dehydrogenation of Propane

In this paper, the Cr2O3/Al2O3 catalysts with various loadings and calcination processes were prepared to investigate catalytic performance in the dehydrogenation of propane. Interestingly, it was found that the Cr2O3/Al2O3 catalysts by post-treatment of air calcination achieved higher propane conversion than their counterparts calcined by H2/Ar, while the latter exhibited a better anticoking ability and then higher resistance against deactivation. XRD, Raman spectra, UV–vis spectra, H2-TPR, XPS, and NH3-TPD investigations showed that the Cr6+ species with different polymeric degrees at low loading and crystalline Cr2O3 at high loading were observed on the Cr2O3/Al2O3 catalysts calcined in air, which exhibited a higher Cr6+/Cr3+ ratio, a larger amount of H2 consumption, and concentration of surface acid sites. On the contrary, the post-treatment by H2/Ar effectively prevented the polymerization of the monomeric and/or oligomeric chromate species by the reduction of Cr6+ species, and the non-redox surface Cr3+ clusters or microcrystalline with good dispersion are the dominant species for all of the Cr2O3/Al2O3–H2/Ar catalysts. The characterization results demonstrated that the calcination atmosphere has a great impact on the nature of Cr species, the dispersion, and the surface acidity, which may account for the difference in the catalytic performance of propane dehydrogenation to propylene

Flash Ignition of Freestanding Porous Silicon Films: Effects of Film Thickness and Porosity

We report the first successful xenon flash ignition of freestanding porous Si films in air. The minimum flash ignition energy (<i>E</i>_min) first decreases and then increases with increasing the porous Si film thickness due to the competition between light absorption and heat loss. The <i>E</i>_min is lower for higher porosity film because high porosity reduces both the heat capacity and the thermal conductivity, facilitating the temperature rise. These results are important for initiating controlled porous Si combustion and preventing their unwanted combustion for safety reasons

Flash Ignition of Freestanding Porous Silicon Films: Effects of Film Thickness and Porosity

We report the first successful xenon flash ignition of freestanding porous Si films in air. The minimum flash ignition energy (<i>E</i>_min) first decreases and then increases with increasing the porous Si film thickness due to the competition between light absorption and heat loss. The <i>E</i>_min is lower for higher porosity film because high porosity reduces both the heat capacity and the thermal conductivity, facilitating the temperature rise. These results are important for initiating controlled porous Si combustion and preventing their unwanted combustion for safety reasons

Elevating Low-Grade Heat Harvesting with Daytime Radiative Cooling and Solar Heating in Thermally Regenerative Electrochemical Cycles

Thermal radiation control has garnered growing interest for its ability to provide localized cooling and heating without energy consumption. However, its direct application for energy harvesting remains largely underexplored. In this work, we demonstrate a novel system that leverages daytime radiative cooling and solar heating technologies to continuously power charging-free thermally regenerative electrochemical cycle (TREC) devices, turning ubiquitous low-grade ambient heat into electricity. Notably, by harnessing a substantial 35 °C temperature differential solely through passive cooling and heating effects, the integrated system exhibits a cell voltage of 50 mV and a specific capacity exceeding 20 mAh g–1 of PB. This work unlocks the potential of readily available low-grade ambient heat for sustainable electricity generation

Atmospheric-Pressure Flame Vapor Deposition of Nanocrystalline Diamonds: Implications for Scalable and Cost-Effective Coatings

Nanocrystalline diamonds (NCDs) are one of the many carbon allotropes that have attracted great attention for the advancement of many technologies owing to their superior mechanical, thermal, and optical properties. Yet, their synthesis must be improved for availability at low costs and their widespread application. Here, we report the atmospheric-pressure flame vapor deposition (FVD) synthesis of NCD particles and thin films over an area of more than 27 cm2 using methane–hydrogen–air flat flames. Synthesis at atmospheric pressure is beneficial as it can lower costs and be more time-efficient when compared to the batch-by-batch synthesis of low-pressure and high-pressure processes. Also, the abundance of methane gas available can further lower costs and improve scalability, while generating lower flame temperatures to mitigate the need of extensive cooling. Notably, the FVD method unlocks conditions for diamond growth beyond the previously considered diamond-growth region of the C–H–O phase diagram. By modeling the flame radical species as a guidance, we experimentally demonstrate that the FVD growth of NCDs can be facilely controlled by tuning the reactant gas composition, substrate material, and seeding density. Moreover, we show that the addition of an external electric bias was influential in controlling the porosity and thickness of the NCD films. Overall, with the low cost and simplicity for operation without the need of vacuum, this atmospheric-pressure FVD approach will offer opportunities to facilitate the scaling-up of NCD synthesis for applications in optical, tribological, thermal, and biomedical coatings

Sol-Flame Synthesis: A General Strategy To Decorate Nanowires with Metal Oxide/Noble Metal Nanoparticles

The hybrid structure of nanoparticle-decorated nanowires (NP@NW) combines the merits of large specific surface areas for NPs and anisotropic properties for NWs and is a desirable structure for applications including batteries, dye-sensitized solar cells, photoelectrochemical water splitting, and catalysis. Here, we report a novel <i>sol-flame</i> method to synthesize the NP@NW hybrid structure with two unique characteristics: (1) large loading of NPs per NW with the morphology of NP chains fanning radially from the NW core and (2) intimate contact between NPs and NWs. Both features are advantageous for the above applications that involve both surface reactions and charge transport processes. Moreover, the sol-flame method is simple and general, with which we have successfully decorated various NWs with binary/ternary metal oxide and even noble metal NPs. The unique aspects of the sol-flame method arise from the ultrafast heating rate and the high temperature of flame, which enables rapid solvent evaporation and combustion, and the combustion gaseous products blow out NPs as they nucleate, forming the NP chains around NWs

Rapid and Controllable Flame Reduction of TiO₂ Nanowires for Enhanced Solar Water-Splitting

We report a new flame reduction method to generate controllable amount of oxygen vacancies in TiO2 nanowires that leads to nearly three times improvement in the photoelectrochemical (PEC) water-splitting performance. The flame reduction method has unique advantages of a high temperature (>1000 °C), ultrafast heating rate, tunable reduction environment, and open-atmosphere operation, so it enables rapid formation of oxygen vacancies (less than one minute) without damaging the nanowire morphology and crystallinity and is even applicable to various metal oxides. Significantly, we show that flame reduction greatly improves the saturation photocurrent densities of TiO2 nanowires (2.7 times higher), α-Fe2O3 nanowires (9.4 times higher), ZnO nanowires (2.0 times higher), and BiVO4 thin film (4.3 times higher) in comparison to untreated control samples for PEC water-splitting applications

The IOD of MMP-9 and LOX-1 in the three groups (mean [SD]).

<p>IOD: integral optical density, MMP-9: matrix metalloproteinase-9, LOX-1: lectin-like oxidized low density lipoprotein receptor-1.</p>#<p>: <i>P</i><0.05,</p><p>*: <i>P</i><0.01,</p>a<p>: compared with 0 week,</p>b<p>: compared with week 12;</p>c<p>: compared with group 1,</p>d<p>: compared with group 2.</p