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Osteoarthritis (OA) is a progressive disease, involving the progressive breakdown of cartilage, as well as changes to the synovium and bone. There are currently no disease-modifying treatments available clinically. An increasing understanding of the disease pathophysiology is leading to new potential therapeutics, but improved approaches are needed to deliver these drugs, particularly to cartilage tissue, which is avascular and contains a dense matrix of collagens and negatively charged aggrecan proteoglycans. Cationic delivery vehicles have been shown to effectively penetrate cartilage, but these studies have thus far largely focused on proteins or nanoparticles, and the effects of macromolecular architectures have not yet been explored. Described here is the synthesis of a small library of polycations composed of N-(2-hydroxypropyl)methacrylamide (HPMA) and N-(3-aminopropyl)methacrylamide (APMA) with linear, 4-arm, or 8-arm structures and varying degrees of polymerization (DP) by reversible addition fragmentation chain-transfer (RAFT) polymerization. Uptake and retention of the polycations in bovine articular cartilage was assessed. While all polycations penetrated cartilage, uptake and retention generally increased with DP before decreasing for the highest DP. In addition, uptake and retention were higher for the linear polycations compared to the 4-arm and 8-arm polycations. In general, the polycations were well tolerated by bovine chondrocytes, but the highest DP polycations imparted greater cytotoxicity. Overall, this study reveals that linear polymer architectures may be more favorable for binding to the cartilage matrix and that the DP can be tuned to maximize uptake while minimizing cytotoxicity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

p–p orbital interaction through Mg(II) isovalent doping in methylammonium lead chloride perovskite significantly enhances the electronic properties while not affecting the optical bandgap. This chemical behaviour shows promising applications to optoelectronic devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High-performance optoelectronic devices, such as solar cells and light-emitting diodes, have been fabricated with lead halide perovskites owing to their superior carrier properties. However, charge transport in such optoelectronics is intrinsically directional due to the existence of p–n junctions, which thus lacks the potential to elucidate any perturbations in light or electricity during energy conversion. Here, with the presence of a LiCl additive in a formamidinium chloride (FACl) solution, the as-grown LiCl:FAPbCl3 nanorods demonstrate greatly enhanced crystallinity and UV photoresponse as compared to pristine FAPbCl3 nanostructures without the LiCl additive. Most importantly, the LiCl:FAPbCl3 nanorod film exhibits unprecedented distinguishability to UV photons with different energies and oscillating intensities, in the form of bipolar and periodically oscillatory photocurrents. This work could advance the fundamental understanding of photoinduced carrier processes in halide perovskites and facilitate the development of novel UV-based optical communications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effects of proton irradiation on nanostructured metal oxides have been investigated. Recent studies suggest that the presence of structural defects (e.g. vacancies and interstitials) in metal oxides may enhance the material's electrochemical charge storage capacity. A new approach to introduce defects in electrode materials is to use ion irradiation as it can produce a supersaturation of point defects in the target material. In this work we report the effect of low-energy proton irradiation on amorphous TiO2 nanotube electrodes at both room temperature and high temperature (250 °C). Upon room temperature irradiation the nanotubes demonstrate an irradiation-induced phase transformation to a mixture of amorphous, anatase, and rutile domains while showing a 35% reduction in capacity compared to anatase TiO2. On the other hand, the high temperature proton irradiation induced a disordered rutile phase within the nanotubes as characterized by Raman spectroscopy and transmission electron microscopy, which displays an improved capacity by 20% at ∼240 mA h g−1 as well as improved rate capability compared to an unirradiated anatase sample. Voltammetric sweep data were used to determine the contributions from diffusion-limited intercalation and capacitive processes and it was found that the electrodes after irradiation had more contributions from diffusion in lithium charge storage. Our work suggests that tailoring the defect generation through ion irradiation within metal oxide electrodes could present a new avenue for designing advanced electrode materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]