Jokumsen Dahl (supplyfang1)

Metal-oxide thin-film transistors (TFT) fabricated by spray pyrolysis are of increasing interest because of its simple process and scalability. A bottleneck issue is to get a bubble-free and dense material. We studied the effect of ammonium acetate (AA) addition in the oxide precursor solution on the performance of spray-coated ZnO TFTs. AA acts as a stabilizer, which increases the solubility of the solution and enhances the film quality by reducing the defects. With AA addition in ZnO precursor, the films are coffee ring free with high mass density and better grain orientation. The ZnO TFT with AA exhibit a remarkable improvement of its device performance such as saturation mobility increasing from 5.12 to 41.53 cm2V-1s-1, the subthreshold swing decreasing from 340 to 162 mV/dec and on/off current ratio increasing from ~105 to 108. Additionally, the TFTs show excellent stability with a low threshold voltage shift of 0.1 V under gate bias stress. Therefore, the addition of AA is a promising approach to achieve high-performance ZnO TFTs for low-cost manufacturing of displays.Cerebral ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) results in harmful consequences during ischemic stroke, especially the disruption of the blood-brain barrier (BBB), which leads to severe hemorrhagic transformation through aggravation of edema and brain hemorrhage. Our previous study demonstrated that icariside II (ICS II), which is derived from Herba Epimedii, attenuates cerebral I/R injury by inhibiting the GSK-3β-mediated activation of autophagy both in vitro and in vivo. However, the effect of ICS II on the BBB remains unclear. Thus, in this study, we investigated the regulation of BBB integrity by ICS II after cerebral I/R injury and further explored the underlying mechanism in rats. Cerebral I/R injury was induced by middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO), and the treatment groups were administered ICS II at a dose of 16 mg/kg by gavage twice a day for 3 days. The results showed that ICS II effectively prevented BBB disruption, as evidenced by Evans Blue staining. Moreover, ICS II not only significantly reduced the expression of MMP2/9 but also increased TIMP1 and tight junction protein (occludin, claudin 5, and ZO 1) expression. Intriguingly, ICS II may directly bind to both MMP2 and MMP9, as evidenced by molecular docking. In addition, ICS II also inhibited cerebral I/R-induced apoptosis and ameliorated the Bax/Bcl-2 ratio and cleaved-caspase 3 level. Collectively, our findings reveal that ICS II significantly ameliorates I/R-induced BBB disruption and neuronal apoptosis in MCAO rats by regulating the MMP9/TIMP1 balance and inhibiting the caspase 3-dependent apoptosis pathway.Establishing processing routes for obtaining metal-matrix composites (MMCs) with uniformly-dispersed reinforcements is one of the main subjects in additively manufactured composite materials to achieve designed microstructures and mechanical properties. Here we report on the microstructural features of compositionally graded WC/Co-alloy composites additively manufactured by multi-beam laser directed energy deposition (multi-beam LDED). For tailoring microstructures of compositionally graded WC/Co-alloy composites with uniformly-dispersed reinforcements, the combinational method the laser-beam defocus function in the multi-beam LDED system and granulated powder was attempted. By laser defocusing in the multi-beam LDED system, composites with uniformly-dispersed WC particles in Co alloy matrix was successfully obtained due to melting of Co bond in WC-12 wt.%Co granulated particles. It was found that the laser defocusing of multi-beam lasers affects temperature increase of flying powder during the laser focusing area, resulting in change of processing mode from melt-pool mode to thermal spray mode. The preferable property gradients in the WC/Co-alloy composites could be obtained by controlling the feeding rate of the powders and laser-beam defocus. These experimental results demonstrated the