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It has been a great challenge to achieve the direct light manipulation of matter on a bulk scale. In this work the direct light propulsion of matter is observed on a macroscopic scale using a bulk graphene-based material. The unique structure and properties of graphene, and the novel morphology of the bulk three-dimensional linked graphene material make it capable not only of absorbing light at various wavelengths but also of emitting energetic electrons efficiently enough to drive the bulk material, following Newtonian mechanics. Thus, the unique photonic and electronic properties of individual graphene sheets are manifested in the response of the bulk state. These results offer an exciting opportunity to bring about bulk-scale light manipulation with the potential to realize long-sought applications in areas such as the solar sail and space transportation driven directly by sunlight. The observation of macroscopic and direct light propulsion of bulk-graphene-based material offers an exciting opportunity for realizing long-sought proposals in areas such as space transportation driven directly by sunlight.

A nylon-like polyester tire cord, which combined the characteristics of nylon and polyester tire cords, was designed as the carcass reinforcement material used to meet the increasing demands of the tire industry for performance and impact on the environment. Tires’ carcass construction plays a crucial role in affecting handling performance and ride comfort. Small changes in the carcass component can lead to significant improvements in the total tire/vehicle performance. This study evaluated the performance of nylon-like polyester and nylon 6 motorcycle tires. The results showed that the nylon-like polyester tire passed all indoor tests, and post-cure inflation (PCI) could be eliminated, resulting in energy and cost savings. The rolling resistance coefficient of the nylon-like polyester tire was reduced by 6.8% compared to that of the nylon 6 control tire, which could save fuel and have a positive impact on the environment. Nylon-like polyester tire cord extracted from the experimental tire possessed a higher modulus compared to that of nylon 6 tire cord, which could lead to better handling and ride comfort performance. Morphological pictures showed that both nylon-like polyester and nylon 6 cords extracted from tires had a good rubber coverage and comparable adhesion properties.

Hybrid lead halide perovskites have made great strides in next-generation light-harvesting and light emitting devices. Recently, they have also shown great potentials in nonlinear optical materials. Two-photon absorption and two-photon light emission have been thoroughly studied in past two years. However, the three-photon processes are rarely explored, especially for the laser emissions. Here we synthesized high quality CH 3 NH 3 PbBr 3 perovskite microstructures with solution processed precipitation method and studied their optical properties. When the microstructures are pumped with intense 1240 nm lasers, we have observed clear optical limit effect and the band-to-band photoluminescence at 540 nm. By increasing the pumping density, whispering-gallery-mode based microlasers have been achieved from CH 3 NH 3 PbBr 3 perovskite microplate and microrod for the first time. This work demonstrates the potentials of hybrid lead halide perovskites in nonlinear photonic devices.

Polyimide (PI) refers to a type of high-performance polymer containing imide rings in the main chain, which has been widely used in fields of aerospace, microelectronic and photonic devices, gas separation technology, and so on. However, traditional aromatic PIs are, in general, the inefficient fluorescence or even no fluorescence, due to the strong inter- and intramolecular charge transfer (CT) interactions causing unavoidable fluorescence quenching, which greatly restricts their applications as light-emitting functional layers in the fabrication of organic light-emitting diode (OLED) devices. As such, the development of fluorescent PIs with high fluorescence quantum efficiency for their application fields in the OLED is an important research direction in the near future. In this review, we provide a comprehensive overview of fluorescent PIs as well as the methods to improve the fluorescence quantum efficiency of PIs. It is anticipated that this review will serve as a valuable reference and offer guidance for the design and development of fluorescent PIs with high fluorescence quantum efficiency, ultimately fostering further progress in OLED research.

Smart actuators have many potential applications in various areas, so the development of novel actuation materials, with facile fabricating methods and excellent performances, are still urgent needs. In this work, a novel electromechanical bimorph actuator constituted by a graphene layer and a PVDF layer, is fabricated through a simple yet versatile solution approach. The bimorph actuator can deflect toward the graphene side under electrical stimulus, due to the differences in coefficient of thermal expansion between the two layers and the converse piezoelectric effect and electrostrictive property of the PVDF layer. Under low voltage stimulus, the actuator (length: 20 mm, width: 3 mm) can generate large actuation motion with a maximum deflection of about 14.0 mm within 0.262 s and produce high actuation stress (more than 312.7 MPa/g). The bimorph actuator also can display reversible swing behavior with long cycle life under high frequencies. on this basis, a fish‐like robot that can swim at the speed of 5.02 mm/s is designed and demonstrated. The designed graphene‐PVDF bimorph actuator exhibits the overall novel performance compared with many other electromechanical avtuators, and may contribute to the practical actuation applications of graphene‐based materials at a macro scale. A graphene‐poly‐(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF) bimorph actuator is fabricated. The actuator can fast generate large actuation motion and produce high actuation stress due to the differences in coefficient of thermal expansion between the two layers and the converse piezoelectric effect and electrostrictive property of PVDF. On this basis, a fish‐like robot that can swim at the speed of 5.02 mm s−1 is designed and demonstrated.

A tert-butyldiphenylsilyl-containing polyimide (PI-OSi) has been established as a colorimetric and ratiometric chemosensor for rapid detecting fluoride ions (F−). The UV-vis absorbance ratio value (A322/A288) of PI-OSi in a DMF solution displays a wide linear range change to F− concentrations with a detection limit (DL) value of 2.13 μM. Additionally, adding incremental amounts of F− to a DMF solution of PI-OSi shows an immediate color change to yellow and finally to green from colorless. More interestingly, the resulting PI-OSi plus F− system (PI-OSi·F) could detect trace water in DMF. The A292/A322 value of PI-OSi·F almost linearly increases with low water content, which suggests convenient quantitative sensing of trace water content in DMF. The DL value of PI-OSi·F for sensing water in DMF is determined to be 0.00149% (v/v). The solution color of PI-OSi·F returns to colorless when the water content increases, indicating that PI-OSi·F can conveniently estimate water content in DMF by naked-eye detection. The detection mechanisms confirmed by an 1H NMR study and a DFT calculation involve a F−-induced desilylation reaction of PI-OSi to form phenolate anion followed by protonation with trace water. Finally, PI-OSi film was fabricated for the colorimetric detection of F− and water in CH3CN.

Perovskite is an advanced optoelectronic semiconductor material that has garnered significant attention in recent years. However, its drawback lies in its environmental instability, limiting its practical applications. To tackle this issue, this research delved into the idea of creating a space-confined structure and used electrospinning to produce a film of perovskite nanocomposite fibers. By effectively encapsulating perovskite nanocrystals into a polymer matrix, the perovskite could be shielded from water and oxygen in the environment, thereby reducing the likelihood of perovskite decomposition and enhancing the stability of its structure and properties. This study examined the influence of material composition and the spinning process on the nanofiber structure to create good spatial confinement. This strategy resulted in a high photoluminescence quantum yield of over 80% and a long-term environmental stability of as long as 1000 h over 90% of the original PLQY. By harnessing the flexibility of the composite fibers, this study demonstrated the potential applications and performance of this nanocomposite film in flexible quantum fluorescence conversion for LED applications.

Highly sensitive, label-free detection methods have important applications in fundamental research and healthcare diagnostics. To date, the detection of single nanoparticles has remained largely dependent on extremely precise spectral measurement, which relies on high-cost equipment. Here, we demonstrate a simple but very nontrivial mechanism for the label-free sizing of nanoparticles using the far-field emission of a photonic molecule (PM) around an exceptional point (EP). By attaching a nanoparticle to a PM around an EP, the main resonant behaviors are strongly disturbed. In addition to typical mode splitting, we find that the far-field pattern of the PM is significantly changed. Taking a heteronuclear diatomic PM as an example, we demonstrate that a single nanoparticle, whose radius is as small as 1 nm to 7 nm, can be simply monitored through the variation of the far-field pattern. Compared with conventional methods, our approach is much easier and does not rely on high-cost equipment. In addition, this research will illuminate new advances in single nanoparticle detection.

Xinhui tangerine peel has valuable medicinal value. The longer it is stored in an appropriate environment, the higher its flavonoid content, resulting in increased medicinal value. In order to correctly identify the age of the tangerine peel, previous studies have mostly used manual identification or physical and chemical analysis, which is a tedious and costly process. This work investigates the automatic age recognition of the tangerine peel based on deep learning and attention mechanisms. We proposed an effective ConvNeXt fusion attention module (CNFA), which consists of three parts, a ConvNeXt block for extracting low-level features’ information and aggregating hierarchical features, a channel squeeze-and-excitation (cSE) block and a spatial squeeze-and-excitation (sSE) block for generating sufficient high-level feature information from both channel and spatial dimensions. To analyze the features of tangerine peel in different ages and evaluate the performance of CNFA module, we conducted comparative experiments using the CNFA-integrated network on the Xinhui tangerine peel dataset. The proposed algorithm is compared with related models of the proposed structure and other attention mechanisms. The experimental results showed that the proposed algorithm had an accuracy of 97.17%, precision of 96.18%, recall of 96.09%, and F1 score of 96.13% for age recognition of the tangerine peel, providing a visual solution for the intelligent development of the tangerine peel industry.

Organic perovskites are promising optoelectronic semiconductor materials with photoelectric applications. It is known that the luminescence of perovskites is highly sensitive to hydron molecules due to its low moisture resistance of crystal structure, indicating its potential application on humidity-sensing. Herein, a novel perovskite-based compound (PBC) with minimal defects was developed to promote the photoluminescence performance via optimization of the drying method and precursor constitutions. Perovskite materials with good structural integrity and enhanced fluorescence performance up to four times were obtained from supercritical drying. Moreover, the hydrophilic polymer matrix, polyethylene oxide (PEO), was added to obtain a composite of perovskite/PEO (PPC), introducing enhanced humidity sensitivity and solution processibility. These perovskite/PEO composites also exhibited long-term stability and manifold cycles of sensitivity to humidity owing to perovskite encapsulation by PEO. In addition, this precursor solution of perovskite-based composites could be fancily processed by multiple methods, including printing and handwriting, which demonstrates the potential and broaden the applications in architecture decoration, logos, trademarks, and double encryption of anti-fake combined with humidity.