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The interface between molecules and electrodes has great impact on charge transport of molecular devices. Precisely manipulating the structure and electronic coupling of electrode-molecule interface at a molecular level is very challenging. Here, we develop new molecular junctions based on tetrathiafulvalene (TTF)-fused naphthalene diimide (NDI) molecules which are anchored to gold electrodes through direct TTF-Au contacts formed via Au-S bonding. These contacts enable highly efficient orbital hybridization of gold electrodes and the conducting π-channels, yielding strong electrode-molecule coupling and remarkably high conductivity in the junctions. By further introducing additional thiohexyl (SHe) anchors to the TTF units, we develop molecular wires with multiple binding sites and demonstrate reversibly switchable electrode-molecule contacts and junction conductance through mechanical control. These findings show a superb electrode-molecule interface and provide a new strategy for precisely tunning the conductance of molecular devices towards new functions. Though charge transport in molecular devices depend on the electrode-molecule interface, controlling the interface’s contact geometry remains a challenge. Here, the authors report molecular junctions featuring TTF-fused NDI molecules anchored to gold electrodes through direct TTF-Au contacts.

Moho tomography is important for studying the deep Earth structure and geodynamics, and fiber borehole strainmeters are broadband, low-noise, and attractive tools for seismic observation. Recently, many studies have shown that fiber optic seismic sensors can be used for subsurface structure imaging based on ambient noise cross-correlation, similar to conventional geophones. However, this array-dependent cross-correlation method is not suitable for fiber borehole strainmeters. Here, we developed a Moho imaging scheme for the characteristics of fiber borehole strainmeters based on ambient noise autocorrelation. S-wave reflection signals were extracted from the ambient noise through a series of processing steps, including phase autocorrelation (PAC), phase-weighted stacking (PWS), etc. Subsequently, the time-to-depth conversion crustal thickness beneath the station was calculated. We applied our scheme to continuous four-component recordings from four fiber borehole strainmeters in Lu’an, Anhui Province, China. The obtained Moho depth was consistent with the previous research results. Our work shows that this method is suitable for Moho imaging with fiber borehole strainmeters without relying on the number of stations.

In this paper, we report deformable blend thin films of polymer semiconductors with PDPPTT (p-type) and N2200 (n-type) as the examples by using the hydrogenated polyisoprene (H-PIP) as the newly developed elastomer. As compared to the respective blends with other elastomers, the blends with H-PIP bear lower elastic moduli and higher crack on-set strains, and in particular exhibit remarkably stable semiconducting performance under large and cyclic mechanical deformations. This aligns with the observation that the assembly structures of polymer semiconductors are stable within the H-PIP matrix based on AFM and GIWAXS characterizations. This exceptional performance is attributed to the unique structure of H-PIP, which is solely composed of mobile aliphatic-hydrocarbon chains without chemical/physical crosslinks. This enables the blend thin films with H-PIP to follow the mechanical deformations of the substrate without generating internal stress and affecting the interconnected assembly networks of the polymer semiconductor, thus leading to stable semiconducting performance. Designing organic semiconductors for ductility and charge transport properties is a challenge. Here, the authors report a family of deformable high performance polymer semiconductor blends using hydrogenated polyisoprene.

The soft nature has endowed conjugated polymers with promising applications in a wide range of field‐effect transistor (FET) based flexible electronics. With unremitting efforts on revealing the molecular structure–property relationships, numerous novel conjugated polymers with high mobility and excellent mechanical property have been developed in the past decades. Incorporating hydrogen‐bonding (H‐bonding) units into semiconducting polymers is one of the most successful strategies for designing high‐performance semiconducting materials. In this review, we aim to highlight the roles of H‐bonding units in the performances of polymeric FETs from three aspects. These include (i) charge mobility enhancement for semiconducting polymers after incorporation of H‐bonding units into the side chains, (ii) the effects of H‐bonding units on the stretchability of conjugated polymers, and (iii) the improvement of self‐healing properties of conjugated polymers containing dynamic hydrogen bonds due to the H‐bonding units in the side chains or conjugated backbones. In this review, the effects of H‐bonding units on the interchain packing order, semiconducting performance, stretchability and self‐healing property of conjugated polymers have been summarized and discussed.

In recent decades, polymer semiconductors, extensively employed as charge transport layers in devices like organic field‐effect transistors (OFETs), have undergone thorough investigation due to their capacity for large‐area solution processing, making them promising for mass production. Research efforts have been twofold: enhancing the charge mobilities of polymer semiconductors and augmenting their mechanical properties to meet the demands of flexible devices. Significant progress has been made in both realms, propelling the practical application of polymer semiconductors in flexible electronics. However, integrating excellent semiconducting and mechanical properties into a single polymer still remains a significant challenge. This review intends to introduce the design strategies and discuss the properties of high‐charge mobility stretchable conjugated polymers. In addition, another key challenge faced in this cutting‐edge field is maintaining stable semiconducting performance during long‐term mechanical deformations. Therefore, this review also discusses the development of healable polymer semiconductors as a promising avenue to improve the lifetime of stretchable device. In conclusion, challenges and outline future research perspectives in this interdisciplinary field are highlighted. Intrinsically stretchable and healable polymer semiconductors hold great potential for flexible electronics. This review summarizes the key advancements of intrinsically stretchable and healable polymer semiconductors. The variation of charge transporting property and morphology evolution of these materials under stress and during healing process are discussed.

Artificial neural network-based machine learning provides foundations for artificial intelligence (AI), yet requires high energy costs for training. Beyond software-level simulation of neural networks, hardware-level implementation via neuromorphic devices becomes the next milestone in nanoscience towards energy-sustainable AI. Single-molecule devices have the potential for ultimate scale and energy efficiency, but challenges remain in achieving programmable multi-conductance states amidst room-temperature thermal fluctuations. Here we fabricated a bio-inspired single-molecule neuromorphic device consuming ~6.34 aJ/operation by electrochemically gating molecule-ion electrostatic interactions. This device realizes biomimetic emulation of neural plasticity from short-term to long-term memory featuring over 10 distinct conductance states, demonstrating the applications in Pavlovian conditioning for associative learning and pattern recognition in Morse code processing. Our approach enables multi-state synaptic emulation using an individual molecule toward energy-sustainable AI. Molecular devices offer the potential for the scalability and energy efficiency required to develop energy-sustainable AI. Zhang et al. report a single-molecule neuromorphic device that consumes 6.34 aJ per operation and support both short-term to long-term memory, featuring over 10 distinct conductance states.

Multimodal image fusion aims to retain valid information from different modalities, remove redundant information to highlight critical targets, and maintain rich texture details in the fused image. However, current image fusion networks only use simple convolutional layers to extract features, ignoring global dependencies and channel contexts. This paper proposes GRPAFusion, a multimodal image fusion framework based on gradient residual and pyramid attention. The framework uses multiscale gradient residual blocks to extract multiscale structural features and multigranularity detail features from the source image. The depth features from different modalities were adaptively corrected for inter-channel responses using a pyramid split attention module to generate high-quality fused images. Experimental results on public datasets indicated that GRPAFusion outperforms the current fusion methods in subjective and objective evaluations.

Molecular systems that can function as photoresists are essential for the fabrication of flexible electronics through all‐photolithographic processes. Most of the reported molecular systems for photo‐patterning of polymeric semiconductors contain binary or multi‐components. In comparison, single component semiconducting photoresist is advantageous since it will circumvent the optimization of phase separation and ensure the patterned semiconducting thin films to be more uniform. In this paper, a single component semiconducting photoresist (PDPP4T‐N3) by incorporating azide groups into the branching alkyl chains of a diketopyrrolopyrrole‐based conjugated polymer is reported. The results reveal that i) the azide groups make the side chains to be photo‐cross‐linkable; ii) uniform patterns with size as small as 5 µm form under mild UV irradiation (365 nm, 85 mW cm−2) at ambient conditions; iii) such photo‐induced cross‐linking does not affect the inter‐chain packing; iv) benefiting from the single component feature, field‐effect transistors (FETs) with the individual patterned thin films display satisfactorily uniform performances with average charge mobility of 0.61 ± 0.10 cm2 V–1 s–1 and threshold voltage of 3.49 ± 1.43 V. These results offer a simple yet effective design strategy for high‐performance single component semiconducting photoresists, which hold great potentials for flexible electronics processed by all‐photolithography. A new diketopyrrolopyrrole‐based conjugated polymer as single component semiconducting photoresist has been developed by incorporating azide groups in the side chains. This conjugated polymer possesses excellent photo‐patterning property and high semiconducting performance simultaneously. Benefiting from the single component feature, the semiconducting performances of FETs with individual patterned thin films are satisfactorily uniform.

The aberrant behavior of lipid droplets (LDs) is often indicative of cellular dysfunction, which may contribute to the development of a range of diseases, particularly metabolic dysfunction‐associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) and atherosclerosis (AS). Consequently, there is an urgent need to develop fluorescence probes targeting LDs to monitor the progression of disease. In this study, an unanticipated one‐pot boron tribromide (BBr₃)/boron trichloride (BCl₃)‐promoted cyclization reaction was discovered, yielding a bromo‐/chloro‐substituted triphenylamine (TPA) derivative (TPA‐Br/TPA‐Cl). TPA‐Br was successfully transformed into new TPA‐containing donor‐acceptor (D–A) molecules which show typical aggregation induced emission (AIE) property. Among these new AIE emitters, TPA‐N shows the most promising LDs targeting specificity, lowest toxicity and best photo‐stability. Ex vivo studies further demonstrate that TPA‐N can be used to fluorescence image fatty liver and AS plaque quickly and effectively. This work reports an unanticipated one‐pot cyclization reaction induced by boron tribromide (BBr₃)/boron trichloride (BCl₃) to construct novel triphenylamine based aggregation induced emission emitters. Among these emitters, TPA‐N shows the best performance for lipid droplet imaging, which can be further be used to fluorescence image fatty liver effectively and AS plaque.

Objective Calcific aortic valve disease (CAVD) is the leading cause of angina, heart failure, and death from aortic stenosis. However, the molecular mechanisms of its progression, especially the complex disease-related transcriptional regulatory mechanisms, remain to be further elucidated. Methods This study used porcine valvular interstitial cells (PVIC) as a model. We used osteogenic induced medium (OIM) to induce calcium deposition in PVICs to calcify them, followed by basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF) treatment to inhibit calcium deposition. Transcriptome sequencing was used to study the mRNA expression profile of PVICs and its related transcriptional regulation. We used DaPars to further examine alternative polyadenylation (APA) between different treatment groups. Results We successfully induced calcium deposition of PVICs through OIM. Subsequently, mRNA-seq was used to identify differentially expressed mRNAs for three different treatments: control, OIM-induced and OIM-induced bFGF treatment. Global APA events were identified in the OIM and bFGF treatment groups by bioinformatics analysis. Finally, it was discovered and proven that catalase ( CAT ) is one of the potential targets of bFGF-induced APA regulation. Conclusion We described a global APA change in a calcium deposition model related to CAVD. We revealed that transcriptional regulation of the CAT gene may contribute to bFGF-induced calcium deposition inhibition.