An Enzyme-based 1:2 Demultiplexer Interfaced with an Electrochemical Actuator

Alginate-Based Smart Materials and Their Application: Recent Advances and Perspectives

Nature produces materials using available molecular building blocks following a bottom-up approach. These materials are formed with great precision and flexibility in a controlled manner. This approach offers the inspiration for manufacturing new artificial materials and devices. Synthetic artificial materials can find many important applications ranging from personalized therapeutics to solutions for environmental problems. Among these materials, responsive synthetic materials are capable of changing their structure and/or properties in response to external stimuli, and hence are termed "smart" materials. Herein, this review focuses on alginate-based smart materials and their stimuli-responsive preparation, fragmentation, and applications in diverse fields from drug delivery and tissue engineering to water purification and environmental remediation. In the first part of this report, we review stimuli-induced preparation of alginate-based materials. Stimuli-triggered decomposition of alginate materials in a controlled fashion is documented in the second part, followed by the application of smart alginate materials in diverse fields. Because of their biocompatibility, easy accessibility, and simple techniques of material formation, alginates can provide solutions for several present and future problems of humankind. However, new research is needed for novel alginate-based materials with new functionalities and well-defined properties for targeted applications.

Multiple stimuli-switchable electrocatalysis and logic gates of rutin based on semi-interpenetrating polymer network hydrogel films

The switching properties of PAA–PDEA films polymerized as a semi-IPN were studied with rutin as a probe and a logic gate was constructed.

A domain-based DNA circuit for smart single-nucleotide variant identification

According to the differential information of four homologous oligonucleotides, two domain-based encoders have been constructed with the molecular information as the input. Based on the one-to-one correspondence between the input and output, SNVs can be identified and their sites can be located at the domain level.