Ming-Yong Han

Tianjin University | tju

Renewable fuel and environmental remediation are of paramount importance in today's world due to escalating concerns about climate change, pollution, and the finite nature of fossil fuels. Transitioning to sustainable...

The impact of the size effect on the color and photoluminescence (PL) of quantum dots (QDs) has sparked a revolutionary field of research, culminating in the prestigious Nobel Prize in 2023. Prior to their widespread popularization and large-scale commercialization, it is of paramount importance to effectively manipulate and optimize their optical...

Because of the low reactivity of cyclic nitrides, liquid-phase synthesis of carbon nitride introduces challenges despite its favorable potential for energy-efficient preparation and superior applications. In this study, we demonstrate a strong interaction between citric acid and melamine through experimental observation and theoretical simulation,...

Engineered noble metal nanomaterials (NMN) possess adjustable optical, electrical, and biocompatible properties that make them excellent tools for probing the nano‐bio‐interface. Understanding their interactions with biomolecules, cells, and tissues at the nano‐bio‐interface is crucial in designing these nanomaterials for biomedical applications. T...

Transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) are a promising class of layered materials in the post-graphene era, with extensive research attention due to their diverse alternative elements and fascinating semiconductor behavior. Binary MX 2 layers with different metal and/or chalcogen elements have similar structural parameters but varied optoelectroni...

The collective oscillation of free electrons at the nanoscale surface of gold nanostructures is closely modulated by tuning the size, shape/morphology, phase, composition, hybridization, assembly, and nanopatterning, along with the surroundings of the plasmonic surface located at a dielectric interface with air, liquid, and solid. This review first...

Heat is abundantly available from various sources including solar irradiation, geothermal energy, industrial processes, automobile exhausts, and from the human body and other living beings. However, these heat sources are often overlooked despite their abundance, and their potential applications remain underdeveloped. In recent years, important pro...

With large surface-responsive and excitation-dependent fluorescence, two-dimensional fluorescent quantum dots (QDs) have been receiving tremendous attention to develop their facile synthetic approaches and/or expand their promising applications. Here, a two-step strategy is demonstrated for high-yield production of MoS2 QDs from MoS2 powder through...

Stimulated emission depletion (STED) microscopy provides a powerful tool for visualizing the ultrastructure and dynamics of subcellular organelles, however, the photobleaching of organelle trackers have limited the application of STED imaging in living cells. Here, we report photostable and amphiphilic carbon dots (Phe-CDs) with bright orange fluor...

Biomaterials is an interdisciplinary field of research to achieve desired biological responses from new materials, regardless of material type. There have been many exciting innovations in this discipline, but commercialization suffers from a lengthy discovery to product pipeline, with many failures along the way. Success can be greatly accelerated...

Biomaterials is an exciting and dynamic field, which uses a collection of diverse materials to achieve desired biological responses. While there is constant evolution and innovation in materials with time, biomaterials research has been hampered by the relatively long development period required. In recent years, driven by the need to accelerate ma...

As a promising technique to potentially address the energy crisis and environmental issues, photocatalysis has been reported widely to exhibit various outstanding behaviors in production of new fuels/chemicals and treatment of contaminants. The photocatalytic performance is extremely dependent on the used photocatalysts, so that the design and prep...

We develop an innovative approach to utilize silk, a natural polymer with discrete hydrophobic blocks interspersed with hydrophilic domains for hermetically encapsulating hydrophilic colorants to create a palette of lustrous multicolored silk while retaining its unique properties and rendering new functionalities. The success is largely dependent o...

A ratiometric fluorescent probe with a large emission shift was developed for the accurate measurement of hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) in the sophisticated pyroptosis signaling pathways. The results reported here demonstrate...

Investigating the interactions between lipid droplets (LDs) and other organelles are greatly significant to the in-depth understand the physiology and pathology of LDs. Despite of commercial LDs probes available, the ER and other membrane structures are also stained due to their amphiphilicity, which limits their further applications. To address th...

High lipid metabolism is one of the fundamental characteristics of cancer cells different from normal cells due to lots of energy needed for the fast proliferation of cancer cells. As an important organelle to supply cellular energy, however, the difference of lipid droplets (LDs) in their dynamic features between cancer cells and normal cells rema...

With the wide utilization of antibiotics, antibiotic‐resistant bacteria have been often developed more frequently to cause potential global catastrophic consequences. Emerging photothermal ablation has been attracting extensive research interest for quick/effective eradication of pathogenic bacteria from contaminated surroundings and infected body....

Understanding lysosome-related physiology needs specific lysosome probes to track the biological processes of lysosome in living cells. Here, we report an azacyclo-modified fluorescent probe that has a large Stokes shift, good photostability and negligible cytotoxicity for highly specific labeling of lysosome and autolysosome in living cells. The p...

Abstract The discovery of graphene and subsequent verification of its unique properties have aroused great research interest to exploit diversified graphene‐analogous 2D nanomaterials with fascinating physicochemical properties. Through either physical or chemical doping, linkage, adsorption, and hybridization with other functional species into or...

Through innovative nanosynthesis techniques and advanced surface‐passivation methods, diversified luminescent nanocrystals, like quantum dots, metal nanoclusters, carbon dots, and upconversion nanoparticles, are produced successfully to exhibit greatly improved performance in various applications, due to their color tunability and resistance to pho...

Since the first discovery of luminescent graphene oxide (GO), exponentially increasing investigations on the tunable structures and surfaces for modulating its optical properties have struggled to expand applications in imaging, sensing, biomedical diagnostics, and so on. Here, the latest works on reconstructing or modifying the structures and surf...

Noble metal iridium nanostructures have been gaining significant research interest due to their unique optical, electronic and catalytic properties for promising applications, which critically depend on their size, shape/morphology and composition. As such, various synthetic strategies have been exploited to achieve these targeted properties for im...

The dynamics of DNA and RNA structures in live cells are important for understanding cell behaviors, such as transcription activity, protein expression, cell apoptosis, and hereditary disease, but are challenging to monitor in live organisms in real time. The difficulty is largely due to the lack of photostable imaging probes that can distinguish b...

The dynamics of DNA and RNA structures in live cells are important in understanding cell behaviors such as transcription activity, protein expression, cell apoptosis, and hereditary disease, but are challenging to monitor them in live organisms in real time. The difficulty is largely due to the lack of photostable imaging probes that can distinguis...

In this paper, an oxide matrix, Gd2O3, as an alternative counterpart of NaGdF4 was developed via controlled surfactant-free synthesis, flexible lanthanide-loading, compositional/size tuning, hexagonal to cubic lattice-refinement and positive surface charging to achieve a substantial enhancement upconversion luminescence (~30 times upon calcination...

Chemically engineered holes on 2D nanomaterials may significantly increase the number of edge sites to tune their intrinsic properties for achieving promising performance. Here, we report a general and mild approach to the convenient creation of holes on atomically thin nanosheets for engineering bandgaps and enhancing properties of 2D materials. T...

For the last decades, the chemical reduction of Au3+ to Au0 has been widely employed to produce gold nanostructures. In comparison with the fast reduction, the slow reduction is systematically investigated in this research to reveal intermediary process and further disclose the growth mechanism of gold nanostructures by using a series of ligands wi...

Copper-based multinary sulfides (CMS) have been the subject of intense research over the past decade due to the numerous outstanding properties that emerge when they are synthesized on the nanoscale. While many of these compounds (e.g. CuInS2, Cu2SnS3, Cu12Sb4S13, Cu2ZnSnS4) are best known for their immense potential in energy-related disciplines,...

Herein, we develop a facile exfoliation and in-situ functionalization strategy to produce hybridized Au/MoS2 nanostructures comprised of size-controlled gold nanoparticles (Au NPs) and ultrathin MoS2 nanosheets by using bovine serum albumin (BSA)-caged Au25 clusters as both exfoliating and functionalizing agents. As revealed, BSA molecules are stro...

Paper‐based sensors (e.g., pH and pregnancy test papers) are the most promising sensors because analysts prefer on‐site and real‐time/visual detection without the aid of analytical instruments. Herein, advances in the new generation of nanofluorophore‐integrated test papers toward visual qualitative/quantitative assays of universal target species a...

Distinguishing tumor cells from normal cells with high accuracy holds the key to the precision diagnosis and effective intervention of cancers. The fundamental difficulties, however, are the heterogeneity of cancer cells and the lack of truly specific and ideally universal cancer biomarkers. In this work, we report a nanotechnology approach to bypa...

Hydrogen sulfide (H2S) is a key signaling molecule in the cytoprotection, vascular mediation and neurotransmission of living organisms. In-depth understanding of its production, trafficking, and transformation in cells is very significant in what way H2S mediates cellular signal transductions and organism’s functions, motivating the developments of...

Photocatalysis, which is the mimicry of the natural photosynthesis, is a game-changing breakthrough for the conversion of solar energy to chemical fuels. As presented by Wee-Jun Ong and co-workers in article number 1700251, precious-metal-free 1D Co2P nanorods are hybridized with 2D g-C3N4 to form intact 1D/2D heterointerfaces for H2 evolution with...

Graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4), which typically acts as the 2D support for loading with cocatalysts, endows fascinating performances for photocatalytic water splitting. Benefiting from the natural sheet-like structure in g-C3N4, 1D metal phosphides (Co2P) nanorods are incorporated into 2D porous g-C3N4 nanosheets via a solution-phase method unde...

Tetrahedrite (Cu12Sb4S13) is a highly promising environmentally friendly material for energy conversion applications but its synthesis generally requires several days of heating at high temperature conditions. To fabricate tetrahedrite in a more rapid way and under milder conditions, solvothermal synthesis has been recently explored. However, a com...

Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) and Escherichia coli (E. coli) are the most common infectious bacteria in our daily life, and seriously affect human’s health. Due to the frequent and extensive use of antibiotics, the microbial strains forming drug-resistance have become more and more difficult to deal with. Herein, we utilized bovine serum albumi...

Crystalline α-MoO3 belts consisting of nanosheets stacked along their [010] axes were synthesized via thermal vapor transport of MoO3 powders at elevated temperatures. The MoO3 belts were millimeters in length along their [001] axes and tens to hundreds of micrometers in width along their [100] axes. Mechanical and aqueous exfoliations of the belts...

Here, direct and effective electrostatic-driven exfoliation of tungsten trioxide (WO3 ) powder into atomically thin WO3 nanosheets is demonstrated for the first time. Experimental evidence together with theoretical simulations clearly reveal that the strong binding of bovine serum albumin (BSA) on the surface of WO3 via the protonation of NH2 grou...

Hybrid structures of nanomaterials (e.g. tubes, scrolls, threads, cages) and biomaterials (e.g. proteins) hold tremendous potential for applications as drug carriers, biosensors, tissue scaffolds, cancer therapeutic agents, etc. However, in many cases, the interacting forces at the nano-bio interfaces and their roles in controlling the structures a...

As a light-activated non-invasive cancer treatment paradigm, photodynamic therapy (PDT) has been attracting extensive attentions because of its high treatment efficacy and low side effects. Especially, spatiotemporal control of singlet oxygen (1O2) release is highly desirable for realizing on-demand PDT, which, however, still remains a huge challen...

Hydrogen is readily obtained from renewable and non‐renewable resources via water splitting by using thermal, electrical, photonic and biochemical energy. The major hydrogen production is generated from thermal energy through steam reforming/gasification of fossil fuel. As the commonly used non‐renewable resources will be depleted in the long run,...

Here, the roles of coating and charging on the surface of CdSe quantum dots (QDs) are systematically investigated in tuning their emission via a simple change of pH in solution. A very thick layer of ZnS with a wide bandgap is chemically grown first to passivate the CdSe for retaining their high emission intensity, which is further encapsulated wit...

Here a biomimetic approach is presented to fabricate nanodragon fruits featured by a multitude of tiny quantum dot ZnO seeds embedded in mesosilica (SiO2) flesh then enclosed in amorphous calcium phosphate (ACP) shell. The nanodragon fruits give rise to a new class of hybrid ZnO/SiO2@ACP nanocomplex with multimoidal capability: cellular delivering,...

Fluorescent test papers are promising for the wide applications in the assays of diagnosis, environments and foods, but unlike classical dye-absorption-based pH test paper, they are usually limited in the qualitative yes/no type of detection by fluorescent brightness, and the colorimetry-based quantification remains a challenging task. Here, we rep...

With the rapid evolution of antibiotic resistance in bacteria, antibiotic-resistant bacteria (in particular, multidrug-resistant bacteria) and their biofilms have been becoming more and more difficult to be effectively treated with conventional antibiotics. As such, there is a great demand to develop a nonantibiotic approach in efficiently eliminat...

With their remarkable properties and wide‐ranging applications, nanostructures of noble metals and metal oxides have been receiving significantly increased attention in recent years. The desire to combine the properties of these two functional materials for specific applications has naturally prompted research in the design and synthesis of novel n...

Flexible electronic devices are necessary for applications involving unconventional interfaces, such as soft and curved biological systems, in which traditional silicon-based electronics confront a mechanical mismatch. Silk offers exquisite mechanical, optical, and electrical properties that are advantageous toward the development of next-generatio...

Fluorescent colorimetry test papers are promising for the assays of environments, medicines and foods by the observation of naked eye on the variations of fluorescence brightness and color. Unlike dye-absorption-based pH test paper, however, the fluorescent test papers with wide color-emissive variations with target dosages for accurate quantificat...

Based on the combined technologies of atomic force microscopy, X-ray diffraction/scattering, Fourier transform infrared spectra analysis, etc., it is demonstrated that the nano-fishnet-like networks, one of the most flexible but toughest structures, turn out to be the basic structure of silk filaments. The force patterns of pulling individual fibri...

Fluorescent probes are powerful tools for the investigations of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in living organisms by visualization and imaging. However, the multi-parallel assays of several ROS with multiple probes are often limited by the available number of spectrally non-overlapping chromophores together with large invasive effects and discrepan...

Semiconductor nanostructures that can effectively serve as light-responsive photocatalysts have been of considerable interest over the past decade. This is because their use in light-induced photocatalysis can potentially address some of the most serious environmental and energy-related concerns facing the world today. One important application is...

High-level incorporation of Ag in Au nanoclusters (NCs) is conveniently achieved by controlling the concentration of Ag(+) in the synthesis of bovine serum albumin (BSA)-protected Au NCs, and the resulting structure is determined to be bimetallic Ag28 Au10 -BSA NCs through a series of characterizations including energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy...

Flexible electronic devices are necessary for applications involving unconventional interfaces, such as soft and curved biological systems, in which traditional silicon-based electronics would confront a mechanical mismatch. Biological polymers offer new opportunities for flexible electronic devices by virtue of their biocompatibility, environmenta...

In this work, copper (Cu) species were used as reducing reagents in the colloidal preparation of novel cross-shaped gold (Au) nanostructures in oleylamine. The reduction rate can be controlled through an appropriate choice of Cu species to obtain Au nanocrosses of varying sizes. It was found that the presence of Cu species during the nucleation sta...

Review: syntheses, properties and applications; 50 refs.

This paper demonstrates an optimized fabrication of amorphous Ru nanoparticles through annealing at various temperatures ranging from 150 to 700 °C, which are used as water oxidation catalyst for effective electrochemical water splitting under a low overpotential of less than 300 mV. The amorphous Ru nanoparticles with short-range ordered structure...

Recent studies reveal that biomolecules can form intriguing molecular structures with fascinating functionalities upon interaction with graphene. Then, interesting questions arise: How does silk fibroin interact with graphene? Does such interaction lead to an enhancement in its mechanical properties? In this study, using large-scale molecular dynam...

In this article, Drosophila larvae are applied as an in vivo model to investigate the transport and uptake of polymeric nanoparticles in the larval digestive tract after oral administration. After feeding the larvae with food containing bare and chitosan-coated Poly(d,l-lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) nanoparticles encapsulated with BODIPY, time-la...

Earth-abundant copper is incorporated into textile in history and still caters for various needs in modern society. In this paper, we present a two-step copper metallization strategy to sequentially realize non-diffusive copper ion patterning and rapid copper deposition on various textile materials, including cotton, polyester, nylon, and their mix...

The white backlight in displays is generated by optimizing the proportions of individual emitters with different wavelengths by variations in materials composition, phase, and structure. Color pixels usually result from the separation of white light or the excitation with multiwavelength or multipulse sources. However, it is a challenge to develop...

Metal nanostructures display a multitude of technologically useful properties that can be tailored through fine-tuning of certain parameters, such as size, shape and composition. In many cases, the shape or morphology of metal nanostructures plays the most crucial role in the determination of their properties and their suitability in specific appli...

Herein, we report a facile two-step approach to produce gold-incorporated copper (Cu/Au) nanostructures through the controlled disproportionation of Cu+ -oleylamine complex at 220 °C to form copper nanowires and the subsequent reaction with Au3+ at different temperatures of 140, 220 and 300 °C. In comparison to copper nanowires, these bimetallic Cu...

In the nanoscience and nanotechnology, the study of nanocrystal self-assembly has been regarded as a key technology in leading future industrial development. The colloidal self-assembly techniques, particularly for one-dimensional (1D) building blocks, have been widely adopted for the systematic fabrication of functional nanocrystals and received a...

A promising photocatalytic system in the form of heterostructured nanocrystals (HNCs) is presented wherein alloyed ZnS-CuInS2 (ZCIS) semiconductor nanorods are decorated with Pt and Pd4 S nanoparticles. This is apparently the first report on the colloidal preparation and photocatalytic behavior of ZCIS-Pt and ZCIS-Pd4 S nanoscale heterostructures....

Here, we report a general and facile method for effective layer-by-layer exfoliation of transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) and graphite in water by using protein, bovine serum albumin (BSA) to produce single-layer nanosheets, which cannot be achieved using other commonly used bio- and synthetic polymers. Besides to serve as an effective exfoli...

White-light emitting materials for the applications in display and lighting have widely been prepared by the rare earth with high photoluminescent efficiency and stability, but the short resource, high cost and serious environmental concerns are the insurmountable barriers of rare earth-based materials. Here, we report that strong laser ablation of...

Single phase “greener” phosphor with broadband emission made of colloidal quantum dots (QDs) is most desirable for use as color convertors in white light emitting diodes (WLEDs). Here, we demonstrate a single “cadmium-free” component system consisting of Cu-doped InP core/ZnS barrier/InP quantum well/ZnS shell QDs, which exhibits two emission peaks...

With the ban of tributyltin, copper-based biocides are now widely used in antifouling coatings as the major active ingredients. Given the past experience of heavy-metal accumulation in harbors with limited water exchange, there is a significant interest in developing copper materials that greatly reduce the amount of copper ions released into marin...

The orthorhombic polymorph of Cu2ZnGeS4 (CZGS) is a metastable wurtzite-derived phase that can only be prepared in the bulk form by extensive heating at high temperatures (≥ 790 °C) when using the conventional solid-state reaction route. By employing a facile solution-based synthetic strategy, we were able to obtain phase-pure orthorhombic CZGS in...

Site and size control of ordered arrays of semiconductor nanostructures in an efficient way has remained a large challenge and has thus attracted intensive research interest due to their potential applications in integrated optoelectronics. In this work, we report an original approach to grow hexagonally ordered arrays of InGaAs/GaAs nanobars on th...