Curcumin (CUR) has limited aqueous solubility, motivating the development of dispersed formulations for its delivery. Although clove-oil nanoemulsions (CONE) have been reported, the influence of emulsifier choice on the properties of CUR-loaded clove-oil nanoemulsions (CONEs) has received limited direct comparison. This study aimed to prepare CUR-loaded CONEs stabilized with Tween 20 (T20) or whey protein concentrate (WPC 80) and compared their physicochemical characteristics, interactions with bovine serum albumin (BSA), and in vitro release behavior. The optimized CUR-loaded T20 and WPC 80 formulations had hydrodynamic diameters of 16 ± 1 and 225 ± 5 nm, respectively, and CUR entrapment efficiencies of 92.77 ± 1.43% and 95.42 ± 1.72%. Neither formulation showed visible phase separation over 30 days. Spectroscopic measurements indicated interactions between BSA and the CUR-loaded nanoemulsion systems, although the contributions of individual formulation components could not be resolved. Release varied with formulation and pH: after 12 h at pH 5.5, cumulative CUR release was 84.42 ± 0.88% from the T20 formulation and 45.78 ± 0.81% from the WPC 80 formulation. The CUR-loaded WPC 80 NE showed 91.0 ± 0.58% radical-scavenging activity in the ABTS assay and a 15.0 ± 0.28 mm inhibition zone against Klebsiella pneumoniae under the tested conditions. DNA electrophoresis and SDS-PAGE provided preliminary information on interactions with the tested biomolecular models but did not establish overall biocompatibility. These findings show that emulsifier choice influences the measured physicochemical properties and in vitro performance of CUR-loaded CONEs, highlighting the potential of emulsifier-tailored CONEs as delivery systems while supporting the need for further evaluation of their safety and delivery performance.
The development of flexible and wearable energy storage systems demands zinc-ion batteries with high capacity, mechanical robustness, and long-term electrochemical stability. Vanadium oxide (V6O13.nH(2)O), with its high theoretical capacity, is a promising cathode material for aqueous and flexible Zn-ion batteries. However, its practical application is hindered by structural instability, vanadium dissolution, and sluggish Zn2+ reaction kinetics, mainly under mechanical deformation. To address these challenges, nanoscale engineering has emerged as an effective strategy to improve both electrochemical performance and mechanical stability. Herein, monoclinic-phase V6O13.nH(2)O nanobelts are synthesized as robust cathodes, enabling ultrafast Zn2+ kinetics, a medium operating temperature range, and excellent structural stability suitable for flexible battery configurations. The experimental results demonstrated an outstanding electrochemical performance of the V6O13.nH(2)O nanobelts cathode, delivering a high specific capacity of 400 mAh g(-1) at 0.1 A g(-1) and retaining similar to 95% capacity after 500 cycles at 1 A g(-1) at different temperatures. Furthermore, the coin cell configuration maintains 79% capacity after 1500 cycles, whereas the flexible battery exhibits 78% capacity retention after 600 cycles at 10 A g(-1). This work highlights vanadium-based cathode design in overcoming limitations of flexible Zn-ion batteries and provides valuable insights into the electrochemical mechanisms governing high-performance electrodes.
Curcumin (CUR) has limited aqueous solubility, motivating the development of dispersed formulations for its delivery. Although clove-oil nanoemulsions (CONE) have been reported, the influence of emulsifier choice on the properties of CUR-loaded clove-oil nanoemulsions (CONEs) has received limited direct comparison. This study aimed to prepare CUR-loaded CONEs stabilized with Tween 20 (T20) or whey protein concentrate (WPC 80) and compared their physicochemical characteristics, interactions with bovine serum albumin (BSA), and in vitro release behavior. The optimized CUR-loaded T20 and WPC 80 formulations had hydrodynamic diameters of 16 ± 1 and 225 ± 5 nm, respectively, and CUR entrapment efficiencies of 92.77 ± 1.43% and 95.42 ± 1.72%. Neither formulation showed visible phase separation over 30 days. Spectroscopic measurements indicated interactions between BSA and the CUR-loaded nanoemulsion systems, although the contributions of individual formulation components could not be resolved. Release varied with formulation and pH: after 12 h at pH 5.5, cumulative CUR release was 84.42 ± 0.88% from the T20 formulation and 45.78 ± 0.81% from the WPC 80 formulation. The CUR-loaded WPC 80 NE showed 91.0 ± 0.58% radical-scavenging activity in the ABTS assay and a 15.0 ± 0.28 mm inhibition zone against Klebsiella pneumoniae under the tested conditions. DNA electrophoresis and SDS-PAGE provided preliminary information on interactions with the tested biomolecular models but did not establish overall biocompatibility. These findings show that emulsifier choice influences the measured physicochemical properties and in vitro performance of CUR-loaded CONEs, highlighting the potential of emulsifier-tailored CONEs as delivery systems while supporting the need for further evaluation of their safety and delivery performance.
The enormous data volumes produced by cosmological simulations such as IllustrisTNG make detailed dark matter analysis difficult for researchers without high-performance computing resources. This study investigates whether a Sinusoidal Representation Network (SIREN) can serve as a compact, queryable surrogate for dark matter halos and whether it can be constrained by Newtonian gravity through Poisson’s equation, forming a physics-informed SIREN (PI-SIREN). The framework is first validated using a synthetic Navarro–Frenk–White (NFW) halo with a closed-form solution. Physics-informed training reduces the mean Poisson residual substantially compared with a data-only SIREN, while both the ReLU baseline and SIREN achieve sub-percent gravitational-potential reconstruction errors of 0.095% and 0.237%, respectively. The workflow is then applied to five dark matter halos from the IllustrisTNG TNG100-1 simulation at redshift z∼0, spanning masses from 4.53×1012 to 3.44×1014 solar masses. The trained networks compress raw particle data by approximately 10×–275×, with a 1.107-GB, 46-million-particle cluster represented by a 4.02-MB network, while reconstructing gravitational potentials with errors of 0.48%–4.14%. However, Poisson constraints could not be effectively imposed on the real halos because Neural Tangent Kernel (NTK) adaptive weighting collapsed during physics fine-tuning. This failure is traced to satellite-subhalo density cusps, which increase Poisson-residual gradients by three to four orders of magnitude relative to data gradients. Gradient-saliency and integrated-gradients analyses highlight sensitivity near halo centers and satellite structures, while multi-plane slices recover the expected triaxial halo morphology. SIREN therefore provides an effective compression and querying framework, while robust physics-constrained dark matter inference remains an open challenge.
The development of phosphors exhibiting negative-thermal expansion (NTE) is urgent for achieving thermally robust luminescence performance of phosphor-converted white light-emitting diodes (pc-WLEDs). The current pc-WLEDs suffer from poor thermal stability, suboptimal color rendering index (CRI) due to blue-light exposure, and high correlated color temperature (CCT). Herein, we developed a promising Sc2Mo3O12:Dy3+ phosphor with bright yellow-white emission upon ultraviolet (UV) and near-UV light excitation. Local structure analysis using extended X-ray absorption fine structure (EXAFS) spectroscopy confirmed the occupancy of Dy3+ ions at octahedral Sc3+ sites. Temperature-dependent in situ X-ray diffraction study revealed a strong NTE effect in Sc2Mo3O12. Temperature-dependent photoluminescence studies demonstrated the excellent luminescence thermal stability of the Sc2Mo3O12:Dy3+ phosphor (91.4%@480 K) due to enhanced structural rigidity and reduced non-radiative decay as a result of thermally induced lattice compaction. The influence of the host's low-temperature phase transition on Dy3+ luminescence was examined under cryogenic temperature conditions. Furthermore, we demonstrated the fabrication of three prototype pc-WLEDs by coating the Sc2Mo3O12:Dy3+ phosphor onto a UV-LED chip with tunable WLED parameters, i.e., CIE, CCT, and luminous efficacy, which strengthens its suitability for commercial lighting. The optical thermal sensing based on charge transfer red-shift and phase transition-induced luminescence has been demonstrated with high relative sensitivity (Sr) values of 2.30 (70 K) and 1.14% K-1 (300 K) across different temperature regimes, from cryogenic to high-temperature conditions, respectively, with visual color tuning. This work highlights the potential of NTE-active hosts in designing pc-WLED phosphors with enhanced thermal stability to advance the commercialization of sustainable WLED lighting, and offers opportunities for flexible thermal sensing in complex environments.
