RSC Advances Blog

We are very pleased to introduce Seong Jun Kang and Jae Seung Shin, corresponding and first authors of the paper ‘Improving the performance of quantum-dot light-emitting diodes via an organic–inorganic hybrid hole injection layer‘. Their article has been very well received and handpicked by our reviewers and handling editors as one of our January HOT articles. The authors told us more about the work that went into this article and what they hope to achieve in the future. You can find out more about their article below and find more HOT articles in our online collection.

Meet the authors

Seong Jun Kang received his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Physics from Yonsei University. In 2005, He joined in University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign as a postdoctoral research associate, where he was involved in research of flexible and stretchable electronic devices based on carbon nanomaterials. In 2007, he joined Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science as a research scientist. From 2010, he joined to the Department of Advanced Materials Engineering for Information and Electronics at Kyung Hee University, where he has been an associate professor since 2014. His research interests focused on transparent, flexible and stretchable electronics based on nanomaterials, such as carbon nanotube, graphene and quantum-dots. Also, he focused on the study of interfacial electronic structures between nanomaterials for the high-performance optoelectronics.

Jae Seung Shin received his B.S., and currently pursuing his Master’s degree in Advanced Materials Engineering for Information and Electronics from Kyung Hee University, Korea in 2020. His research interests are the development of optoelectronics based on quantum-dots and oxide semiconductors.

Could you briefly explain the focus of your article to the non-specialist (in one or two sentences only) and why it is of current interest?
Quantum-dot light emitting diodes(QLEDs) are considered as a next-generation display due to its vivid color and stability. The goal of our research was to improve the device performance using a mixture of conductive polymer and metal oxide.

How big an impact could your results potentially have?
Our results provide that performance and stability can be improved by applying an organic-inorganic hybrid hole injection layer to the QLED structure, and furthermore, it can be easily fabricated with a single-layer hole injection layer.

Could you explain the motivation behind this study?
To develop a high-performance QLEDs with a high-stability, it is important to charge injection and transport behavior. Therefore, we suggest a new type of organic-inorganic charge injection materials.

In your opinion, what are the key design considerations for your study?
A key design consideration in this study is to find the optimal V2O5 mixture concentration.

Which part of the work towards this paper proved to be most challenging?
Including vanadium ions into the polymer during the synthesis of organic-inorganic hybrid hole injection materials was the most challenging part.

What aspect of your work are you most excited about at the moment?
We are excited about the remarkable improvement in the operational lifetime of PEDOT:PSS-based devices due to the inorganic mixture.

What is the next step? What work is planned?
We are currently working on doping metal into hole injection materials to improve the charge balance of QLEDs.

Improving the performance of quantum-dot light-emitting diodes via an organic–inorganic hybrid hole injection layer
Jae Seung Shin, Tae Yeon Kim, Su Been Heo, Jong-Am Hong, Yongsup Park and Seong Jun Kang
RSC Adv., 2021,11, 4168-4172
DOI: 10.1039/D0RA10422A, Paper

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We are very pleased to introduce Dulal Senapati, corresponding author of the paper ‘Impact of porous nanomaterials on inhibiting protein aggregation behaviour‘. His article has been very well received and handpicked by our reviewers and handling editors as one of our February HOT articles. Dulal told us more about the work that went into this article and what he hope to achieve in the future. You can find out more about his article below and find more HOT articles in our online collection.

Meet the authors

Dr. Dulal Senapati is an Associate Professor in the Chemical Sciences Division (CSD) at the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics (SINP), Homi Bhabha National Institute (HBNI), Kolkata, INDIA. He earned his Ph.D. in 2005 with Prof. Puspendu K. Das at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru. After finishing his Ph.D., he immediately joined as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Georgia Institute of Technology, USA in the laboratory of Prof. Robert M. Dickson and continued till 2008. In 2008, he moved to Jackson State University, USA to pursue his second Postdoctoral research in the laboratory of Prof. P. C. Ray and continued till 2013. In 2013, he joined SINP as an Associate Professor-‘E’ and was promoted to Associate Professor-‘F’ in 2018. The central theme of Dr. Senapati’s laboratory (Nanophotonics Laboratory) is to design, characterizing, and finding applications of defect enriched anisotropic plasmonic, magnetic, and magnetoplasmonic nanomaterials in the field of sensing, diagnosis, catalysis, and therapeutics. Details of his publication, citation, and h-index are listed in: https://scholar.google.co.in/citations?user=0b5q6hAAAAAJ&hl=en.

Could you briefly explain the focus of your article to the non-specialist (in one or two sentences only) and why it is of current interest?
Of late, several diseases caused by “misfolding” of one or more key proteins are drawing attention to biologists. Of these, neurodegenerative diseases like Huntington’s, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s etc. are of special interest because any drug which would prevent these misfolded proteins to aggregate, must also cross the blood-brain-barrier to reach the brain. The focus of our article is to find a way to prevent non-specific protein aggregation by interfering with their physical properties, especially those that trigger misfolding and cause the disease. In this research work we used non-toxic and biocompatible nanomaterials, with potentials to act as vehicles to cross the barrier, for preventing their aggregation and thereby inhibiting these diseases. This study could be fruitful to formulate nanotherapeutic drugs for future clinical applications.

How big an impact could your results potentially have?
This work could have huge impact in the field of Nanomedicine. The assay is already shown to be effective in cellular model, and in future we have a plan to validate it in Alzheimer’s diseases animal model. Once established, this work has the potential to revolutionize the use of nanotherapeutic drugs for future clinical applications of neurodegenerative diseases.

Could you explain the motivation behind this study?
The main motivation behind this work was to understand the role of nanoparticles, especially porous nanomaterials to control aggregation of protein which may cause different neurodegenerative diseases. Though the literature is rich in the therapeutic applications of non-porous inorganic nanoparticles, the role of corresponding porous nanomaterials has not been explored to the same extent. Porous nanomaterials are more effective due to their highly controllable and isotropic nature of large accessible pore size, and easy release of incorporated materials from their pores.

In your opinion, what are the key design considerations for your study?
Following are the two key design considerations for our study:
(i) Designing of bio compatible and cost effective nanomaterials to achieve the desired structure.
(ii) To control the fibrillation process of model protein aggregates in presence of porous nanomaterials at pH 1.8.

Which part of the work towards this paper proved to be most challenging?
(i) synthesis of monodispersed porous nanomaterials with uniform pore diameter distribution.
(ii) High contrasted images of aggregated Insulin in presence of porous nano-silica (PNS).
(iii) Stable cell culture of SHSY5Y human cell line (Neuroblastoma of neuronal origin).

What aspect of your work are you most excited about at the moment?
We are extremely excited by finding out a cheap and nontoxic way to restrict the protein aggregation which we potentially can use to formulate nanotherapeutic drugs for future clinical applications.

What is the next step? What work is planned?
Next step is to validate our assay in Alzheimer’s disease animal model. This may help revolutionize the formulation of nanotherapeutic drugs for future clinical applications.

Impact of porous nanomaterials on inhibiting protein aggregation behaviour
Munmun Bardhan, Sandip Dolui, Siddhi Chaudhuri, Uttam Paul, Gaurav Bhattacharjee, Manorama Ghosal, Nakul C. Maiti, Debashis Mukhopadhyay and Dulal Senapati
RSC Adv., 2021,11, 3354-3362
DOI: 10.1039/D0RA10927D, Paper

Submit to RSC Advances today! Check out our author guidelines for information on our article types or find out more about the advantages of publishing in a Royal Society of Chemistry journal.

Keep up to date with our latest HOT articles, Reviews, Collections & more by following us on Twitter. You can also keep informed by signing up to our E-Alerts.

We are very pleased to introduce Annamalai Senthil Kumar, Desika Rajagopal and Mansi Gandhi, authors of the paper ‘In situ electro-organic synthesis of hydroquinone using anisole on MWCNT/Nafion modified electrode surface and its heterogeneous electrocatalytic reduction of toxic Cr(vi) species‘. Their article has been very well received and handpicked by our reviewers and handling editors as one of our January HOT articles. The authors told us more about the work that went into this article and what they hope to achieve in the future. You can find out more about their article below and find more HOT articles in our online collection.

Meet the authors

Annamalai Senthil Kumar is a Senior Professor, Dept. of Chemistry, School of Advanced Sciences, Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT), Tamil Nadu, India & part of CO2 Research and Green Technology Centre, VIT. His research interest includes interdisciplinary areas of Nano-, Bio- and Molecular- Electrochemistry especially design and development of redo active chemically modified electrode for electrocatalytic and electrochemical sensor applications. He has published nearly 200 publications (Scopus Index(R); 7406627815). His h-index value is 36. He has been serving as an Advisory Board member of Analyst (RSC) (2014-) and an (Invited) elected member of Fellow Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC).

Dr. Desikan Rajagopal is Professor and Head of the Department of Chemistry at School of Advanced Sciences, VIT University, Vellore. His research interest includes the design and organic-synthesis of biologically relevant organic molecules, electro-organic synthesis and medicinal chemistry. Prior to this, he was leading a drug development program for cardiovascular disease at Columbus in USA. He has published more than 47 research papers, six US patents and seven book chapters. Apart from research, he is highly passionate in teaching to undergraduate and masters students in the specialized areas of chemistry. He is also a consultant to several industries.

Mansi Gandhi is a Research Scholar working under Prof Desikan Rajagopal and Prof A Senthil Kumar on topic In-situ electro-organic synthesis and electrocatalysis.

Could you briefly explain the focus of your article to the non-specialist (in one or two sentences only) and why it is of current interest?
Conventional organic synthesis and electro-organic synthesis are known in the literature. However, carbon nano tube mediated organic reactions is either unknown or scarce. Herein, we introduce a new concept of “in-situ electro-organic synthesis” of a redox-active molecule, hydroquinone on MWCNT modified glassy carbon electrode surface with anisole as a precursor.

How big an impact could your results potentially have?
It is a novel and new method to prepare a chemically modified electrode of a desired organic redox-active molecule for selective electrochemical sensor and bio-electrochemical sensor applications. This may be considered as a game-changer in the field of electrochemical sensors.

Could you explain the motivation behind this study?
This study aims at integrating a multi-disciplinary approach involving organic chemistry, electrochemistry, nanotechnology and bio-sensor areas.

The development of new redox-active organic molecules-based chemically modified electrodes that are stable under the working condition and effective towards targeted analyte are rarely reported in the literature. Similarly, high-valent Cr(VI) species have been used as an oxidant for the alcohol oxidation reaction. In this work, we have reversed the concept, i.e, redox-active polyphenolic compound, Hydroquinone modified electrode for Cr(VI) reduction reaction, has been introduced.

In your opinion, what are the key design considerations for your study?
A strong surface-confined electrochemical oxidation of organic precursors on graphitic material via π- π interaction is a key step for this new concept.

Which part of the work towards this paper proved to be most challenging?
Isolation of extremely minute quantity fraction of the redox-active organic compound trapped on the MWCNT and its characterization by GC-MS and NMR.

What aspect of your work are you most excited about at the moment?
Introduction and coining the concept “In-situ Electro-organic synthesis” for the development of new redox-active chemically modified electrodes.

What is the next step? What work is planned?
With this new concept, we will like to oxidize inert and difficultly-oxidizable substances like benzene and polyaromatic hydrocarbon on the graphitic surface to develop certain molecular-electronic materials.

In situ electro-organic synthesis of hydroquinone using anisole on MWCNT/Nafion modified electrode surface and its heterogeneous electrocatalytic reduction of toxic Cr(vi) species
Mansi Gandhi, Desikan Rajagopal and Annamalai Senthil Kumar
RSC Adv., 2021,11, 4062-4076
DOI: 10.1039/D0RA10370E, Paper

Submit to RSC Advances today! Check out our author guidelines for information on our article types or find out more about the advantages of publishing in a Royal Society of Chemistry journal.

Keep up to date with our latest HOT articles, Reviews, Collections & more by following us on Twitter. You can also keep informed by signing up to our E-Alerts.