Thermoelectrics can generate electrical energy from waste heat and work also as active coolers. However, their widespread use is hindered by their poor efficiency, which is aggravated by their costly and hard-to-scale fabrication process. Good thermoelectric performances require materials with high (low) electrical (thermal) conductivity. Inducing morphological anisotropy at the nanoscale holds promise to boost thermoelectric performances, in both inorganic and organic materials, by increasing the ratio electrical/thermal conductivity along a selected direction without strongly affecting the Seebeck coefficient. Recent advances in 2D/3D printed electronics are revealing new simple and inexpensive routes to fabricate thermoelectrics with the necessary morphological control to boost performance by inducing anisotropy.In this study, a novel colorimetric aptasensor was developed for the rapid detection and visual screening of HPV16 L1 proteins using gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) and an RNA aptamer against HPV16 L1 protein (APTHPV16 L1). The AuNP-APTHPV16 L1 conjugates could be aggregated by the addition of a salt in the presence of HPV16 L1 proteins at the ppb level. At the same time, the surface plasma resonance absorption peaks of AuNPs shifted to a short wavelength, and an observable change in color from red to blue occurred. The relative absorbance (Ablank - Asample/Ablank) at 520 nm exhibited a stable response to HPV16 L1 proteins over a concentration range from 9.6 to 201.6 ng mL-1. The visual detection limit of HPV16 L1 proteins was found to be 9.6 ng mL-1. Finally, the proposed colorimetric aptasensor was successfully applied for the rapid and effective detection of HPV16 L1 proteins in clinical samples and vaccine samples. The validity and reliability of the proposed colorimetric aptasensor were verified by the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay method. The proposed colorimetric aptasensor provided a promising indicator for screening and quantitative detection of HPV16 L1 proteins in clinical samples.Alignment of highly anisotropic nanomaterials in a polymer matrix can yield nanocomposites with unique mechanical and transport properties. Conventional methods of nanocomposite film fabrication are not well-suited for manufacturing composites with very high concentrations of anisotropic nanomaterials, potentially limiting the widespread implementation of these useful structures. In this work, we present a scalable approach to fabricate polymer-infiltrated nanoplatelet films (PINFs) based on flow coating and capillary rise infiltration (CaRI) and study the processing-structure-property relationship of these PINFs. We show that films with high aspect ratio (AR) gibbsite (Al (OH)3) nanoplatelets (NPTs) aligned parallel to the substrate can be prepared using a flow coating process. NPTs are highly aligned with a Herman's order parameter of 0.96 and a high packing fraction >80 vol%. Such packings show significantly higher fracture toughness compared to low AR nanoparticle (NP) packings. By depositing NPTs on a polymer film and subsequently annealing the bilayer above the glass transition temperature of the polymer, polymer infiltrates into the tortuous NPT packings though capillarity. We observe larger enhancement in the modulus, hardness and scratch resistance of NPT films upon polymer infiltration compared to NP packings. The excellent mechanical properties of such films benefit from both thermally promoted oxide bridge formation between NPTs as well as polymer infiltration increasing the strength of NPT contacts. click here Our approach is widely applicable to highly anisotropic nanomaterials and allows the generation of mechanically robust polymer nanocomposite films for a diverse set of applications.We assess experimentally the ability of a simple flow-based sorting device, recently proposed numerically by [Zhu et al., Soft Matter, 2014, 10, 7705-7711], to separate capsules according to their stiffness. The device consists of a single pillar with a half-cylinder cross-section which partially obstructs a flow channel so that initially centred, propagating capsules deform and circumvent the obstacle into an expanding channel (or diffuser). We perform experiments with millimetric capsules of fixed size which indicate that the deviation of the capsule in the diffuser varies monotonically with a capillary number - the ratio of viscous to elastic stresses - where the elastic stresses are measured independently to include the effects of pre-inflation, membrane thickness and material properties. We find that soft capsules with resistance to deformation differing by a factor of 1.5 can be reliably separated in the diffuser but that experimental variability increases significantly with capsule stiffness. We extend the study to populations of microcapsules with size polydispersity. We find that the combined effects of increasing capsule deformability and relative constriction of the device with increasing capsule size enable the tuning of the imposed flow so that capsules can be separated based on their shear modulus but irrespectively of their size.We report single-particle characterization of membrane-penetrating semiconductor quantum dots (QDs) in T cell lymphocytes. We functionalized water-soluble CdSe/CdZnS QDs with a cell-penetrating peptide composed of an Asp-Ser-Ser (DSS) repeat sequence. DSS and peptide-free control QDs displayed concentration-dependent internalization. Intensity profiles from single-particle imaging revealed a propensity of DSS-QDs to maintain a monomeric state in the T cell cytosol, whereas control QDs formed pronounced clusters. Single-particle tracking showed a direct correlation between individual QD clusters' mobility and aggregation state. A significant portion of control QDs colocalized with an endosome marker inside the T cells, while the percentage of DSS-QDs colocalized dropped to 9%. Endocytosis inhibition abrogated the internalization of control QDs, while DSS-QD internalization only mildly decreased, suggesting an alternative cell-entry mechanism. Using 3D single-particle tracking, we captured the rapid membrane-penetrating activity of a DSS-QD.