The assembly of Ag nanowires on quartz substrates from suspensions of water and ethylene glycol under stirring has been investigated. The introduction of stirring makes a remarkable difference to the assembly morphology. Firstly, the surface coverage of Ag nanowires is increased by a factor of 4 (in water) and 8 (in ethylene glycol) with stirring. Secondly, the Ag nanowires assembled in the stirred ethylene glycol dispersion were highly aligned. The influence of the surface of substrates, solvents and profile of the nanowires on the alignment has been explored, which indicates that stirring is an efficient way to generate nanowire arrays. This study has revealed the great potential of the stirring-assisted assembly technique in producing structurally controlled nanoarchitectures, opening up new opportunities for manufacturing ordered nanomaterials.

Hylomecon japonica (Thunb.) Prantl. is a Chinese medicinal plant whose active components and their antimicrobial mechanism was studied by TLC bioautography-guided isolation and identification of 12 alkaloids and their antimicrobial activities evaluated using the standard broth microdilution method. The benzophenanthridine isoquinoline alkaloids showed the strongest inhibitory activity against Gram-positive bacteria. Analysis of conductivity changes and observation of TEM images revealed that the antimicrobial mechanism involved cell integrity damage and cell division arrest.