Wearable sensors for detection of human activities have encouraged the development of highly elastic sensors. In particular, to capture subtle and large-scale body motion, stretchable and wide-range strain sensors are highly desired, but still a challenge. Herein, a highly stretchable and transparent stain sensor based on ionic liquids and elastic polymer has been developed. The as-obtained sensor exhibits impressive stretchability with wide-range strain (from 0.1% to 400%), good bending properties and high sensitivity, whose gauge factor can reach 7.9. Importantly, the sensors show excellent biological compatibility and succeed in monitoring the diverse human activities ranging from the complex large-scale multidimensional motions to subtle signals, including wrist, finger and elbow joint bending, finger touch, breath, speech, swallow behavior and pulse wave.

In recent years, nitrite pollution has become a subject of great concern for human lives, involving a number of fields, such as environment, food industry and biological process. However, the effective detection of nitrite is an instant demand as well as an unprecedented challenge. Here, a novel nitrite sensor was fabricated by electrochemical deposition of palladium and platinum (Pd-Pt) nanocomposites on porous gallium nitride (PGaN). The obtained Pd-Pt/PGaN sensor provides abundant electrocatalytic sites, endowing it with excellent performances for nitrite detection. The sensor also shows a low detection limit of 0.95 µM, superior linear ampere response and high sensitivity (150 µA/mM for 1 to 300 µM and 73 µA/mM for 300 to 3000 µM) for nitrite. In addition, the Pd-Pt/PGaN sensor was applied and evaluated in the determination of nitrite from the real environmental samples. The experimental results demonstrate that the sensor has good reproducibility and long-term stability. It provides a practical way for rapidly and effectively monitoring nitrite content in the practical application.

In this study, we found that phosphine protected [Au₆(dppp)₄]²⁺ and [Au₈(dppp)₄Cl₂]²⁺ nanoclusters could be reversibly converted under oxidative/reductive conditions. This work not only provides new insights into the relationship between the [Au₆(dppp)₄]²⁺ and [Au₈(dppp)₄Cl₂]²⁺ nanoclusters, but also offers a novel method for controlling structural evolution of different Au nanoclusters.

Reaction of Na₁₂[α-P₂W₁₅O₅₆] · 18H₂O with Mn(CH₃COO)₂ · 4H₂O in the presence of K₂S₂O₈ in acidic aqueous solution leads to isolation of a { } cluster-containing sandwich-type compound: αββα-K₃Na₁₁{ (H₂O)₂(P₂W₁₅O₅₆)₂} · 40H₂O (1). Single-crystal X-ray diffraction analysis revealed that 1 shows the well-known Weakley-type sandwich-type structure consisting of two trivacant [α-P₂W₁₅O₅₆]¹²⁻ Dawson moieties linked by a central symmetric rhomb-like mixed-valence manganese cluster via W–O–Mn and P–O–Mn connections. Mixed-valence Mn-cluster-substituted sandwich-type complexes based on trivacant Dawson units are rarely observed in polyoxometalate chemistry. Further, the sandwich-type polyoxoanions were connected by [K₃Na₂] clusters into a 4⁴-layer. Magnetic study indicates that antiferromagnetic interactions exist in this compound.