WO₃ films are the most widely used electrochromic functional layers. It is known that WO₃ films prepared by pure chemical method generally possess novel nanostructures, but the adhesion between WO₃ films and substrates is weak. However, WO₃ films prepared by pure physical method usually show relatively dense morphology, which limits their electrochromic properties. In order to break through these bottlenecks and further improve their electrochromic properties, this work first prepared nanostructured WO₃ powder by chemical method, and then using this powder as the evaporation source, nanostructured WO₃ films were fabricated by vacuum thermal evaporation method. Properties of nanostructured WO₃ films were systematically compared with those of ordinary WO₃ films. It turned out that the nanostructured WO₃ film exhibited better cyclic stability and memory effect, and also the optical modulation rate was 14% higher than that of the ordinary WO₃ film. More importantly, the nanostructured WO₃ film showed better adhesion with the ITO substrates. These results demonstrate that a combination of chemical and physical methods is an effective preparation method to improve the electrochromic properties of WO₃ films.

The technology to reprogram human somatic cells back to pluripotency allows the production of patient-specific induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) and holds a great promise for regenerative medicine. Choosing the most suitable cell type for induction and reducing the risk of viral transgene activation, especially oncogene activation, are important for iPSC research. To date, human dermal fibroblasts (HDFs) are the most frequent cell source used for iPSC generation, but they have several limitations. An invasive skin biopsy must be performed to obtain HDFs, and HDFs must be cultured for a prolonged period before they can be used for experiments. Thus, in an effort to develop a suitable source for iPSC studies to avoid the limitations mentioned above, we have here identified stromal cells derived from menstrual blood (MenSCs) as suitable candidates. In the present study, we found that MenSCs can be reprogrammed to pluripotent status by doxycycline-inducible lentiviral transduction of OCT4, SOX2, and KLF4. Additionally, we found that MenSCs have a significantly higher reprogramming efficiency than HDFs. The combination of OCT4 and SOX2 is sufficient to reprogram MenSCs into iPSCs without the use of c-MYC or KLF4. The resulting MenSC-iPSCs showed the same characteristics as human embryonic stem cells with regard to morphology, pluripotent markers, gene expression, and the epigenetic status of pluripotent-cell-specific genes. These cells were able to differentiate into various cell types of all 3 germ layers both in vitro and in vivo. Therefore, MenSCs may be a preferred candidate for generation of iPSCs.

The generation of supercontinuum spectra on integrated nonlinear optical platforms opens up new possibilities for applications in spectroscopy, metrology, signal processing, optical communications, and more. As an extremely promising low-loss nonlinear integrated photonics platform, there is an urgent need to achieve efficient and broadband supercontinuum generation (SCG) on thin-film lithium niobate (TFLN). However, most advancements in this field have not fully exploited the potential of χ(2) nonlinearity, leading to constraints in both spectral width and flatness. In this work, we introduce broadband quasi-phase matching into TFLN, effectively leveraging the synergistic effects of χ(2) and χ(3) nonlinearities. By combining cascaded χ(2) frequency upconversion, self-phase modulation (SPM), and dispersive wave (DW) generation, we have achieved, for the first time, a broadband, flat, three-octave-spanning SCG covering the ultraviolet–visible–NIR region (320–2500 nm, −30 dB) with microjoule-level energy in z-cut quasi-phase matching TFLN. The ultraviolet–visible spectral region consists of second–fourth harmonics, while the NIR region is composed of the spectrally broadened pump wave by SPM and DW generated by soliton fission, with a conversion efficiency of up to 31% from the pump to the ultraviolet–visible region. We conducted a comprehensive study on the critical roles of χ(2) and χ(3) nonlinearities in SCG and provided a systematic, in-depth analysis of the spectral evolution process. The experimental results show excellent agreement with numerical simulations. Our work paves the way for SCG across the full transparency window of LN.