Themed collection 2024 Emerging Investigators

This profile article showcases the researchers who have contributed an article to the 2024 Emerging Investigators collection.

Hydrogels are emerging as promising candidates for brain–computer interfaces. This review highlights the current advancements in implantable hydrogel electrodes for neural signal recording, neuromodulation, and brain disorder treatment.

We review advances in coacervate-based microreactors, covering enzyme selection, recruitment strategies, microreactor compositions, and their impact on reaction kinetics.

Bioinspired fluid manipulating interfaces possessing special wettability, an asymmetric structure, and a geometric gradient were systematically reviewed, including history, classification, mechanisms, fabrication and applications.

Organic afterglow luminescence can emit light long after the cessation of irradiation, enabling autofluorescence-free in vivo imaging with high signal-to-background ratios (SBRs).

This review explores various catalytic strategies for achieving diverse diastereomeric outcomes in asymmetric conjugate additions creating carbon–carbon bonds.

This review highlights the importance of pair distribution function (PDF) analysis in revealing molecular interactions, structural transformations, and nucleation mechanisms in metal- and covalent organic frameworks (MOFs and COFs).

This review provides a mechanistic overview of asymmetric Fe, Cu, Pd, Rh, Au and heme-based enzymes catalyzed carbene insertion reactions to construct  C–X (X = O, N, S, etc.) and C–C bonds, focusing on the stereochemical models.

Versatile energy inputs, including light, X-ray and ultrasound, activate organic molecular probes to undergo different delay mechanisms, including charge separation, triplet exciton stabilization and chemical trap, for delayed photon emission.

This review summarized the strategies and mechanisms for improving the conductivity, mechanical properties and stability of PEDOT:PSS, as well as the reliable micropatterning technologies and optoelectronic devices applied at bio-interfaces.

This review article centers around structured liquids and their underlying mechanisms. The focus is on the chemistry, applications, characterization, reconfigurability, and future prospects of this class of soft materials.

This review proposes the concept of proteolysis-targeting drug delivery system (ProDDS), surveys the recent research in various ProDDSs, summarizes their design principles, and provides an outlook on future opportunities.

Bioelectronics is a hot research topic, yet an important tool, as it facilitates the creation of advanced medical devices that interact with biological systems to effectively diagnose, monitor and treat a broad spectrum of health conditions.

This review explores designing highly ion-conductive COFs for advanced electrochemical devices, merging theory and practice.

Recent achievements in H₂O₂ electrosynthesis are reviewed, including electrocatalyst design, electrode optimization, electrolyte engineering, reactor exploration, potential applications, and integrated systems.

The usage of liquid metal or alloy enables the fabrication of various 2D atomic crystals. This review fully examines the synthetic methods, condition-behavior relationship, and atomic engineering in this field, emphasizing a promising future.

This review outlines recent advances in field-regulated catalysis and reveals the key role of dipole manipulation by electric/magnetic/electromagnetic fields.

Thermophysical properties of adsorbates and gas-phase species define the free energy landscape of heterogeneously catalyzed processes and are pivotal for an atomistic understanding of the catalyst performance.

This tutorial review presents the development of advanced immunomodulatory hydrogels strategically designed to address chronic inflammation through their intrinsic properties.

This perspective summarizes recent progress in rational design and synthesis of multidimensionally ordered mesoporous intermetallics, and propose new frontier nanoarchitectonics for designing high-performance functional nanocatalysts.

This tutorial review explores the fundamentals and applications behind the production and purification of radiometals in the burgeoning field of radio-theranostics.

Supramolecular and molecular capsules are a diverse class of host systems exhibiting a range of properties and characteristics with applications in sensing, separations, storage, transport, reactivity modulation and biomedicine.

This Tutorial Review discusses the evolution and expectation of enantioselective construction of Si-stereocenters by asymmetric organocatalysis.

Reducing the dimensionality of lead-halide perovskite nanocrystals from 3D to 0D leads to fascinating properties. This tutorial review discusses the synthesis, optical properties and applications of such strongly-confined quantum dots.

Oxidative degradation is a powerful method to degrade plastics into oligomers and small oxidized products.

An overview of the design strategies and their applications of tunable molecular solid-state emission based on customized packing of α-cyanodiarylethenes (CAEs) by stimuli response as well as the utilization of co-assembly.