Themed collection Recent Review Articles

Recent advancements in science and technology have significantly enhanced public health by integrating novel materials and early diagnostic methods.

Illustration of atomic catalysts in five different reactions: nitrogen reduction, nitrate reduction, nitrite reduction, nitric oxide reduction and urea synthesis. Advantages of diatom catalysts include those of single atom catalysts.

This mini-review focuses on organic photoelectrochemical transistors and summarizes their recent advances in operation mechanisms, device architectures, and applications in biomedical sciences, optoelectronics and sensor technologies.

This work discusses the imprinting of optoelectronic chirality on hybrid-organic inorganic perovskites, which are a new class of chiral nanomaterials for manipulation and control of spin polarized current and circularly polarized light.

This article presents MXenes' potential in 3D bioprinting, discussing their benefits for bio-printed scaffolds, 3D bioprinting techniques, bio-ink criteria, applications of MXene-incorporated constructs, current challenges, and future directions.

Silicene-based technologies can be applied in photonic hyperthermia and drug delivery for oncology treatment.

This review highlights recent progress in increasing the operating voltage of biodegradable primary batteries by suppressing or substituting the hydrogen evolution reaction at the cathode with alternative redox reaction.

Guidelines for tailored enzyme-induced electrospun nanofiber immobilization techniques: aligning fabrication methods with future application requirements.

This review focuses on the structure–property correlation and bioimaging application of luminescent metal nanoclusters, which feature atomically precise structures, diverse optical properties and excellent biocompatibility.

Nanomaterials interact with the gut microbiome, mucus layer, and epithelial cells, influencing immune responses and facilitating transport to distant organs via blood, lymphatic, and neural pathways, impacting intestinal and systemic health.

This review summarizes various methods for synthesizing core–satellite, core–shell, yolk–shell, and hollow–shell MOFs or their derivatives in recent years.

The fundamentals of and techniques for measuring exciton diffusion length in organic semiconductors are described, focusing on inherent challenges and developed solutions. Discrepancies between measurements are explored and their origins explained.

Reaction mechanisms of CO₂ reduction and evolution at cathode/electrolyte interface are discussed, highlighting the relationship between electrochemical performance of Li–CO₂ batteries and properties of different discharge products.

A comprehensive insight about recent advances in biomimetic superhydrophobic surfaces: focusing on abrasion resistance, self-healing and anti-icing, which brings a new perspective to construct durable superhydrophobic surfaces.

This review aims to provide a deeper understanding and new perspectives of omics approaches to characterize the toxicity and biological interactions of inorganic nanoparticles, and improve the safety of nanoparticle applications.

Layered transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) are extensively investigated as catalyst materials for a wide range of electrochemical applications due to their high surface area and versatile electronic and chemical properties.

Herein, the authors have focused on the recent development of MOF-derived scaffold electrodes using transition metal oxides, sulfides, selenides, tellurides, and their composites for supercapacitors.

Recent advances in aggregation-induced emitters for luminescent solar concentrators are discussed, focusing on molecular designs enabling operation in the deep-red/near-infrared regions, for prospective use in colourless spectral conversion devices.

An overview of the development of biomimetic AIE nanoparticles and their biomedical applications.

Structure evolution and specific effects of atomically ordered intermetallic compounds (IMCs) have been extensively studied for exploring catalysts with high activity, selectivity, and longevity.

This mini-review summarises recent discoveries on MnBi₂Te₄ thin films and provides insights for overcoming the temperature barrier for the quantum anomalous Hall effect.

Atomically precise metal clusters for electrocatalytic and photocatalytic H₂ production are systematically summarized, which is expected to provide new insights into the design of high-performance H₂ production catalysts.

This minireview explores the tunable dynamic properties and potential applications of memristor-based physical reservoir computing.

This review summarizes the significant recent progress in AAV capsid engineering strategies, with a particular focus on chemical modifications in advancing the next generation of AAV-based gene therapies.

This minireview summarizes the mechanical properties in nanomaterials for tumor therapy.

The tunable nanoporous features in metal–organic frameworks and covalent organic frameworks show great potential for batteries, such as promoting lithium-ion conduction and stabilising lithium metal anodes/high nickel cathodes.

This minireview outlines recent progress in synthetic strategies, photophysical, surface reactivity, and catalytic properties of Ag(0)-containing ligand-protected atomically precise silver nanoclusters.

The integration of low-dimensional nanomaterials into direct ink writing (DIW) 3D-printed micro-supercapacitors (MSCs) represents a groundbreaking approach in developing high-performance energy storage devices.

The technique of Scanning Electrochemical Cell Microscopy (SECCM) has been expanded in recent years, with new categories of materials being tested, implementation of new instrumental capabilities, and the rapid adoption of the technique worldwide.

This minireview highlights the recent advances in defect modulated electrocatalysts and the promotional role of defects in the OER.

Recent progress on nickel phthalocyanine-based electrocatalysts is reviewed, focusing on their specific strategies, structure–performance relationship and CO₂-to-CO reaction mechanism.

Harnessing the power of mesoporous silica to encapsulate organic fluorescent dyes has led to the creation of an extraordinary class of nanocomposite photonic materials.

The application of metal phosphides from the aspects of characteristics, material structure design, and material interface control. Enhancing the understanding of the operational mechanism and providing guidance for the development of Li–S batteries.

This review highlights recent advancements in the development of lanthanide (Ln³⁺)-based nanothermometers, focusing on those operating in the near-infrared (NIR) spectral region and outlining key findings as well as remaining challenges.

This article provides a review of various emerging micro/nanomotors utilized for neural modulation in recent years, with the aim of inspiring readers to explore broader biomedical applications of micro/nanomotors.

Nanoelectrocatalysts with optimized chemical composition, structure, and integration methods can reduce reaction activation energy, improve electrolyte mass transfer, and thereby enhance the power output of redox flow batteries.

This minireview explores the unique properties and potential applications of bismuth oxychalcogenide nanosheets in chemical and biological sensing, and photodetection.

This review focuses on all substances that are regarded as cluster materials and makes a new attempt to provide a comprehensive understanding through categorizing and summarizing clusters based on their constituent elements in the periodic table.

This work shows that cation disorder is a key tuneable parameter that can improve the optoelectronic properties of emerging solar absorbers.

Artificial switchable catalysis is a new, rapidly expanding field that offers great potential advantages for both homogeneous and heterogeneous catalytic systems.

Dendrimers and dendritic NPs are emerging as potential nanoplatforms for cancer immunotherapy. This minireview provides an updated overview of dendrimer conjugates, dendritic hybrids, and dendron-based copolymers for targeted therapy.

Supramolecular design principles are emerging as a powerful tool to manipulate organic cathode performance. In this review, we discuss how supramolecular interactions influence electrode behavior.

This mini-review highlights recent materials design strategies to alleviate distortive phase transformations in vanadium pentoxide materials for energy storage applications and characterization methods.

An overview of the strategies, progress, mechanisms, and prospects of chemical treatments to passivate the defects and improve the optical and electronic properties of 2D transition metal dichalcogenides.

This minireview covers recent advances in photoelectrochemical hydrogen production using I–III–VI QDs, detailing the material design strategies.

Enhanced by diverse color sorting techniques and deep learning, color routing at the nanoscale shows great potential in the image sensing field.

Research work in light control of droplets is summarized from three aspects: underlying mechanism of light control of droplets, smart material design for light control of droplets, as well as the diverse applications of light control of droplets.

This review focuses on the study of encryption, multiplexing and demultiplexing of vortex beams based on nanostructure platforms.

This minireview summarizes the utility of integrating nano-delivery systems with TCM, emphasizing their capacity to enhance treatment efficacy, modernize TCM, and expand global accessibility.

In this work, we focus on perovskite–organic tandem solar cells (PO TSCs) with advantages in device performance, manufacturing cost, and diverse applications and conclude the critical factors influencing the future development of PO TSCs.

The emergence of genetically engineered extracellular vesicles has marked a new epoch in cancer immunotherapy, presenting substantial clinical potentials.

This review introduces the modified methods of engineered EVs, summarizes the application of engineered EVs in preclinical and clinical trials, and discusses the opportunities and challenges for the clinical translation of surface-engineered EVs.

The recent development of lattice engineering, including lattice strain and lattice symmetry, in noble metal–light nonmetal binary nanocompounds and some of the core–shell nanostructures derived from them are discussed.

This review aims to outline future directions of the transfer techniques of graphene films, focusing on the application-specific transfer techniques, “all-dry transfer” compatible for batch transfer, and several new possible transfer-related applications.

We highlight the recent advances, discuss challenges, and propose future opportunities in nanomedicine-based strategies centered around macrophages for enhanced cancer immunotherapy.

Framework nucleic acid nanomaterials possess excellent antioxidative and anti-inflammatory therapeutic properties through scavenging reactive oxygen species.

A comprehensive overview of the recent progress in synthesizing novel nanomaterials using Ga-based liquid metals as reaction media, detailing related properties, synthetic methods and future directions.

This minireview summarizes recent applications of machine learning interatomic potentials for predicting the stability and structures of solid-state surfaces.

The peripheral nervous and muscular system, a cornerstone of human physiology, plays a pivotal role in ensuring the seamless functioning of the human body.

This review aims to summarize the timely progress of manufacturing high-performance nanocellulose-based fibers using wet spinning process.

Raman line shapes depending on the excitation wavelength is one of the confirmations for the presence of Fano resonance in any material, but the same is often not clearly visible in low dimensional materials owing to several system-specific reasons.

This minireview examines how the interfacial liquid, comprising water molecules and ionic species, profoundly impacts key electrochemical reactions: HER, OER/ORR, and CO₂RR/CORR.

This mini-review highlights advances in multi-dimensional carbon electrodes with bio-inspired principles for metal-ion batteries.

This minireview focuses on wafer-scale synthesis of single-crystal 2D van der Waals thin films such as graphene, hBN and metal chalcogenides, summarizing the state-of-the-art synthesis routes, discussing the current challenges and future outlook.

In this review, the basic principles of plasmon-enhanced SHG, different methods to enhance the SHG intensity of metal nanostructures, and related applications of SHG based on metal nanostructures are introduced.

This minireview aims at highlighting the most recent advances in the production of electrocatalytically active nanomaterials and their applications in organic catalysis.

This minireview summarizes the most recent developments in live-cell RNA imaging technologies in mammalian cells.

This work provides a mini review on the state-of-the-art modelling and simulation of coalescence kinetics and mechanisms for metallic nanoparticles, including nanoparticles with the same and different elements, alloys and metal oxides.

New concepts, strategies, and latest developments of in-plane Zn ion hybrid MSCs as well as key challenges and future directions have been highlighted, which provides new insights into several kinds of emerging miniaturized energy storage devices.

This minireview concisely but comprehensively summarizes recent advances of bio-organic frameworks (BOFs) including their synthesis strategies and diverse applications.