Reviews & Analysis

This research is emphasized particularly on cathodes (such as carbon, metal oxides, MXenes, and redox-active polymers), anodes (such as Zn-based composite materials and Zn-free materials), electrolytes (organic/ionic liquid electrolytes, WiSs, redox electrolytes, polymer or solid electrolytes) as well as the design of a novel device for ZHSCs.

Despite years of exploration, numerous challenges remain unresolved in the field of hydrogels and hydrogel membranes for bone repair. In this review, we provide a comprehensive overview of the fundamental principles and current development status of hydrogel materials for bone repair, including their mechanisms, formation principles, and medical benefits in bone regeneration. Additionally, we summarize recent effective strategies to develop advanced hydrogels and technical approaches for bone repair while also discussing future directions.

Wearable devices provide an alternative way to clinically diagnose respiratory diseases in a non-invasive and real-time manner. In this review, we summarize the recent developments in the field of wearable respiratory sensors, including the methods to synthesize various sensing materials, the ways to improve respiratory sensing performances, and the feature comparison among different sensing materials. We also summarize the concentrations, sources and associated diseases of various biomarkers in exhaled gas. Finally, we discuss current trends in the field to provide predictions for the future trajectory of wearable respiratory sensors.

Biomaterial fabrication techniques and therapeutic strategies for spinal cord injury. This review focuses on the most recent advancements of biomaterial-based therapeutics for the treatment of spinal cord injury. The outer ring of the figure shows four fabrication techniques for tissue engineering: hydrogel, electrospinning, 3D printing and decellularization. The inner ring shows the injured spinal cord and the roles of biomaterials in spinal cord injury repair, for instance, restoring the blood‒spinal cord barrier (BSCB).

Oxide-based thermoelectric materials that exhibit a high figure of merit are promising because of their good chemical and thermal stabilities and their relative harmlessness compared with chalcogenide-based state-of-the-art thermoelectric materials. The layered barium-cobalt oxide (Ba_1/3CoO₂) exhibits a record-high ZT of 0.55 at 600 °C in air. The increase in ZT is directly originated by the decreased thermal conductivity of Ba_1/3CoO₂. As we hypothesized, the greater the atomic mass, the lower the thermal conductivity, resulting in higher ZT. The ZT is reliable and the highest among thermoelectric oxides. Moreover, this value is comparable to those of p-type PbTe and p-type SiGe.

Malaria continues to be among the most lethal infectious diseases. In the last two decades, we have witnessed unprecedented success in reducing the mortality rate. With the UN resolution of eradicating malaria by 2030 approaching fast, the scientific community has devoted substantial attention to interdisciplinary research using the latest opto-/magnetic-based technologies to detect a novel biomarker coming from the malarial pigment (hemozoin), which also carries vital information for discovering targeted drugs. This perspective article looks into the growing interest in this field and discusses the practical applicability of these sensing technologies.

This perspective highlights recent applications of ionogels that take advantage of their ionic conductivity, nonvolatility, and high thermal and electrochemical stability. Examples include sensors, batteries, electronics, 3D printing, and adhesives. Improving the mechanical properties of ionogels broadens the application space; thus, simple strategies to achieve tough ionogels are introduced. Finally, the potential applications and future opportunities of ionogels are discussed.

This review highlights single-aggregate spectroscopy studies of conjugated polymer aggregates based on a combination of solvent vapor annealing and single-molecule fluorescence techniques and draws mesoscopic connections between morphology, electronic coupling, and photophysics in conjugated polymers.

Inverted perovskite solar cells (PSCs) with a p-i-n architecture are being actively researched due to their concurrent good stability and decent efficiency. In particular, the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of inverted PSCs has seen clear improvement in recent years and is now almost approaching that of n-i-p PSCs. Here, we systematically review recent progress in the development of high-efficiency inverted PSCs, and highlight the development of charge transport materials and the effects of defect passivation strategies on the performance of inverted PSCs, with the aim of providing constructive suggestions for the future development of inverted PSCs.

This review highlights the recent advances in the bioapplications of higher-order DNA origami structures at multiple scales. After a brief introduction to the development of DNA origami, we describe the use of DNA origami structures to assist in single-molecule studies, manipulate lipid membranes, direct cell behaviors, and deliver drugs as smart nanocarriers. Our opinions on the current challenges and future directions are also shared.

Due to their unique physical characteristics, surfactants containing fluorocarbon chains form hierarchical patterns of two-dimensional mesoscopic/microscopic self-assemblies on the surface of water. This review describes the overarching physical mechanism, the competitive interplay of line tension and dipole interaction and discusses several key experimental and analytical techniques characterizing the shape, size, correlation, and viscoelasticity of mesoscopic/microscopic self-assemblies on water, which is often non-trivial. Some of the recent biomedical applications, including biomimetic surface coating, contrast agents in multimodal imaging, and controlled delivery, are introduced to highlight how the unique physicochemical properties of fluorinated self-assemblies can be applied in materials science.

The exquisite structures of biological ion channels provide inspiration for designing and constructing artificial ion channels to achieve analogous functions. Hierarchically engineered heterogeneous nanochannels with excellent ion rectification, selectivity, and gating properties have attracted more and more attention. In this review, we briefly review the recent advances of hierarchically engineered nanochannel systems in terms of pore-on-pore and pore-in-pore structures, with an emphasis on the promising applications, including ion-selective transport, osmotic energy harvesting, separation, and biosensing.

Nanoarchitectonics concept is essential to bridge the gaps between biology and materials chemistry. Based on this fundamental principle, this review article provides pore-engineered nanoarchitectonics for cancer therapy by integrating basic descriptions and exemplifying therapy applications. This review paper briefly summarizes pore-engineered nanoarchitectonics basics according to classification based on material porosity and composition. We discuss how to design mesoporous material and highlight the appealing points of the progress in the clinical translation of mesoporous materials for cancer treatment. Nanoarchitectonics could be an important key concept for future advanced life technologies as well as currently required cancer therapy.

The recent advances realized in the syntheses and characterizations of both morphological- and molecular-level one-dimensional (1D) metal-halide perovskites with tunable structures, compositions, and properties, as well as optoelectronic applications are comprehensively reviewed. Furthermore, the challenges, prospects, and promising research directions are discussed, which we believe will help to accelerate the explorations of 1D metal-halide perovskites in the future.

The potential of transition metal-based cocatalysts for PEC water splitting has been outlined with a focus on the reported literature, ongoing research, and future perspectives.

Palladium (Pd)-nonmetal nanostructures, as a special class of Pd-based alloys, have exhibited diversified advantages for fuel cell reactions. This minireview summarized the most recent progress in the synthesis of Pd-nonmetal nanostructures and their applications in fuel cells. Especially, this review proposed the promising strategies for enhancing the performance of Pd-nonmetal nanostructures in fuel cell applications. It is expected that this review will generate more research interest in the development of more advanced Pd-nonmetal nanocatalysts.

Cell-derived exosomes have been rapidly developed and applied in various biomedical fields over the last decade, holding great potentials in tissue repair such as chronic wounds due to their excellent biocompatibility and immune stability. Recent advances in regulating the features and biological functions of cell-derived exosomes by biochemical and biophysical cues in the cell microenvironment are summarized. Then microenvironmental cue-regulated exosomes as therapeutic strategies to improve chronic wound healing are discussed, and hydrogel-based exosome delivery systems used in the treatment of chronic wounds are highlighted. Finally, ongoing challenges and future opportunities are proposed.

Summary of the main influencing factors between autophagy and disease.

In this paper, we review a large number of recent studies on the synthesis of nanoparticles assisted by machine learning. Moreover, we describe the working steps of machine learning, the main algorithms, and the main ways to obtain datasets. Finally, we discuss the current problems of this research and provide an outlook.

This Perspective illustrates how theory and experiment can be combined to study the interfacial charge transfer between transition metal nanoparticles and oxide supports, the short- or long-range natures of interactions between them and the effects of oxide nanostructuring on the properties of supported metal particles. These studies deepen our understanding of the role of metal-oxide interactions in industrially relevant nanocomposites thus helping to design interfaces with unique properties for future applications