Review Articles in 2023

Immunotherapy represents an important advance in cancer treatment, yet faces challenges owing to lack of precise control, leading to systemic effects and suboptimal results for patients. This Review explores how responsive biomaterials can enhance cancer immunotherapies by responding to various internal and external stimuli to regulate the delivery and behaviour of therapeutic agents, thereby improving efficacy and reducing toxicity in treatment methods such as cancer vaccines, T cell-based therapies and sustained delivery systems.

Mucosal vaccines are critical in the fight against mucosal pathogens because they enable the immune system to directly neutralize these pathogens at their primary site of entry. This Review examines the role of material design in addressing the challenges associated with mucosal vaccine delivery.

Ultra-high temperature ceramics (UHTCs), with their exceptionally high melting points and outstanding thermomechanical behaviour, are critical materials for extreme environment technologies. This Review establishes the key UHTC composition–synthesis–property relations and discusses the design of UHTCs for application in extreme environments.

Advances in photoactive-layer materials have contributed to the increase in the performance of organic solar cells. This Review summarizes the types of materials used in the photoactive layer of solution-processed organic solar cells, discusses the advantages and disadvantages of combinations of different materials and considers molecular design strategies for future development.

Broken symmetries at the nanoscale can greatly modify the emergent nanophotonic responses enabled by phonon polaritons. This Review discusses how lowering the degree of symmetry in natural and artificial materials gives rise to a wide spectrum of low-loss, directional, confined light–matter quasiparticles.

Incorporating fluorine into battery components can improve the energy density, safety and cycling stability of rechargeable batteries. This Review explores the broad use of fluorinated compounds in battery design, examines the relationship between their chemical structure and battery performance and discusses the challenges and opportunities of fluorinated batteries within the present regulatory framework.

Vapour-phase deposition holds promise for synthesizing two-dimensional layered chalcogenides that are intriguing for fundamental research and emerging technological applications. This Review summarizes the advancements and future opportunities for translating this synthesis approach from laboratory to manufacturing scale.

Methylammonium-free wide-bandgap metal halide perovskites are attractive for tandem photovoltaics but routinely perform worse than their methylammonium-containing counterparts. This Review discusses the factors contributing to their constrained performance, progress made in these tandem devices and promising strategies for their continued development.

Electrons in strongly interacting materials can flow collectively, exhibiting hydrodynamic phenomena such as viscous flow. This Review highlights recent experimental advances, including high-quality materials growth, that have enabled these observations and surveys the spatially resolved theoretical frameworks necessary to interpret and predict these phenomena.

Owing to their suitable and tunable optoelectronic properties, regulation-compliant InP-based colloidal quantum dots have attracted considerable academic and industrial interest for visible and near-infrared photonics. This Review covers the fundamentals, the design, the fabrication and the many applications of this class of materials, highlighting current challenges and future prospects.

Lightwave electronics could enable the control of interactions in quantum materials and provide access to the quantum phases and quantum information of condensed-matter systems. This Review discusses the fundamental concepts of lightwave electronics and outlines key advances and potential applications.

In situ self-assembly is advantageous for cancer therapy and imaging because of the efficient deep-tumour targeting, enhanced blood circulation and negligible drug resistance of the resulting nanomedicines. This Review discusses extracellular and intracellular in situ self-assembly based on endogenous and exogenous stimuli for cancer therapy and imaging applications.

Two-dimensional materials can enable a new generation of flexible and printed electronics suitable for light-weight, low-power, sustainable and cost-effective field-effect transistors. This Review surveys solution-processed transistors based on 2D materials, discussing their performance, limitations and future perspectives.

Combining poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):polystyrene sulfonate (PEDOT:PSS) with 3D-printing techniques enables the customization of compliant conductive materials for soft robotics, towards the goal of merging humans and robots. This Review discusses the fundamentals of 3D-printed PEDOT:PSS for soft robotics, from printable ink design and evaluation to printing strategies and promising soft robotic systems.

UV photodetectors based on low-dimensional wide-bandgap semiconductors offer wearable, multidimensional and intelligent functions in the scenarios of imaging, communication, multispectral and/or weak light detection and flexible electronics. This Review focuses on the material design, dimensionality engineering and device engineering of wide-bandgap semiconductors in diversified UV applications.

Although perovskite solar cells now have competitive efficiencies compared with silicon solar cells, their low stability has hindered their commercial application thus far. This Review summarizes the tremendous improvements made over the past decade and offer a perspective on how to reach >25-year stable perovskite solar cells.

Nanotheranostics — nanoparticle-based systems combining diagnostic and therapeutic functions — hold great promise, but their implementation in the clinic is challenging. This Review discusses the design and clinical development of nanotheranostics and defines the critical steps needed to overcome technical, manufacturing, regulatory and economical challenges for their safe and effective clinical translation.

Owing to the many-body nature of quantum materials, a microscopic understanding of the interactions dictating their ground state is essential to control their dynamics. This Review summarizes how THz light is effective for both probing quantum materials and driving them into new types of out-of-equilibrium phases.

Electrified processes offer a chemical-free approach to the removal of a wide range of contaminants from water, including many that are difficult to remove using conventional methods. This Review discusses the fundamentals of several important electrified processes and highlights the role of electrode materials in contaminant transport and transformation.

Integrating various two-dimensional materials and three-dimensional nanomembranes via van der Waals interactions enables novel hetero-integrated photonic layouts and ways to explore exotic nanophotonic phenomena. This Review discusses photonic van der Waals integration, from film preparation to device implementation.