Review Articles

This review discusses exciton–polaritons in microcavities and their emerging technological applications, with emphasis on the materials challenges for operation at room temperature.

This Review discusses the materials and electronic requirements for flexible sensors and electronic systems to mimic the mechanical and sensing properties of natural skin, with the goal of providing artificial prostheses with sensing capabilities.

Optical transparency, tunable conducting properties and easy processability make metal oxides key materials for advanced optoelectronic devices. This Review discusses recent advances in the synthesis of these materials and their use in applications.

The role of surface ligands in tuning the optoelectronic properties, controlling the stability and determining the performance in applications of colloidal nanocrystals is discussed in this Review.

This Review discusses the properties and applications of supramolecular biomaterials for drug delivery, tissue engineering, regenerative medicine and immunology.

This Review discusses the physics of electrical contacts to 2D semiconductors and the strategies adopted to improve charge injection in these materials. The requirements for efficient spin injection in spintronic devices are also presented.

This Review discusses stimuli-responsive liquid crystalline polymer networks and elastomers as materials with programmable mechanics for use in functional devices.

This Review discusses recent and ongoing realizations of Rashba physics in various fields of physics and materials science.

Major strategies for the preparation and rational design of nanoporous carbon spheres as well as the investigation of their properties for energy conversion and storage, catalysis and biomedical applications are now critically reviewed.

Optically excited plasmonic nanoparticles can activate chemical reactions on their surfaces. The underlying physical mechanisms responsible for the chemical activity and advances in photocatalysis on plasmonic metallic nanostructures are discussed.

The properties and applications of biomacromolecules, for example proteins, can be enhanced by the covalent attachment of synthetic polymers. This Review discusses the modification of these biomacromolecules with stimuli-responsive polymers.

This Review discusses the common structural motifs of a range of natural materials and the difficulties associated with mimicking these designs in the fabrication of synthetic structures with enhanced mechanical properties.

Human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) have great potential for regenerative medicine, yet producing billions of hPSCs suitable for clinical use needs defined culture conditions and scalable culture systems. This Review discusses the role of high-throughput materials discovery in the development of scalable growth substrates for hPSC culture.

Inherent properties of materials, such as their adhesiveness to cells, nanotopography, stiffness, degradability or chemical functionality, can influence the fate of stem cells. This Review discusses recent evidence of how inherent material properties can be engineered to regulate stem cell decisions, as well as of signal-transduction mechanisms that convert material stimuli into biochemical signals.

Stem cells respond to nanoscale cues from the extracellular matrix or culture substrates by altering cell adhesion, which can in turn define their fate. This Review discusses how stem cell adhesion and differentiation are influenced by surface nanotopography, with a particular focus on integrin–matrix interactions and cell-adhesion-mediated signalling processes.

Strategies to increase light-trapping in solar cells can significantly improve the power-conversion efficiency of these devices. This Review discusses the use of nanostructured high-index layers to manipulate photons in thin-film solar cells, as well as the recent efforts aimed at integrating such layers in large-area devices.

At present, magneto-, electro- and mechanocaloric effects are intensely investigated as the basis for possible cooling applications. This Review discusses and compares the three effects from both a fundamental and an applied perspective, with an emphasis on the experimental methods used to measure them.

Metamaterials are artificially fabricated materials that allow for the control of light and acoustic waves in a manner that is not possible in nature. This Review covers the recent developments in the study of so-called metasurfaces, which offer the possibility of controlling light with ultrathin, planar optical components.

Alongside their beneficial effects within the innate immune system, macrophages can also play a detrimental role in some disease settings. This Review discusses the range of nanoparticles that are known to target macrophages and hence, are able to act as imaging agents in cancer, atherosclerosis, myocardial infarction, aortic aneurysm, diabetes and other inflammatory conditions.

Therapeutics based on small interfering RNA (siRNA), which in principle are able to reversibly silence any gene of interest, are under development for the treatment of cancers, viral infections, hereditary disorders and many other diseases. This Review discusses the biological challenges that siRNA delivery materials aim to overcome, as well as the most clinically advanced classes of siRNA delivery systems, including cyclodextrin–polymer nanoparticles, lipid nanoparticles and siRNA conjugates.