Volume 16 Issue 6, June 2021

The challenge of assessing the scope and magnitude of risk from nanomaterials is urgent for society and ignoring risks could be detrimental for development. This challenge is bigger than the individual capacities on each side of the Atlantic, but effective cross-Atlantic collaboration can solve essential riddles about the use of nanomaterials.

Standardization and interoperability of data for both the functional and environmental performance properties of nanomaterials is essential to accelerate sustainable design.

The use of phase-change materials makes metasurfaces and nanoantennas electrically tunable and switchable, bringing their functionality to the next level.

This Review presents the emerging understanding of the importance of the dynamic and evolving protein corona composition in mediating the fate, transport and biological identity of nanomaterials in the environment. Principles specific to the environment are presented, along with a perspective on next steps toward mechanistic and predictive insights for the next phase of eco-corona studies.

This Review provides an overview of four platform technologies that are currently used in the clinic for delivery of nucleic acid therapeutics, describing their properties, discussing technical advancements that led to clinical approval, and highlighting examples of approved genetic drugs that make use of these technologies.

The proposal of a FAIR-aligned Nanosafety Data Interface can advance findability, accessibility and interoperability across physicochemical, bio–nano interaction, human toxicity, omics, ecotoxicological and exposure data.

While two-dimensional semiconductors enable the investigation of light–matter interactions in low dimensions, a link to magnetic order has so far remained elusive. Now, the antiferromagnetic insulator NiPS₃ is found to exhibit excitons with strong linear polarization that are coupled to the zigzag antiferromagnetic order.

An electrically reconfigurable optical metasurface using a Ge₂Sb₂Se₄Te phase change material shows half an octave spectral tuning and promising performances for optical beam steering applications.

A metasurface comprising electrically controlled heating units and a phase-change material offer non-volatile and reversible modulation of reflectance by more than fourfold.

By incorporating an atomically defined HgS interlayer at the core/shell interface of CdSe/CdS quantum dots, these normally visible-light emitters can be converted into spectrally tunable, near-infrared fluorophores that exhibit excellent light-emission characteristics under both optical and electrical excitation.

Energy- and area-efficient vanadium-dioxide-based Mott activation neuron devices enable the implementation of activation functions in neural networks.

Living electrodes enable signalling into a microbial community, coordinating behaviour.

Expansion microscopy, or ExM, physically expands biological specimens upon embedding them in swellable polymeric hydrogels, allowing nanoscale imaging using conventional microscopes. This work presents a diamond lattice polymeric hydrogel synthesized via click chemistry, which achieves higher homogeneity than the ones currently in use, allowing a more accurate sample expansion.

Understanding the in vivo biotransformation of nanomaterials used for biomedical applications might shed light on their long-term effects and safety. Here the authors show that molybdenum derived from nanomaterials is mainly transported in the liver, in a corona-mediated process, and is incorporated in molybdoenzymes, with an effect on liver metabolism.

Ultra-high-frequency radio-frequency acoustic molecular imaging is a safe molecular imaging diagnostic option because it does not require radioactive probes or high magnetic fields, but lack of biocompatible targeted contrast agents has so far limited its in vivo application. In this paper the authors present perfluorocarbon nanodroplets containing hypertonic saline solution for targeted molecular imaging of prostate cancer in animal models.

Self-assembly of small drugs with organic dyes represents a facile route to synthesize nanoparticles with high drug-loading capability. Here the authors combine a machine learning approach with high-throughput experimental validation to identify which combinations of drugs and excipient lead to successful nanoparticle formation and characterize the therapeutic efficacy of two of them in vitro and in animal models.

In this work, the authors develop a platform that leverages extracellular vesicles to measure drug–target engagement and apply it to monitor the outcomes of targeted treatments in lung cancer patients.