Themed collection 2020 Materials Chemistry Frontiers Review-type Articles

This review summarizes recent progress on chemistry and engineering techniques of organic polymers across a range of electrically insulating polymers, semiconducting polymers and conducting polymers for neural interfacing, stimulation and recording.

Synthetic chemistry towards two-dimensional semiconducting polymers (2DSPs) with planar π-conjugated structures is reviewed and their unique chemical and physical properties derived from the extended π-conjugation are discussed.

Radicals, organic molecules with unpaired electrons, are applied across different scientific disciplines such as electronics, energy storage and biochemistry.

In this review, we focus on the recent advances in organic solar cells enabled by A–DA′D–A type acceptors and summarize the correlation between molecular structure, molecular packings, optoelectronic properties, and photovoltaic performance.

This review gives an overview of strategies to tailor organic semiconductors with designed physical structures and chemical functionalities for development of chemical and biological sensors based on organic field effect transistors.

A timely review of recent exciting progress is provided regarding the molecular design, optical characterization, and device fabrications of novel 2D halide perovskite materials incorporating functional organic semiconducting building blocks.

In this review, we will focus on the recent progress in the synthetic strategies, photo-electronic properties, molecular packing modes and applications of azaacenes (n ≥ 6) with single-crystal structures.

This review comprehensively summarized the construction of naphthalene diimide- and perylene diimide-based cages as well as their properties and applications.

This review comprehensively summarizes the construction of pyrene-based metallocycles and metallocages as well as their properties and applications.

This review summarizes the recent progresses made in AIE-active photochromic materials with respect to molecular structures, material morphology, and practical applications.

This review categorizes the reported reaction cascades in polymer mechanochemistry into five parts, including mechanocatalysis, cargo-releasing, self-strengthening, gating, and mechanochromism. Some outlook is also provided.

Recent progress on PEDOT:PSS composites by incorporating various polymers and fillers through blending and mixing methods and main focus is put onto the electrical conductivity, stretchability and thermoelectric properties.

Surface properties control provides tools for tailoring the active layer self-assembly and phase separation kinetics, which plays an important role in the morphology by directing phase separation during film deposition, drying and annealing.

Recent advances and perspectives in all aspects of the elaboration of OPV devices from nanoparticle dispersions are reviewed.

The typical effects and performance enhancements induced by the ordered assembly of 1D nanomaterials are reviewed.

Functional organic field-effect transistors (OFETs) have developed rapidly, especially OFETs with memory function. We make a comprehensive summary of the background, memory mechanism, structure construction and memory applications based on OFETs.

Rotaxane dendrimers are a newly emerging large family of mechanically interlocked molecules (MIMs), which combine the concept of molecular switching properties into hyperbranched dendrimers to render new macromolecular machines.

This review describes the constituents and clinical biomarkers in urine, saliva, and sweat, and the role of currently developed AIE bioprobes that can quantitatively detect disease-related biomarkers in these biofluids.

Turning to improve performances under industrial requirements may be more meaningful for research itself.

This review summarises recent advances of hollow-structured sulfur cathodes for high performance lithium sulfur batteries, focusing on their synthesis, structure, electrochemical performance, advantages and challenges.

Organic/inorganic nanocomposites are ideal candidates for cancer immunotherapy since they could combine both advantages of organic and inorganic components.

Recent progress made in the synthesis, mechanism, and applications involving the enantioselective separation and sensing of chiral conducting polymer nanomaterials has been reviewed.

Four key factors in designing effective sonosensitizers for sonodynamic therapy, including ROS generation ability, targeting ability, oxygen supply and corresponding ultrasound parameters, are discussed.

We summarized the recent progress in the synthesis approaches and representative applications of hollow carbon nanospheres, especially focused on the shape control mechanism and the unique capability as anode materials of post LIBs technologies.

This review summarizes the recent progress of fullerene derivatives applied in perovskite solar cells, unveiling the correlation between the chemical structures of fullerene derivatives, especially the addend groups, and their performance.

This review article summarises the academic work in the fields of initiator development, polymer chemistry and physics, composites, self-healing composites, novel processing opportunities and macro-as well as microporous materials.

This review summarizes recent advances in silver nanoclusters focusing on their controlled synthesis, crystal structures and photoluminescence.

The structural complexity of polymer semiconductors can be revealed by electron diffraction in a TEM on highly oriented and crystalline thin films.

We first officially propose the brand-new concept of “biosafety materials”, which utilizes materials science to solve biosafety problems.

We summarize and highlight recent advances in the realm of light olefins separation using MOFs as adsorbents, covering the progress made in improving the key features of MOFs that are necessary for their real-world applications.

This review presents the recent developments in the research hotspots of advanced functional polymers; their concepts, design strategies, and applications are briefly discussed.

Aromatic imide/amide-based organic small molecules as emitters in organic light-emitting diodes have caught increasing attention. This study summarized their advances in terms of device performance and molecular design rules over the past 20 years.

A brief review of CDots from the perspective of traditional QDs clarifies the basic concepts, unique characteristics and challenges.

This review comprehensively summarizes potential biological application using aptamer-functionalized nanomaterials platform, focusing on explaining syntheses, properties, prospects and challenges.

Disassembly is an essential process in supramolecular chemistry. In this review, different bimetallic donor–acceptor-based chemosensors, chemodosimeters, catalysts and latent catalysts founded on various displacement assays will be discussed.

This review about the development of blue QD-LEDs will provide the reference to demonstrate the excellent blue devices.

This review describes the applications of chemically modified nucleic acid biopolymers in biosensing, and mainly introduces different assembly methods of chemically modified nucleic acid biopolymers.

Hypothetical transmembrane rotaxane as a model for trajectory thermodynamic theory of synthetic molecular pumps.

This article reviews important developments in DNA nanotechnology and RNA nanotechnology and highlights supramolecular nucleic acid structures with biomedical applications.

This review summarized most recent advances of designing strategies of polydiacetylene-based smart biomaterials with unique colorimetric and mechanical properties, as well as their applications in biosensing, drug delivery, and tissue engineering.

This review summarizes the synthesis methods for fabricating multishelled hollow nanostructures and provides views for such intricate hollow architectures in several emerging application areas.

Proteins are modified with small molecules and polymers via olefin metathesis reactions in aqueous media.

This review presents progress in the field of MIM hosts for ion recognition and sensing since 2014, focusing on the synthetic approaches employed and mechanisms of host–guest binding and detection.

Fluorescent materials-based information storage systems are characterised by attractive data security, stability, and stimuli responsive features. We summarise here, recent progress in the area of fluorescent materials-based information storage codes.

Organic cocrystals, as an intelligent design strategy of functional materials, have received extensive attention in the scientific community over recent years. This review focuses on recent advances and perspectives of organic charge transfer cocrystals in the area of stimuli-response.

This review summarizes the recent progress in the design and preparation of multiple electrochemical energy storage devices utilizing carbon dots, and elaborates the positive effects of carbon dots on the resulting electrodes and devices.

This review summarizes the recent progress of GeSe thin-film solar cells and provides a brief outlook for their further development.

This review describes the functional biomedical polymers developed by the biomimetic/bioinspired strategies from various prototypes of cell membranes.

Recent advances in organic light-emitting diodes toward smart lighting and displays are reviewed in terms of materials, devices, fabrication and applications.

The synthesis, optical properties, and biomedical applications of CDs are summarized.

This review comprehensively summarizes the recent progress in surface-grafting polymers, including their formation process and the utilization of surface-grafting polymers as functional materials of insulators, conductors and semiconductors in versatile organic electronic devices.

This review summarizes and discusses the recent advances and future prospects of carbon dots as nanotheranostic agents for anticancer applications.

Dynamic covalent polymers have emerged as intriguing, new materials with unique properties. In this article, their synthesis, properties, and applications in the biomedical field have been reviewed.

Carbon dots (CDs) have gained tremendous attention in agriculture. Herein, we summarize recent progress of the interaction between CDs and plant systems, mainly including plant growth, photosynthesis, resistance, etc.

We highlight the recent advances and future prospects of the spectroscopic studies of the optical properties of carbon dots.

High performance photodetectors play important roles in the improvement of innovative technologies in many fields, for instance, medicine, military, optical communication, environment monitoring, etc.

We summarized the progress in the synthesis, doping and modification strategies of GQDs and the development and application of GQDs in energy storage and conversion devices.

Carbon dots (CDs) with incomparable optical properties have attracted extensive attention. However, some unclear issues remain, which has impeded the basic understanding and practical application of CDs.

Recent representative advances in the long-lived afterglow properties and applications of carbon dots are summarized and discussed.

This review summarizes the latest advances of porous organic polymers (POPs) focusing on their applications in photocatalysis, including photocatalytic chemical transformations, photodetoxification of pollutants from water, and water splitting.

This review summarizes the recent development of ECL sensors based on carbon-based dots. Particularly, various analytical approaches involving metal ions, small molecules, proteins, nucleic acids and cells are thoroughly presented.

The organic mechanoluminescence (ML) happens at the crack surface under force, and the ML composition is becoming more complicated, extending from the normal fluorescence to phosphorescence, persistent room temperature phosphorescence and the photo-sensitive ML.

EWOD was investigated from wetting to superwetting with six basic fluid systems. Each fluid system has developed special technologies for functional applications owing to the different interactions among solid, liquid and gas phases.

Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) paired carbon dot composite nanoprobes are studied as multi-functional platforms for sensing and imaging applications.

Chemical methods to generate polysaccharide-containing block copolymers are enabling these polymers to achieve their potential as sustainable materials in a variety of applications.

This review describes recent advances and scientific challenges in the area of post-synthetic methodologies to tailor the functionalities and properties of COFs.

The concept, design strategy and self-assembly of chiral supra-amphiphiles were summarized in this review article.

This review summarises the development of bottom-up synthesis of graphene nanoribbons in liquid phase and provides views on challenges in the field and the future outlook.

This review summarizes pH-controlled mechanical motions including translocation in rotaxanes, circumrotation in catenanes and other motions in more sophisticated mechanomolecules.

A systematic review of current achievements in calixarene-based amphiphiles and supra-amphiphiles, mainly focused on their assembling features.