Themed collection Recent Review Articles

The ion-selective transport property of biological systems has inspired the development of biomimetic ion channels. This mini-review highlights the mechanisms, recent fabrication strategies and applications of biomimetic ion channels.

This review emphasizes the groundbreaking potential of MXene-based microrobots in developing targeted drug delivery and synergistic therapeutic approaches.

Cu-based bimetallic catalysts show enhanced electrochemical CO₂ reduction performance via the tandem effect. This review traces their progress, highlighting design advances, mechanisms, and challenges to guide efficient CO₂ conversion.

This review explores the development of biomedical nanomaterials based on rod-shaped plant viruses, providing insights into the design of innovative biomaterials for applications related to drug delivery, bioimaging and immune-therapy. Created in https://BioRender.com.

This review highlights the recent progress in structural engineering of noble metal-based nanozymes and their enzyme-like properties in various enzyme-mimicking reactions and diverse biomedical applications.

This review explores the spin effects in both achiral and chiral metal halide perovskites and their opto-spintronic applications.

Hydrogen bubble evolution presents both challenges and opportunities in Zn-based batteries. While bubble evolution induces electrode instability and dendrite formation, it can also optimize mass transfer through controlled fluid dynamics.

This review explores advancements, applications, challenges, and future prospects of flexible fibrous electrodes for implantable biosensing, highlighting their potential in biomedical monitoring and human–machine interfaces. Images reproduced with permission, full details in paper.

Polymeric nanoparticles represent an innovative approach to drug delivery, particularly for addressing complex diseases like cancer.

External strategies such as electrode design, stress/heat transfer improvements, microstructure optimization, and multifunctional synergy show great potential for improving sensing performance of PVDF-based sensors. Images reproduced with permission, full details in paper.

The increasing demand for sustainable solutions to address environmental and energy challenges has driven the development of advanced materials. This paper highlights recent advancements in the development of sustainable nanofibrous membranes.

Multifunctional coupling and signal decoupling achieved through nanostructure and supramolecule design, enable multimodal mechanoluminescent materials to play an increasingly important role in interdisciplinary applications and cutting-edge fields.

DNA nanomaterials offer promising advancements in addressing the challenges of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) through targeted drug delivery, biomarker detection, and therapeutic innovation.

Laser diodes based on solution-processed semiconductor quantum dots (QDs) present an economical and color-tunable alternative to traditional epitaxial lasers.

The dual role of ROS in liver diseases, and the potential of nanomaterials with catalytic activity for therapeutic applications are examined.

This review provides a comprehensive overview of recent biomedical applications of upconversion nanomaterials specifically within the near-infrared two-region (NIR-II) window (1000–1700 nm).

Mathematically inspired structure design has emerged as a powerful approach for tailoring material properties, especially in nanoscale thermal transport, with promising applications both within this field and beyond.

The emerging integrated power supplies for self-powered bioelectronic devices over the past few years are summarized. Additionally, the challenges and future perspectives in self-powered device design and manufacturing are also indicated.

Lithium metal is considered one of the most promising anode materials for lithium batteries due to its high theoretical specific capacity (3860 mA h g⁻¹) and low redox potential (−3.04 V).

This minireview highlights recent progress in BHJ-based photoelectrochemical cells and photocatalysts for solar-to-chemical conversions.

Chiral nanomaterials are emerging as a promising class of vaccine adjuvants with the potential to significantly enhance vaccine efficacy, especially in the context of cancer immunotherapy.

Dilute and single-atom alloy catalysts have attracted tremendous attention in heterogeneous catalysis. Herein, we discuss recent progress on simulating their stability and catalytic behavior.

We summarize the latest developments in NIR-CPL generated by chiral inorganic nanomaterials and provide new perspectives for constructing NIR-CPL materials and developing new applications for chiral nanomaterials.

Solid-state nanochannel sensors consisting of recognition elements and nanochannels are capable of detecting a wide range of small molecules including gas molecules, drug molecules and biomolecules.

This mini-review focuses on how super-resolution techniques uncover the detailed interactions between nanoparticles and immune cells.

Chirality is an intriguing property of molecules, and exciting area of study involves the generation of chirality in nanographenes (NGs), also known as graphene quantum dots.

Research and progress in quantum dot memristors.

This review highlights the structural design of freestanding nanofibrous anodes for a thorough understanding of the synergistic effect between structural design and anode active materials in metal-ion batteries.

Schematic representation of MXene based gas sensors: including synthesis, materials design, application and challenges.

The unique tuneability of various properties of MNPs and immunomodulatory effects are discussed in this review.

Regulation of grain size/morphology, second phase, and ligand in solution synthesis. Reproduced with permission - see article for full details.

Engineered nanoparticles exhibit superior physicochemical, antibacterial, optical, and sensing properties, rendering them attractive for biomedical applications. Multiscale modeling aids in understanding and optimizing these properties.

Chiral plasmonic nanostructures have been increasingly explored for asymmetric catalysis, high-sensitivity sensors with selectivity and advanced optical components. This review summarizes their synthesis methods and recent progress in the field.

DNA origami provides precise addressable self-assembly templates, demonstrating the tremendous potential of DNA origami technology in promoting interdisciplinary integration and driving technological progress.

This review summarizes current methods for monitoring cardiomyocyte contractility and explores recent advances in hydrogel-based platforms for monitoring cell contraction forces. Copyright 2023, Springer Nature; 2019 and 2022, John Wiley and Sons.

Layered nitrides have diverse compositions and pore profiles with wide applications, and are unique but soft and their characterization is challenging. This paper reviews the layered carbon nitrides' syntheses and applications.

Molecular junctions fabricated using different carbon materials and their nanofabrication deposition techniques, showcasing their potential applications.

Key strategies for placental-targeted drug delivery.

Nanoparticles boost ESCC treatment efficacy by enhancing drug targeting and overcoming biological barriers, despite biocompatibility and scalability challenges.

This review summarizes recent advances in functional coatings in water electrolyzers and fuel cells, covering both compositional design and mechanism understanding of coating materials.

Bacteriophage–nanozyme as hybrid probes for the detection of pathogenic bacteria.

This review summarizes the catalytic principles and different structure-based insightful design strategies of Mn-based nanoenzymes, as well as their latest applications and challenges in antitumor and antibacterial applications.

Different optical microscopy methods provide different but related single particle information. This tutorial reviews how optical microscopy images can be related to particle properties, including optical theory and strategies for image analysis.

The schematic includes nanophotonic structures energized short-wave infrared quantum dot photodetectors and their advancements in imaging and large-scale fabrication techniques.

The review of metal cluster materials in photocatalysis including synthetic methodologies, especially AI-assisted synthesis, characterization techniques, and modification strategies and applications.

The emerging functionalization strategy of self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) offers transformative potential for enhancing the performance of nanostructured metal oxides (MOXs)-based gas sensors.

Overview of additive manufacturing technologies and potential device integration strategies.

This review summarizes the research progress on the combination of carbon dots and carbon materials in the field of supercapacitors and focuses on discussing the electrochemical properties of materials of different dimensions.

Advanced flexible self-healing triboelectric nanogenerators (F-TENGs) achieve reliable energy harvesting in harsh environments, enabling sustainable wearable electronics and sensors through dynamic material innovations.

In this review, we present the recent progress on transition metal dichalcogenide-based composites, including their typical categories, key fabrication strategies, and transformative roles in the field of cancer therapy.

This review highlights how smart nanomaterials overcome biological barriers by enhancing targeting, reducing off-target effects, and enabling controlled drug release. Created in BioRender. Orash, A. (2025) https://BioRender.com/g97k271

The review highlights lipid-based nanomedicines (LBNs) for organ-specific delivery, focusing on functionalization strategies to improve target specificity, drug stability, therapeutic outcomes, and reduce side effects in clinical applications.

This review involves advances in the mechanics of 2D materials, including measurement methods, sample transfer, materials design, and mechanisms covering the impact of defects and thickness for highly-bendable 2D materials.

Single photon sources (SPS) enable precise quantum communication, secure encryption and quantum computing. Recent research highlights quantum dots as ideal candidates for SPS due to their tunable emission, high stability, brightness and scalability.

This review systematically summarizes the recent advances in the use of Pd-based chalcogenides as electrocatalysts for energy conversion reactions.

The growing societal impact of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has underscored the urgent need for innovative strategies to address the ongoing challenges posed by the pandemic.

Utilization of MXene nanozymes in electrochemical and optical biosensors for food safety.

This review provides an overview of linear, circular, and full-Stokes photodetectors, discussing how to simplify their design from complex to simple. Images by permission of: RSC 2021, WLY 2023, Optica Publishing Group 2016 and ACS 2020.

This review highlights recent advances in flexible, wearable mechano-acoustic sensors for body sound measurement, emphasizing their potential for ambulatory health monitoring. Created in BioRender. Dang, T. (2025) https://BioRender.com/l15d184.