Themed collection Honorary themed collection for Thomas P. Russell

Guest Editors Ilja Gunkel, Xiaodan Gu, Jodie Lutkenhaus, Du Yeol Ryu, Jiun-Tai Chen, and Zhiqun Lin introduce the honorary themed collection on the occasion of Prof. Thomas P. Russell's 70th birthday.

Various mesoporous materials synthesized from block copolymer soft-template-assisted methods and their application in energy storage systems.

Schematic illustration for the development and emerging applications of biomimetic superhydrophobic wood, including a variety of preparation strategies, durability tests, and representative emerging applications.

This review briefly introduces the degradation mechanisms according to the RH and summarizes various approaches to stabilize halide perovskites. An outlook for research directions of halide perovskites is also suggested.

The pioneering work of Thomas Russell and colleagues helped establish neutron reflectometry as a valuable and often indispensable probe of the nanoscale structure of polymer thin film systems.

This article presents a systematic review of emulsion gels: from fundamentals to applications.

Tunable rheological responses are obtained by coupling temperature-responsive capillary networks with jammed microgels, which facilitate complex structures and scale-ups by 3D printing.

We present a novel polyethyleneimine surfactant (PEIS) with redox responsiveness. With PEIS, emulsions and all-liquid devices can be constructed, showing promising applications in encapsulation, cargo release, and chemical separations.

Our results show the impact of alkyl chain lengths (C_n) on mesocrystal formation related to the contour length ratio of periphery L_p to wedge L_w. Energy landscapes for C_n dendrons at L_p/L_w ≈ 1 are more intricate than those with longer or shorter C_n.

In this work, we study the influence of surface tension on light-induced wrinkling of hydrogel disks containing patterned regions of photothermally-active gold nanoparticles at the air–water interface.

The facile oxidation of PS-b-P4VP and PS-b-P2VP leads to PS-b-P4VPNO and PS-b-P2VPNO copolymers with high block incompatibility (high-χ BCPs). Well-ordered, thermally-stable sub-10 nm nanostructures are obtained.

The composite solid polymer electrolyte (SPE), a soft copolymer reinforced with cellulose nanofibers, provides both high ionic conductivity and stiffness to suppress dendrite growth, thereby enabling high-energy-density lithium metal batteries.

Atomic-force microscopy coupled with infrared spectroscopy (AFM-IR) deciphers surface morphology of thin-film polymer blends and composites by simultaneously mapping physical topography and chemical composition.

Artificial neural networks are used to extract three Flory-Huggins chi parameters from neutron scattering length density profiles, which paves a way towards automated analysis of neutron reflectivity data.

Electrochemical quartz crystal microbalance with dissipation monitoring (EQCM-D) revealed the ion-electron transport mechanism of viologen electrodes is dependent on anion valency, specifically the divalent sulfate ion exhibited mixed ion movement.

Waterborne nanocomposite coatings consisting of a low surface energy matrix in conjunction with appropriate nanoparticles were developed to be deposited onto flexible polyethylene films to modify them into superhydrophobic and even superoleophobic.

Two fully non-fused electron acceptors based on terthiophene have been synthesized and a PCE of 11.2% is achieved.

The association of the solute in the liquid phase stabilizes the solid phase a low concentration.

A polymer donor with a D–A₁–A₂ type structure was developed, whose aggregation state was tuned by molecular weight control, finally leading to over 15% power conversion efficiency.

TPV/TPC, EQE/IQE measurements and simulation modeling reveal that the high-performance organic solar cells originate from both an increasing charge generation and a reducing recombination rate coefficient, with PCE potentially exceeding 21%.

Aerogels of cellulose nanocrystals with balanced thermal and mechanical performance can be fabricated via a 1 nm metal oxide cluster assisted unidirectional freeze-drying processing.

A polymer acceptor PY-DF was developed by incorporating difluorothiophenes as linking units. The resulting all-PSCs obtained the best PCE (15.7%) with both enhanced V_OC (0.97 V) and J_SC (23.1 mA cm⁻²) simultaneously.

In this work, the self-assembly behavior of a pair of low-symmetry carboxylic acid molecules (H₄OBDB and H₄ADDI) and their co-assembly behavior with trimesic acid (TMA) as a bridging molecule were studied using a scanning tunneling microscope (STM).

By alternating the substituted position in the terminal end group, two asymmetric non-fullerene acceptor isomers are designed, showing a better device performance for the γ-substituted fashion.

Precise manipulation of the morphologies of aqueous Janus droplets by leveraging the PEG/DEX ATPS on a superhydrophobic surface.

Two novel unfused acceptors, ABBT-BO(DT), featuring 1,4-azaborine have been synthesized. ABBT-BO based OSCs achieved an optimal PCE of over 10% for higher exciton dissociation, improved carrier transport and suppressed charge recombination.

We introduced nanostructured doping of WSe₂via a single-step BCP nanolithography process, demonstrating a 3D WSe₂ homojunction photodetector with improved optoelectronic performance and self-powered photodetection capability.

A new self-assembled hole selective material 2BrPXZPA-based inverted perovskite solar cell achieved a PCE of 22.93%, and further enhanced the PCE up to 23.66% by modify NiOx with 2BrPXZPA.

An integrated experimental and coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulation study of charged star-block copolymer assembly processes at the oil–water interface exploring the effects of block copolymer architecture and charge fraction.

An acceptor FEH2C8-2Cl is designed by introducing the isomerized side chains and the corresponding photovoltaic module with the active layer area 25 cm² yields an efficiency of 11.71%.

A high-performance AgNW electrode was developed via zwitterionic treatment, where the anions electrostatically adsorb on AgNWs and the cations enhance the electrostatic repulsion, resulting in orthogonally aligned AgNW electrode.

Depletion attractions drive bacterial adhesion on non-adhesive surfaces, enhance cell capture on adhesive surfaces, immobilize bacterial cells flat to a surface, and help align cells gentle flow.

Dendron assemblies consisting of G2-CONH₂ and G2-CH₂NH₂ show the core-interaction-dependent mesocrystal structures of A15–σ–DDQC–C14. The more size-dispersed particles, the more susceptibility to chain exchange with increasing temperature.

The addition of a highly crystalline polymer AC174 reduces energetic disorder and increases exciton diffusion length in the PM6:Y6 blend. Ternary devices achieve a champion power conversion efficiency of 17.2%, higher than that of PM6:Y6 (15.9%).

Conical graphene aerogels with concentric annular structures are designed for thermally conductive phase change composites towards efficient solar–thermal–electric energy conversion.