Matter最新文献

Engineered living materials (ELMs) are an emerging class of materials with the potential for transformative impacts in sustainability across sectors (e.g., water, energy, health). Progress toward producing ELMs with tailorable and/or stimuli-responsive functionalities has occurred in recent years, along with advances in materials manufacturing with increased complexity and scale. While a few ELMs have been commercialized, important barriers must be surmounted before their broader integration into society. These social, ethical, legal, and regulatory barriers, as well as barriers to collaboration between stakeholders, were identified in a workshop combining academic, industry, and government agency participants that was convened as part of the annual Montana Biofilm Meeting (Bozeman, MT) in July 2023. The ELM research community finds itself at a defining moment. Urgent action is needed to realize the societal benefits of ELMs while decreasing the likelihood of negative perception, and actual consequences, of their commercialization.

Soft conductive composites that maintain high and stable electrical conductivity even when stretched are essential for the advancement of soft robotics and for devices that are worn on the skin or implanted in the body. In a recent study published in Nature Nanotechnology, Yan and colleagues introduced a phase-separation technique that regulates the assembly of silver nanowires to form well-designed percolation networks. This technique produces a porous Ag NW nanocomposite (PSPN) that achieves a drastically reduced percolation threshold (V_c = 0.00062), lowered by 48 times, and maintains its electrical integrity even when subjected to strains exceeding 600%. From a materials standpoint, these remarkable properties stem from the multi-scale porous polymer matrices that help dissipate stress and the rigid conductive fillers that adjust to changes in geometry caused by strain.

Nature’s intricate biological structures have inspired scientists to explore self-assembly principles for creating highly ordered materials like metal-organic frameworks (MOFs). In materials science, the ability to design and construct complex structures with precise control over their properties is paramount. A groundbreaking self-assembly approach, recently reported by J. Li and co-workers in Chem, utilizes small molecular building blocks to fabricate ultra-complex MOFs. This innovative method introduces 194 different face-containing tiles, elevating structural complexity to a new level in the field of MOF synthesis.

Urease-powered nanobots significantly enhanced the efficacy of radionuclide therapy in bladder cancer treatment, showing superior tumor accumulation and penetration. This novel approach promises transformative advancements in managing non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer, as detailed in a recent study.

Recent efforts have taken place in the design, study, and applications of dynamic framework materials, which include mobility at the molecular scale or the entire lattice. The next step of such materials involves the creation of multi-responsive materials integrating multiple dynamic components into a single framework.

Li et al. reported the development and application of a novel hypoxia-sensitive fullerene-based nanotherapeutic system for photodynamic therapy in cancer treatment. This system integrates a [70]fullerene scaffold with amino-modified cyclodextrin and the hypoxia-activatable anticancer prodrug tirapazamine, enhanced with tumor-targeting peptides and disulfide bond donors. The created fullerene nanomaterial exhibits selective accumulation in tumor tissues, facilitated by its enhanced water solubility and targeted specificity.

Conventional phase change materials struggle with long-duration thermal energy storage and controllable latent heat release. In a recent issue of Angewandte Chemie, Chen et al. proposed a new concept of spatiotemporal phase change materials with high supercooling to realize long-duration storage and intelligent release of latent heat, inspiring the design of advanced solar thermal fuels.

Core to the prospects of cellular engineering are methods to load cells with a range of exogenous cargo that maintain cargo faculties upon delivery. An interdisciplinary team at Northwestern University presents a localized version of electroporation, using nanopore membranes, that can deliver large proteins efficiently with preserved functionality.

The precise tuning of iron oxide nanoparticles (IONPs) to achieve controlled sizes is crucial for numerous applications. High temperature synthesis is most appropriate to achieve small, uniform sizes but suffers from challenges with reproducibility and scale-up. Flow chemistry/engineering approaches are gaining popularity to address nanoparticle (NP) production scalability, however they are plagued with issues in successfully translating batch to flow. This preview highlights a recent breakthrough in the design of a continuous flow reactor system capable of high temperature synthesis of IONPs with tuneable sizes, ranging 2 to 17 nm at gram-per-day scales, far exceeding batch capabilities.

Adjusting pore size has long been considered as the main way to improve porous carbon capacitance. However, recent studies indicated contradictory results, sparking debate on how the structure affects capacitive energy storage. In a recent Science paper, Liu et al. found that structural disorder directly determines porous carbon capacitance and quantified it to guide design and synthesis of porous carbons.