In article number 2007486, Liang Cheng, Chaoliang Tan, and co-workers report the activation of the near infrared absorption of layered metal oxide nanomaterials via a simple lithium treatment-induced structural engineering, making them promising as robust biodegradable nanoagents for photothermal cancer therapy in the second near infrared window.

Host immune response plays a critical role in disease manifestation and severity. In article number 2006123, Win Sen Kuan, Jongyoon Han, and co-workers present a whole blood biophysical immune response profiling tool using deterministic lateral displacement microfluidics. The speed and accuracy of immune response stratification demonstrated in an emergency department has a clear impact in enabling deployable point-of-care systems for rapid clinical triage.

In article number 2007122, Min Chao, Jincui Gu, Xun Wang, Tao Chen, and co-workers present an advanced all-in-one separation membrane, which can realize continuous water purification with stable separation performance, catalytic degradation ability, antibacterial capacity and excellent self-cleaning ability, suggesting its potential value for purifying realistic complex wastewater.

In article number 2007864, Bettina V. Lotsch and co-workers report a facile transfer of 1D photonic crystals and patterns thereof to arbitrary substrates by applying a sacrificial layer approach combined with spatially resolved amine intercalation for hydrophobization. Post-transfer modification such as amine exchange or heat treatment allow an adaptive control of the sensing properties of the photonic crystals thus enlarging application possibilities.

In molecular electronics, molecular wires based on extended π-building blocks can be attractive active components for developing next-generation electronic devices. This review describes unconventional length-dependences—ultralow, zero, or inverted attenuation of tunneling probabilities—in molecular tunneling junctions with highly π-conjugated and conductive molecular wires. The mechanism of such attenuation behaviors and structure–property relationships are discussed.

Biocompatibility and targeting potential are the main features of immune cell membranes, which have rendered them the potential of being used as coating platforms for biomimetic nanoparticles for drug delivery, cancer therapy, and bioimaging. Herein, an overview of requirements for the successful coating of nanomedicines with cell membranes and the most recent progresses in their biomedical applications are discussed.

This review elucidates principles of graphene hybridization including introducing spacers, conductors, heteroatoms doping, and pseudocapacitance to enlarge surface area, enhance electrical conductivity, and improve capacitance of graphene-based electrodes for high performance supercapacitors. It provides guidance for design-driven hybridization strategies for leaping the performance of supercapacitors beyond those based on graphene electrode only.

It is shown from both theory and experiment that the out-of-plane coupling between graphene and octadecyltrichlorosilane (OTS) suppresses transverse phonon vibrations and substantially affects the thermal expansion coefficient (TEC) of graphene. A new experimental scheme is proposed, that offers a solution to deduce TEC of a 2D film with the contribution of out-of-plane coupling to TEC being taken into consideration.

The structural engineering of layered MoO₃ and WO₃ nanostructures is reported here to activate their NIR-II absorption for efficient photothermal cancer therapy. The MoO_3−x nanobelts can be used as a robust nanoagent for photoacoustic imaging-guided photothermal therapy to achieve efficient cancer cell ablation and tumor eradication in the NIR-II window.

The facile transfer is reported of 1D photonic crystal based sensors applying a sacrificial layer method combined with hydrophobization of the sample through amine intercalation and subsequent peel-off in water. The intercalant does not impair the sensing capabilities and can be exchanged or removed post transfer. Pattern transfer can be conducted with spatially resolved hydrophobization.

A molecular design methodology to boost the magnetic relaxivity and biological stability of organic free-radical contrast agents for vastly effective in vivo magnetic resonance imaging is presented here. The high-performance all-organic nanotheranostics for ultralow background near-infrared-II fluorescence imaging, as well as tumor photothermal therapy under the guidance of the synergistic imaging are rationally engineered.

2D carbon nanosheets embedded by bismuth nanoparticles (denoted as Bi⊂CNs) serve as a robust nucleation buffer layer to endow the sodium metal anodes with high Coulombic efficiencies (CE) and dendrite-free deposition during long-term cycling. The metallic Na on the Bi⊂CNs nucleation layer is repeatedly plated/stripped for nearly 1287 cycles at 3 mA h cm⁻² with an average CE of 99.92%.

High performance all-inorganic quantum dot light-emitting diodes (QLEDs) are fabricated by using solution-processed Mg-doped NiO_x and Al-doped ZnO nanoparticles as charge transport layers. Favorable energy levels and balanced charges lead to high luminance of 38 444, 177 825, and 3103 cd m⁻² for red, green, and blue QLEDs, respectively, which are the highest values ever reported for all-inorganic QLEDs.

Multiphilic triblcok copolymer surfactants are developed to manipulate the biphasic emulsion shape and optical behavior. Site-specific conjugation of gold nanoparticles enables the creation of gold rings along the triphase junction, which isotropize the structural colors. Dynamic behavior of complex emulsions is imparted to the gold rings, affording the visualization of emulsion shape into the specific color reflection.

A novel framework is developed through the integration of facet junction datasource, machine learning, mathematic model, and ionic-liquid experimental synthesis to ultimately achieve the rational design and controllable synthesis of functional materials with customized crystallographic facets and facet junctions. This work gives the feasibility of an intelligent chemistry future to accelerate the discovery of facet-governed functional material candidates.

Engraving soft template is a simple and powerful strategy for fabrications of zinc ion microbatteries featured with various shapes on different substrates, which not only exhibit excellent battery performances, but also show good flexibility and scalability for practical applications. This method holds great potential in development of miniaturized energy storage devices used in next-generation wearable, flexible, and miniaturized electronics.

Visible-light-driven and self-hydrogen-donated nanofibers consist of visible-light-active photosensitizers, hydrogen donors, and ROS-producing components. The nanofibers can maintain the activity under visible light irradiation or dark conditions and produce ROS in the absence of an external hydrogen donor, which make them promising bioprotection materials to address emerging infectious disease.

A 15-min label-free immune profiling assay using deterministic lateral displacement microfluidics to measure the immune biophysical signatures of cell size and deformability from a drop of whole blood. The assay detects severe immune response of admission patients in the emergency department and the speed of patient stratification has promising impact in deployable point-of-care systems for clinical triage.

An advanced all-in-one separation membrane is presented. It endows with excellent self-cleaning ability due to its smaller bandgap. Hence, the designed heterojunction membrane can realize continuous water purification with stable separation performance, catalytic degradation ability, and antibacterial capacity, suggesting its potential value for optimizing water environment.

Transparent Ti-45Nb 3D microstructures offer an elegant way to study single bone cell-implant material interactions and pore size effects in vitro. In article number 2005527, Mariana Medina-Sánchez and co-workers present this technology as an excellent tool to live monitor cell migration and adhesion behavior changes deriving from highly constricted microenvironments, while also providing deeper insights on cell death related bone mineralization processes in low nutrition conditions.

Transparent 3D microscaffolds are developed to mimic tiny pores of metal-oxide implants, to study single cell–material interactions as well as early steps of bone formation: anchoring, adhesion, and cell-body crystallization, providing deeper insights on the influence of the material choice and confinement on the osteoinduction and osseointegration processes.

A powerful new nanophotonic biophysical assay is reported and used to model endosome escape of oligonucleotide from delivery vector following fusion with endosomal membrane.

A new holistic theoretical model implying the switching and coexistence of propulsion mechanisms for conical catalytic micromotors is proposed. The model combines the already reported mechanisms based on capillary forces, bubble growth, and bubble expulsion phenomena in one single approach, allowing for an adequate description of the experimentally detected micromotor dynamics.

Janus nanosheets with face-selective and sequence-specific molecular recognition properties have been fabricated from molecular building blocks composed of two important information-carrying biopolymers, DNA and peptides. The self-assembly of DNA–peptide conjugates generates Janus nanosheets with distinct DNA and peptide faces or nanosheets with two distinct DNA strands through the highly directional peptide self-assembly.

A novel carbon support (CNT@GDY) with few-layer graphdiyne wrapped on the carbon nanotubes is constructed. The support has excellent electrical conductivity, abundant and uniform reaction sites, and strong interactions with the metal phase. Depositing Pt(Pd)-ACs on the support via an electroless deposition method can serve as highly efficient heterojunction catalysts (Pt(Pd)-ACs/CNT @ GDY).

A novel hierarchical architecture of confining nano-Fe₇S₈ in carbon nanotubes covalently bonded onto 3D few-layer graphene is designed as a potassium-ion storage anode for boosting the reversible capacity, rate capability, and cycling stability. The material design along with the admirable electrochemical performance in this work can pave a new avenue for the anode applications of transition metal sulfides in KIBs.

A photonic crystal microchip with geometrical micromorphologies is designed and constructed via colloidal nanoparticles assembly. Based on the angle-dependent structural color, the stopband distribution on various morphologies of photonic crystal (PC) pixels is explored. Different geometrical micromorphologies contribute discriminative and quantitative fluorescent enhancement, which leads to the successful complex multianalysis of mining groundwater.

Perovskite LaNiO₃ is an efficient electrocatalyst for oxygen evolution reaction (OER). However, the OER activity is limited by the deprotonation of *OH to *O as rate determining step. Introducing Fe⁴⁺ states into LaNiO₃ (Ni³⁺-O^2--Fe⁴⁺ configuration) can accelerate the deprotonation step, and thus promoting OER kinetics.