Solar-driven evaporation as a promising and sustainable approach to convert solar energy into freshwater resource is attracting huge interest in the research community. This review aims to summarize the recent advances in system designs of solar-driven evaporation devices.

Due to the high mobility of copper ions in numerous structurally-related phases, copper sulphide (Cu_2−xS, 0 ≤ x ≤ 1) has been widely used as a starting template to fabricate various heterostructures via cation exchange. Such nanoheterostructures can possess unique combinations of physical properties that could be useful in diverse applications. Controllable methods of fabricating copper sulphide nanoheterostructures of increasing complexity have been rapidly emerging over the past few years. In this tutorial review, we discuss recent progress in heterostructure fabrication methods using copper sulphide. We primarily focus on important reports of cation exchange-based approaches and then summarize some key emerging applications that can employ these copper-sulphide-based nanoheterostructures.

Herein, for the first time, a sensitive sensing platform for rapid detection of microRNA was developed by employing black phosphorus nanosheets as the fluorescence quenching material.

The blood-brain barrier (BBB) is a complex physiological checkpoint that restricts the free diffusion of circulating molecules from the blood into the central nervous system (CNS). Delivering of drugs and other active agents across the blood brain barrier (BBB) is one of the major technical challenges faced by scientists and medical practitioners. Therefore, development of novel methodologies to address this challenge holds the key for both the diagnosis and treatment of brain diseases, such as HIV-associated encephalopathy (HIVE). Bioconjugated Quantum dots (QDs) are excellent fluorescent probes and nano-vectors, being designed to transverse across the BBB and visualize drug delivery inside the brain. This paper discusses the use of functionalized quantum dots for crossing the blood brain barrier and treating brain disease. We highlight the guidelines for using in vitro BBB models for brain disease studies. The theranostic QDs offers a strategy to significantly improve the effective dosages of drugs to transverse across the BBB and orientate to the targets inside the brain.

Chemo-photothermal therapy based on nanoparticles has emerged as a promising strategy for cancer treatment. However, its therapeutic efficacy and application potential are largely subjected to the uncontrollability and biotoxicity of functional nanoplatforms. Herein, a novel biocompatible and biodegradable metal organic framework (MOF), which was constructed by growing crystalline zeolitic imidazolate framework-8 on gold nanoroad (Au@ZIF-8), was designed and fabricated for efficient drug loading and controlled release. Owing to the large surface area and guest-matching pore size of ZIF-8, doxorubicin (DOX) was successfully loaded into the Au@ZIF-8 with a high drug loading efficiency of ~ 37%. Under NIR light or weakly acidic environment, the ZIF-8 layer was quickly degraded, which resulted in an on-demand drug release in tumour site. More importantly, under the irradiation of near infrared (NIR) laser, highly efficient cancer treatment was achieved in both in vitro cell experiment and in vivo tumour-bearing nude mice experiment due to the synergistic effect of photothermal (PTT) therapy and chemotherapy. In addition, the in vivo study revealed the good biocompatibility of Au@ZIF-8. This work robustly suggested that Au@ZIF-8 could be further explored as a drug delivery system for chemo-photothermal synergistic therapy.

Gene therapy has shown great potential in treating many diseases by downregulating the expression of certain genes. Various functional non-viral vectors have been well designed to enable efficient gene therapy.