Boosting Photoacoustic Effect via Intramolecular Motions Amplifying Thermal‐to‐Acoustic Conversion Efficiency for Adaptive Image‐Guided Cancer Surgery

Near-Infrared Luminescent Materials Incorporating Rare Earth/Transition Metal Ions: From Materials to Applications

The spotlight has shifted to near-infrared (NIR) luminescent materials emitting beyond 1000 nm, with growing interest due to their unique characteristics. The ability of NIR-II emission (1000-1700 nm) to penetrate deeply and transmit independently positions these NIR luminescent materials for applications in optical-communication devices, bioimaging, and photodetectors. The combination of rare earth metals/transition metals with a variety of matrix materials provides a new platform for creating new chemical and physical properties for materials science and device applications. In this review, the recent advancements in NIR emission activated by rare earth and transition metal ions are summarized and their role in applications spanning bioimaging, sensing, and optoelectronics is illustrated. It started with various synthesis techniques and explored how rare earths/transition metals can be skillfully incorporated into various matrixes, thereby endowing them with unique characteristics. The discussion to strategies of enhancing excitation absorption and emission efficiency, spotlighting innovations like dye sensitization and surface plasmon resonance effects is then extended. Subsequently, a significant focus is placed on functionalization strategies and their applications. Finally, a comprehensive analysis of the challenges and proposed strategies for rare earth/transition metal ion-doped near-infrared luminescent materials, summarizing the insights of each section is provided.

Biomedical polymers: synthesis, properties, and applications

Biomedical polymers have been extensively developed for promising applications in a lot of biomedical fields, such as therapeutic medicine delivery, disease detection and diagnosis, biosensing, regenerative medicine, and disease treatment. In this review, we summarize the most recent advances in the synthesis and application of biomedical polymers, and discuss the comprehensive understanding of their property-function relationship for corresponding biomedical applications. In particular, a few burgeoning bioactive polymers, such as peptide/biomembrane/microorganism/cell-based biomedical polymers, are also introduced and highlighted as the emerging biomaterials for cancer precision therapy. Furthermore, the foreseeable challenges and outlook of the development of more efficient, healthier and safer biomedical polymers are discussed. We wish this systemic and comprehensive review on highlighting frontier progress of biomedical polymers could inspire and promote new breakthrough in fundamental research and clinical translation.

Donor-Acceptor Molecule Based High-Performance Photothermal Organic Material for Efficient Water Purification and Electricity Generation

In this contribution, a unique donor-acceptor conjugated organic-small-molecule photothermal material, namely GDPA-QCN, is presented. Bulky dendritic triphenylamine (GDPA) was grafted onto quinoxaline-6,7-dicarbonitrile (QCN) with a phenyl ring as a bridge to form an "umbrella" architecture. Benefited from the particular molecular structure, in solid state, GDPA-QCN molecules adopted a loose packing mode due to the steric effect of "umbrella head" dendritic triphenylamine and flexible molecular structure feature, which allows efficient intramolecular motions and consequently elevates energy dissipation by taking the pathway of thermal deactivation within broad absorption range. The GDPA-QCN solid has high solar-thermal conversion efficiency with an absorption range from 300 to 1100 nm, which can promote superior water purification and electricity generation performance.