Meng Qiu

A biodegradable drug delivery system (DDS) is one the most promising therapeutic strategies for cancer therapy. Here, we propose a unique concept of light activation of black phosphorus (BP) at hydrogel nanostructures for cancer therapy. A photosensitizer converts light into heat that softens and melts drug-loaded hydrogel-based nanostructures. Drug release rates can be accurately controlled by light intensity, exposure duration, BP concentration, and hydrogel composition. Owing to sufficiently deep penetration of near-infrared (NIR) light through tissues, our BP-based system shows high therapeutic efficacy for treatment of s.c. cancers. Importantly, our drug delivery system is completely harmless and degradable in vivo. Together, our work proposes a unique concept for precision cancer therapy by external light excitation to release cancer drugs. If these findings are successfully translated into the clinic, millions of patients with cancer will benefit from our work.

Abstract Subambient daytime radiative cooling (SDRC) provides a promising electricity‐ and cryogen‐free pathway for global energy‐efficiency. However, current SDRC systems require stringent surface designs, which are neither cost‐effective nor eco‐friendly, to selectively emit thermal radiation to outer space and simultaneously maximize solar reflectance. Here, a generic method is developed to upgrade the conventional building‐coating materials with a peculiar self‐adaptive SDRC effect through combining particle scattering, sunlight‐excited fluorescence, and mid‐infrared broadband radiation. It is also theoretically proved that heat exchange with the sky can eliminate the use of resonant microstructures and noble metal mirrors in conventional SDRC, and also leads to enhanced daytime cooling yet suppressed nighttime overcooling. When exposed to direct sunlight, the upgraded coating over an aluminum plate can achieve 6 °C (7 °C on a scale‐model building) below the ambient temperature under a solar intensity of 744 W m −2 (850 W m −2 ), yielding a cooling power of 84.2 W m −2 . The results pave the way for practical large‐scale applications of high‐performance SDRC for human thermal comfort in buildings.

Phosphorene, also known as single- or few-layer black phosphorus (FLBP), is a new member of the two-dimensional (2D) material family and has attracted significant attention in recent years for applications in optoelectronics, energy storage and biomedicine due to its unique physicochemical properties and excellent biocompatibility. FLBP is regarded as a potential biological imaging agent for cancer diagnosis due to its intrinsic fluorescence (FL) and photoacoustic (PA) properties and negligible cytotoxicity. FLBP-based photothermal and photodynamic therapies have emerged with excellent anti-tumour therapeutic efficacies due to their unique physical properties, such as near-infrared (NIR) optical absorbance, large extinction coefficients, biodegradability and reactive oxygen species (ROS) or heat generation upon light irradiation. Furthermore, FLBP is a promising drug delivery platform because of its high drug-loading capacity due to its puckered layer structure with an ultralarge surface area, and FLBP is size-controllable with facile surface chemical modification. Because of the marked advantages of FLBP nanomaterials in biomedical applications, an overview of the latest progress and paradigms of FLBP-based nanoplatforms for multidisciplinary biomedical applications is presented in this tutorial review.

Water shortage is one of the most concerning global challenges in the 21st century. Solar-inspired vaporization employing photothermal nanomaterials is considered to be a feasible and green technology for addressing the water challenge by virtue of abundant and clean solar energy. 2D nanomaterials aroused considerable attention in photothermal evaporation-induced water production owing to their large absorption surface, strong absorption in broadband solar spectrum, and efficient photothermal conversion. Herein, the recent progress of 2D nanomaterials-based photothermal evaporation, mainly including emerging Xenes (phosphorene, antimonene, tellurene, and borophene) and binary-enes (MXenes and transition metal dichalcogenides), is reviewed. Then, the optimization strategies for higher evaporation performance are summarized in terms of modulation of the intrinsic photothermal performance of 2D nanomaterials and design of the complete evaporation system. Finally, the challenges and prospective of various kinds of 2D photothermal nanomaterials are discussed in terms of the photothermal performance, stability, environmental influence, and cost. One important principle is that solutions for water challenges should not introduce new environmental and social problems. This Review aims to highlight the role of 2D photothermal nanomaterials in solving water challenges and provides a viable scheme toward the practical use in photothermal materials selection, design, and evaporation systems building.