The exploitation of luminescent Cu nanoparticles (CuNPs) with excellent stability and bright emission is highly desired but still challenging. In this perspective, we concern the significance of aggregation-induced emission (AIE) effect for designing highly luminescent CuNPs, and highlight recent advances for enhancement of stability and emission of the CuNPs using self-assembly approach. Finally, we discuss perspectives and research directions for the fabrication of the highly luminescent assembled CuNPs in the future.

While most DNA-related reactions have been performed in solution, freezing has also been shown to offer interesting properties. DNA oligonucleotides are stretched and aligned in ice and the aligned DNA can quickly, tightly and in some cases densely adsorb on various nanomaterials. In addition, a few ribozymes and DNAzymes have better catalytic activities in ice than in solution. Some of these observations are related to the concentration of salt and DNA in the micropockets formed between ice crystals. With these interesting examples, future research can be devoted to detailed characterization of DNA in ice using in situ measurement methods, and finding their applications in biosensor development, catalysis and origin of life.

Enzymes are biomolecules with remarkable catalytic properties, which play a critical role in the driving toward green and sustainable methodologies for chemicals manufacturing. In spite of many advantages in enzyme catalysis, it remains fragile entities. These defects limit the widespread application of enzymes in industry. It is a favorable choice to immobilize the enzyme on solid supports to enhance its activity and stability. Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are excellent porous materials that possess tunable porosity, desirable functionality, extremely high surface area, and excellent chemical/thermal stability. It has made great achievements in the encapsulation of enzymes in the past few years. In this article, we focus on the recent advances of these composites, especially in the encapsulated strategies and mechanism, and future perspectives are discussed as well

It’s significant to design luminescent single-molecule magnets and promote their applications in high density data storage and magneto-luminescence devices. In this perspective, we highlight the advances in luminescent single-molecule magnets (SMMs), which have various types including metal complexes, metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), ionic liquids, metallofullerenes, and so on. Among them, metallofullerenes as an emergent luminescent SMMs show great prospects due to the varied metal clusters. Finally, we present perspectives and outlooks on the research directions in the future.

Lymphatic vasculature system has attracted extensive attention due to its important role in some pathological changes such as lymphedema, immune dysfunction, gut malabsorption and lymph node metastasis, etc. With the continuous development of fluorescence imaging technology, it has been widely used in the study of lymphatic vessels structure, morphology, and function both in preclinical and clinical. Fluorescence imaging can help researchers and clinicians to know the morphological and functional status of lymphatic vessels, explore the role of lymphatic vessels in various lymph-related diseases, and help diagnosis the state of lymphatic vessels in patients and formulate further treatment plan. Herein, we describe the usage and recent advances of fluorescence imaging technology including immune fluorescence imaging, optical coherence tomography, near-infrared fluorescence imaging in ex vivo and in vivo lymphangiography, and discuss the future applications of fluorescence imaging in lymphatic vasculature imaging.

Chitosan (CTS) nanospheres are successfully modified dipalmitoyl phosphatidycholine (DPPC) through by solvent removal. The physicochemical properties are characterized by dynamic light scattering (DLS), transmission electron microscope (TEM) and fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR). Furthermore, the CTS-DPPC nanospheres are used as a novel biosorbent for the application in Cr(VI) absorption, and the effect of pH and additional anions on the Cr(VI) adsorption performance is evaluated. Additionally, CTS-DPPC nanofibers are produced by electrospinning to improve adsorption capacity. The results show that the order of Cr(VI) adsorption performance is CTS-DPPC nanofibers, CTS-DPPC nanospheres and CTS nanospheres, which suggests DPPC is helpful for CTS to remove metal ion. Moreover, X-ray photoelectron spectrophotometer (XPS) analyses indicate that both amino and hydroxyl groups of CTS-DPPC nanospheres are engaged in the adsorption.