Here, researchers from Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry, CAS, fabricated customized micropatterns consisting of hydrogel core-shell nanoparticles via the femtosecond laser maskless optical projection lithography (Fs-MOPL) technique for the first time.

Their work offers an approach to fabricating hydrogel core-shell nanoparticles without high temperature or multiple steps.

Despite being a promising and efficient methodology for producing green hydrogen as a novel energy vector, anion exchange membrane water electrolyzers (AEMWEs) have yet to achieve significant commercial success. This is primarily due to the sluggish and complex oxygen evolution reaction (OER) at the anode, which remains the main bottleneck for this technology. To enhance the OER kinetics with minimum overpotentials, scarce and overpriced noble metal-based electrocatalysts are largely utilized, making the AEMWEs practically unaffordable. Recently, amorphous NiFe mixed oxides with variable Ni/Fe ratios have been synthesized using a simple and affordable sol–gel method, successfully enhancing both the OER activity and operational durability in AEMWEs. This work was published in Industrial Chemistry & Materials in March 2025.

This review focuses on the electrochemical engineering in aqueous metal-ion batteries. Under large loading mass or thick electrode conditions, the challenges and solutions faced by anode, electrolytes, interfaces and cathode are discussed in detail from the perspective of ion mass transfer and electrode reaction, providing new ideas for addressing the battery performance degradation during the electrode/battery scaleup.

Here we report an efficient catalyst with highly dispersed MoO_x sites on metallic Ru for the selective hydrogenolysis of esters to alkanes under 150 ℃, which exhibits 5 times higher activity than that of the Ru/C catalyst. The highly dispersed MoO_x sites on ruthenium maximize the interfacial sites and prevents the C─C bond cleavage side reaction, ensuring high conversion and selectivity to diesel-range alkanes.

In response to the growing demands of advanced 5G/6G communication technologies, millimeter-wave vortex beams have emerged as a promising solution to increase channel capacities. This paper introduces a novel and efficient method for vortex beam generation by leveraging the intrinsic singularities of dipole scatterers and enhancing their performance through non-local coupling. We demonstrate that the intrinsic singularities—amplitude-zero points in the scattering patterns of electric dipole (ED) and magnetic dipole (MD) resonances -- enable the conversion of spin angular momentum (SAM) into orbital angular momentum (OAM), generating a vortex electric field distribution. By arranging these dipolar units into a periodic array, we establish a dual-resonance non-local metasurface that improves directivity and efficiency via non-local collective interactions and the generalized Kerker effect. This configuration significantly enhances forward scattering, producing highly directional vortex beams. Our experimental results show that the non-local metasurface achieves a vortex conversion efficiency approximately 2.2 times higher than that of a reference structure around 40 GHz. This alignment-free, high-efficiency solution offers great potential for expanding millimeter-wave communication capacity and advancing photonic applications.

 

Deep-blue perovskite light-emitting diodes (PeLEDs) based on reduced-dimensional perovskites (RDPs) still face a few challenges including severe trap-assisted nonradiative recombination, sluggish exciton transfer, and undesirable bathochromic shift of the electroluminescence spectra. An in situ chlorination (isCl) post-treatment strategy was employed to regulate phase reconstruction and renovate multiple defects of RDPs including halide vacancies and lead-chloride antisite defects. Consequently, deep-blue PeLEDs with a maximum external quantum efficiency of 6.17% at 454 nm were demonstrated.

The development of color routers (CRs) realizes modulation of photon momentum on the frequency and spatial domains. Scientists in China demonstrate an active manipulation of dichromatic photon momentum via electron-induced CRs, where the radiation patterns are manipulated at nanoscale precision within a single nanoantenna unit. Moreover, an encrypted display device based on programmable modulation of the CR array is designed and implemented. This technique will find applications in photonic devices and quantum information technologies.

Tool use is widely reported across a broad range of the animal kingdom, mainly among vertebrates. Now, however, Chinese researchers have identified a remarkable example of tool use in the insect world.

A review in MedComm–Biomaterials and Applications highlights how nanoparticles are revolutionizing breast cancer diagnosis and treatment. These advanced nanomaterials enhance early detection, reduce side effects, and combat drug resistance, offering promising solutions for aggressive subtypes like triple-negative breast cancer.