Given their durability and long‐term stability, self‐healable hydrogels have, in the past few years, emerged as promising replacements for the many brittle hydrogels currently being used in preclinical or clinical trials. To this end, the incompatibility between hydrogel toughness and rapid self‐healing remains unaddressed, and therefore most of the self‐healable hydrogels still face serious challenges within the dynamic and mechanically demanding environment of human organs/tissues. Furthermore, depending on the target tissue, the self‐healing hydrogels must comply with a wide range of properties including electrical, biological, and mechanical. Notably, the incorporation of nanomaterials into double‐network hydrogels is showing great promise as a feasible way to generate self‐healable hydrogels with the above‐mentioned attributes. Here, the recent progress in the development of multifunctional and self‐healable hydrogels for various tissue engineering applications is discussed in detail. Their potential applications within the rapidly expanding areas of bioelectronic hydrogels, cyborganics, and soft robotics are further highlighted.

Graphene The addition of a protective diluent (e.g., pyrene) to graphite during ball-milling results in a game-changer yield (>90%) of defect-free graphene, as described in article number 1603528 by Matat Buzaglo, Oren Regev, and co-workers. In the non-protected milling, there is a continuous fragmentation leading to amorphous carbon formation, whereas in a diluent-protected milling, the diluent adsorbs part of the impact forces, enabling exfo-liation into graphene, whose size is controlled by the milling energy and the diluent type. A Supercritical Lens Optical Label-Free Microscopy: Sub-Diffraction Resolution and Ultra-Long Working Distance Optical Imaging A planar metalens for achieving super-resolution imaging in far-field is proposed. This metalens, which has a non-sub-wavelength feature size, can be fabricated by conventional laser pattern generator. The imaging process is purely physical and captured in real time, without any pre-and post-processing. A new member of the layered pseudo-1D material family-monoclinic gal-lium telluride (GaTe)-is synthesized by physical vapor transport on a variety of substrates. The [010] atomic chains and the resulting anisotropic behavior are clearly revealed. The GaTe flakes display multiple sharp photoluminescence emissions in the forbidden gap, which are related to defects localized around selected edges and grain boundaries.

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Although guest-filled carbon nanotube yarns provide record performance as torsional and tensile artificial muscles, they are expensive, and only part of the muscle effectively contributes to actuation. We describe a muscle type that provides higher performance, in which the guest that drives actuation is a sheath on a twisted or coiled core that can be an inexpensive yarn. This change from guest-filled to sheath-run artificial muscles increases the maximum work capacity by factors of 1.70 to 2.15 for tensile muscles driven electrothermally or by vapor absorption. A sheath-run electrochemical muscle generates 1.98 watts per gram of average contractile power-40 times that for human muscle and 9.0 times that of the highest power alternative electrochemical muscle.Theory predicts the observed performance advantages of sheath-run muscles.

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In spite of remarkable improvements in cancer treatments and survivorship, cancer still remains as one of the major causes of death worldwide. Although current standards of care provide encouraging results, they still cause severe systemic toxicity and also fail in preventing recurrence of the disease. In order to address these issues, biomaterial-based implantable drug delivery systems (DDSs) have emerged as promising therapeutic platforms, which allow local administration of drugs directly to the tumor site. Owing to the unique properties of biopolymers, they have been used in a variety of ways to institute biodegradable implantable DDSs that exert precise spatiotemporal control over the release of therapeutic drug. Here, the most recent advances in biopolymer-based DDSs for suppressing tumor growth and preventing tumor recurrence are reviewed. Novel emerging biopolymers as well as cutting-edge polymeric microdevices deployed as implantable antitumor DDSs are discussed. Finally, a review of a new therapeutic modality within the field, which is based on implantable biopolymeric DDSs, is given.

Given their native-like biological properties, high growth factor retention capacity and porous nature, sulfated-polysaccharide-based scaffolds hold great promise for a number of tissue engineering applications. Specifically, as they mimic important properties of tissues such as bone and cartilage they are ideal for orthopaedic tissue engineering. Their biomimicry properties encompass important cell-binding motifs, native-like mechanical properties, designated sites for bone mineralization and strong growth factor binding and signalling capacity. Even so, scientists in the field have just recently begun to utilise them as building blocks for tissue engineering scaffolds. Most of these efforts have so far been directed towards in vitro studies, and for these reasons the clinical gap is still substantial. With this review paper, we have tried to highlight some of the important chemical, physical and biological features of sulfated-polysaccharides in relation to their chondrogenic and osteogenic inducing capacity. Additionally, their usage in various in vivo model systems is discussed. The clinical studies reviewed herein paint a promising picture heralding a brave new world for orthopaedic tissue engineering.

As the twenty-first century unfolds, nanotechnology is no longer just a buzzword in the field of materials science, but rather a tangible reality. This is evident from the surging number of commercial nanoproducts and their corresponding revenue generated in different industry sectors. However, it is important to recognize that sustainable growth of nanotechnology is heavily dependent on government funding and relevant national incentive programs. Consequently, proper analyses on publicly available nanotechnology data sets comprising information on the past two decades can be illuminating, facilitate development, and amend previous strategies as we move forward. Along these lines, classical statistics and machine learning (ML) allow processing large data sets to scrutinize patterns in materials science and nanotechnology research. Herein, we provide an analysis on nanotechnology progress and investment from an unbiased, computational vantage point and using orthogonal approaches. Our data reveal both well-established and surprising correlations in the nanotechnology field and its actors, including the interplay between the number of research institutes–industry, publications–patents, collaborative research, and top contributors to nanoproducts. Overall, data suggest that, supported by incentive programs set out by stakeholders (researchers, funding agencies, policy makers, and industry), nanotechnology could experience an exponential growth and become a centerpiece for economical welfare. Indeed, the recent success of COVID-19 vaccines is also likely to boost public trust in nanotechnology and its global impact over the coming years.