Cheng Liu, Shaobo Ji and Huaping Xu Matter; 2022, 3, 2397. A rapid and reprogrammable alignment strategy for the reversible actuation of liquid crystal elastomers has been achieved through the phase-transition-induced shape memory effect. This breakthrough, recently reported in Advanced Materials by Xie and colleagues, illustrated the important role of shape-memory-induced stress regulation in developing and improving functional polymer materials.

Xiaoying Kang, Yuan Yuan, Huaping Xu and Yulan Chen Chem. Res. Chinese Universities, 2022, 38, 516. Thermal- and light-driven diselenide metathesis reactions with different types of diselenides are investigated systematically. Their exchange reaction rates and equilibrium conversions are compared in the aspects of the different diselenide structures, activation conditions and solvents. As a result, the metathesis reactions between diselenide small molecules are demonstrated with high dynamic and sensitive features, which can be broadly tuned by varying the electron affinity and aromaticity o...

Yueying Han, Cheng Liu Huaping Xu and Yi Cao Chin. J. Chem.; 2022, 40, 1578. Hydrogels crosslinked by dynamic covalent bonds can effectively mimic the viscoelastic properties of native extracellular matrix and have been widely explored for 3D cell culture. Disulfide is one of the most common dynamic bonds in biological systems whose for-mation and cleavage are catalyzed by a set of dedicated enzymes. However, in vitroformation of disulfide bonds is a slow process and requires harsh catalysts. Therefore, it is difficult to use disulfide crosslinked hydrogels for cell culture. In thiswork, w...

Chaowei He, Muqing Cao, Jianbing Liu, Zhuoxin Ge, Ruihao Zhou, and Huaping Xu ACS Nano.; 2022, 16, 4981. Modern Olympics have increasingly benefited from the advancement of materials science. From February 4 to March 13, 2022, the whole world has witnessed spectacular Olympic Winter Games and Winter Paralympic Games held in Beijing, during which nanotechnologies are extensively applied and play indispensable roles in many aspects. Although these nanotechnologies appear in a very small length scale, they have provided tremendous support to all athletes with the pursuit of “faster, higher, s...

Luo Zhang, Yiheng Dai, Shuojiong Pan, Yizheng Tan, Chenxing Sun, Muqing Cao and Huaping Xu ACS Appl. Bio Mater.; 2022, 5, 1794. Chemodynamic therapy has been appealing for effective cancer treatment. Particularly, Fenton-like reactions catalyzed by Cu2+-based nanoparticles showed promising prospects. Herein, we fabricated copper-selenocysteine quantum dots (Cu-Sec QDs) with the majority of Cu+ by a facile and robust thermal titration process. No high temperature or pressure is needed for this synthetic route of QDs. The selenocysteine functioned as the reducing agent as well as the stabili...