Volume 24 Issue 11, November 2025

The emergence of lipid nanoparticles as nucleic acid delivery vehicles has revolutionized medicine, with polyethylene glycol (PEG)-lipids playing a crucial role in particle formation and in vivo fate. However, PEG has been linked to immune responses that can provoke side effects and may prevent repeat dosing, and so PEG alternatives are now being developed. Here we argue that, rather than concentrating on PEG replacement, the field should prioritize designing around pre-existing immune memory.

Machine learning is shown to help solve nanocrystalline structures from broadened powder X-ray diffraction patterns, but the underlying inference remains mathematically challenging.

By tuning and mapping Josephson currents at the atomic scale, researchers uncover how competing superconducting phases in FeSe interfere, revealing the fingerprints of s^±-wave pairing and frustrated Josephson coupling.

Halide solid electrolytes are shown to be dynamically stable beyond their thermodynamic reduction potential via reversible lithiation–delithiation, reaching 0.2 V versus Li⁺/Li and enabling high-capacity phosphorus-based anodes.

Delayed femtosecond photoemission from a single-walled carbon nanotube enables pulsed electron beams with an unprecedented combination of pulse duration and energy spread.

Ribbon-based morphing structures form multistable shape morphologies, enabling the design of soft machines that merge simple fabrication with dynamic and versatile motion.

Replacing traditional PEG-lipids in lipid nanoparticle formulations with zwitterionic polymer–lipid and brush polymer–lipid conjugates offers enhanced intracellular delivery and reduced immunogenicity, making them promising alternatives to PEGylated nanoparticles.

Rolling two-dimensional materials into one-dimensional nanoscrolls unlocks tunable emergent properties; however, existing methods rely on external forces. Now, intrinsically driven scrolling in polar two-dimensional materials mediated by out-of-plane electric polarization is reported, establishing a platform for the design of functional nanoscrolls.

Terahertz technology has the potential to push the speed limit of future opto-electronic applications, but the large free-space wavelength of terahertz light hinders nanoscale device implementation. Now, the confinement of terahertz light to the nanometre scale is demonstrated using phonon polaritons in hafnium-based van der Waals crystals.

Extracellular matrix remodelling and densification are hallmarks of fibrosis that have been challenging to study ex vivo. Visible light-induced dityrosine crosslinking of native matrix proteins in viable lung tissues has now been shown to recapitulate local stiffening that characterizes early lung injury. This stiffening led to aberrant alveolar epithelial cell differentiation, mechanosensing and nascent protein deposition.

An albumin-recruiting lipid nanoparticle formulation promotes lymphatic drainage while avoiding liver accumulation. In preclinical models of cancers and infectious diseases, mRNA vaccines prepared from this lipid nanoparticle platform elicit robust immune responses and achieve remarkable efficacy.

This Review discusses recent advances in afterglow materials for biomedical applications, the distinct imaging modalities that these agents enable and strategies to optimize their properties for improved disease diagnosis and therapies.

Atomic-resolution scanned Josephson tunnelling microscopy on multigap superconductor FeSe single crystals is studied, demonstrating condensate-resolved imaging and tuning capabilities.

Spontaneous scrolling in two-dimensional polar van der Waals materials, driven by intrinsic out-of-plane electric polarization, enables the scalable production of nanoscrolls and their heterostructures.

A machine learning model that can solve nanocrystalline structures from highly degraded PXRD patterns is presented. It is shown to be successful on simulated crystals as small as 10 Å, and is robust to noisy patterns from real-world experiments.

The authors demonstrate deeply subwavelength light confinement in the terahertz spectral range by exploiting the strong light–matter coupling and hyperbolicity of phonon polaritons in hafnium-based dichalcogenides.

Single-layer organic light-emitting diodes based on thermally activated delayed fluorescence are demonstrated, exhibiting pure-blue emission, high quantum and power efficiencies, and operational stability.

Scattering in the archetypal oxide SrRuO₃ is shown to enhance orbital currents. This counter-intuitive effect establishes a transformative paradigm for energy-efficient spintronic devices.

The authors study the effects of heterovalent doping on superconducting bilayer nickelate thin films.

All-solid-state batteries are potentially superior to Li-ion batteries, but to maximize performance, the solid electrolyte needs to be compatible with high-performance anodes. Halide solid electrolytes are shown to possess dynamic stability that extends beyond the electrochemical stability window, allowing improved full-cell performance.

Metal-tip-based electron sources are constrained by a trade-off between energy spread and pulse width. Here the authors report a carbon-nanotube-based electron source with a 0.3-eV energy spread and an electron pulse width of about 13 fs.

A self-assembly perovskite strategy is reported that can integrate optoelectronic arrays with arbitrary non-developable structures, enabling structural manipulations of photodiode arrays with micrometre precision.

Insights to elucidate the composition–behaviour relationship in organic photovoltaic materials are required. Here the phase behaviour of disordered polymer:small-molecule acceptor blends is studied and an extended model is invoked to understand the temperature–composition diagrams.

Lantern-shaped ribbon cluster meta-units harness stored elastic energy to achieve over 13 distinct volumetric snapping morphologies, with potential applications in soft robotics, deployable devices and mechanical logic.

A continuous mesoscale space-time crystal phase is reported from a nematic liquid crystal driven by light.

Using visible-light-induced crosslinking, a local stiffening approach is developed for ex vivo mouse and human lung tissue as an early lung injury model, directing epithelial cell mechanosensing, differentiation and nascent protein deposition.

Ionizable lipids containing albumin-binding motifs are used in lipid-nanoparticle-based mRNA vaccines, facilitating lymph node enrichment and dendritic cell internalization to potentiate their efficacy and avoiding liver accumulation.

Lipid nanoparticles containing brush-shaped polymer lipids as a replacement for commonly used PEGylated lipids enable the repeated administration of mRNA therapeutics without any loss of performance in protein replacement therapy and genome editing models.

Poly(carboxybetaine) lipids enhance mRNA lipid nanoparticles efficacy and reduce their immunogenicity, being promising alternatives to poly(ethylene) glycol lipids used in traditional mRNA lipid nanoparticle formulations.