The pursuit of high-energy-density energy storage systems has induced significant safety risk in lithium metal batteries, particularly due to the lithium dendrite growth and flammability of liquid electrolytes. Solid-state electrolytes (SSEs) have emerged as a promising alternative, among which solid-state polymer electrolytes (SPEs) stand out due to their lightweight, flexibility, and excellent interfacial compatibility with electrodes. Despite these advantages, conventional SPEs, particularly those based on poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO), suffer from low room-temperature ionic conductivity, low transference numbers, and insufficient mechanical strength. Recent advancements have introduced decoupled SPEs (DSPEs), a novel class of SPEs that decouple ionic conduction from polymer chain segment motion. This decoupling mechanism, akin to that observed in superionic crystals and glasses, enables simultaneous achievement of high ionic conductivity and robust mechanical properties at room temperature. DSPEs represent a significant departure from traditional SPEs, offering a new paradigm for designing high-performance SSEs. This review provides a comprehensive examination of DSPEs, covering their fundamental ion transport mechanisms, key performance evaluation criteria, and advanced characterization techniques. We discuss various design strategies and materials that have been employed to develop DSPEs, highlighting their unique ion conduction mechanisms and comparative advantages. Furthermore, the review raises several critical challenges that must be overcome to advance DSPEs toward commercialization, including scalability, cost reduction, and optimization of electrode-electrolyte interfaces. By systematically analyzing the current state of DSPE research, this review aims to provide a roadmap for future developments in this field, ultimately contributing to the realization of next-generation, high-performance solid-state lithium metal batteries.

As a typical smart soft material, liquid crystal polymers (LCPs) exhibit significant reversible deformation under external stimuli, possessing excellent mechanical and processable properties, which make LCPs highly promising for applications in artificial muscles, soft robotics, smart fabrics, smart wearable devices, and microfluidics. LCPs can respond to various stimuli, including heat, light, electricity, magnetism, and humidity. Among these, electroactuated LCPs stand out because they can integrate with circuits to achieve programmable control, multichannel parallel control, and effective control in dense and/or sheltered environments. This review introduces recent research progress on electroactuated LCPs. First, electroactuated LCPs are classified based on actuation principles, and working mechanisms, advantages, and shortcomings are discussed. Then, the related applications capable of demonstrating the characteristics of electroactuated LCPs are introduced. Finally, we summarize each class of electroactuated LCPs and discuss their potential for future developments.

4D printing extends conventional additive manufacturing (AM) by enabling dynamic shape-morphing structures that adapt to environmental stimuli. However, the spatial resolution of conventional 4D printing is often constrained by nozzle size, laser spot diameter, and material rheology, limiting its adoption in precision-demanding engineering applications. High-resolution 4D printing, integrating micro/nanoscale AM techniques with sub-100 μm to sub-100 nm structural resolution and stimuli-responsive smart materials, has emerged as a promising solution to these challenges. Over the past decade, this approach has made significant strides in fields such as soft robotics, biomedical devices, flexible electronics, and microfluidic systems. This review summarizes recent progress in high-resolution 4D printing, emphasizing key printing technologies such as digital light processing, PolyJet, projection micro-stereolithography, two-photon polymerization, and direct ink writing. A range of smart materials, including shape memory polymers, hydrogels, liquid crystal elastomers, and composite systems, are examined alongside their external stimuli, such as heat, light, humidity, and magnetic fields. Furthermore, the engineering applications enabled by high-resolution 4D printing are discussed. Finally, the review highlights current challenges in material development, structural design, actuation speed, and scalable fabrication while offering future perspectives to stimulate further research and accelerate the industrial translation of high-resolution 4D printing technologies.

Photopharmacology harnesses photoswitchable molecules to reversibly and precisely modulate biological activities, offering exceptional spatial and temporal control through non-invasive illumination. Traditionally, azobenzene-based photoswitches have dominated this field due to their robust photochemistry and synthetic simplicity. Recent advances, however, have introduced diverse alternatives featuring novel photoresponsive cores beyond the classical azo (–N=N–) moiety. These novel molecular scaffolds exhibit gratifying features, including exceptional thermal bistability, near-quantitative photoconversion efficiencies, and long-wavelength photoactivation, significantly improving their suitability for biological applications. This review systematically highlights recent progress in photopharmacology beyond azobenzenes, critically discusses their pros and cons, and provides valuable insights for the rational selection of photoswitches tailored to specific therapeutic contexts, ultimately aiming to broaden their biomedical applicability and facilitate advanced precision medicine.

The increasing presence of organic pollutants such as herbicides and pesticides in water, soil and air requires efficient strategies for their removal and degradation in a reliable and environmentally sound manner. This work focuses on adsorbent materials for water remediation, also addressing pollutant degradation, a critical aspect allowing adsorbent re-use. A photo-regenerable adsorbent based on a liquid crystal network (LCN) is proposed, consisting of a highly ordered nanoporous material obtained through the polymerization of reactive mesogenic monomers. The addition of titanium dioxide nanoparticles in the LCN matrix as photocatalyst opens to its photoregeneration, allowing degradation of the pollutants and further cycles of adsorption. The LCN-TiO₂ composite was optimized using methylene blue (MB) as a model and then tested for a real pollutant. The adsorber proved its efficiency with a maximum pollutant uptake of 86 wt% and total photoregeneration achieved by irradiation with an ultraviolet source. The best tradeoff of adsorption capacity and photoregeneration efficacy was found for samples loaded with only 1 wt% of TiO₂ nanoparticles. This composite also exhibited a high pollutant adsorption capacity and fast and complete photo-regeneration toward the herbicide Diquat, opening the way for a new versatile strategy for water remediation from emerging organic pollutants.

Posterior segment ocular diseases pose substantial concerns as they can cause irreversible visual impairments. Effective management of these conditions necessitates the precise delivery of sufficient drug to the affected site. Current therapeutic approaches for chronic posterior segment disorders involve frequent intravitreal injections of drug solutions. However, the delivered agents have limited tissue penetration and poor bioavailability owing to the ocular physiological barriers. Traditional nano-based drug delivery systems release drugs at a predetermined rate, lacking adaptability to modify release dynamics. Conversely, stimuli-responsive nano-based drug delivery systems have garnered considerable research attention, as they offer spatiotemporal control over drug release and possess the ability to adapt to pathological conditions. This intelligent nano-based drug delivery system paves the path for personalized therapies of ocular diseases. This review encapsulates recent advancements in stimuli-responsive nano-based drug delivery systems, emphasizing their mechanisms and potential for treating posterior segment diseases. Additionally, we introduce recent developments in mechanically interlocked molecules and bioorthogonal reactions, which may usher in a new epoch in ocular drug delivery. The challenges and future perspectives of these tunable release systems are also discussed. Future refinements of these findings would enrich therapeutic strategies for posterior segment diseases, and bridge the gap between basic researches and clinical applications.

Flexible luminescent materials, especially those exhibiting circularly polarized luminescence (CPL), have attracted increasing attention in wearable electronics, optical sensing, and information encryption owing to their adaptable responsiveness and on-demand tunable emission. However, the simultaneous achievement of high luminescence dissymmetry factor and efficiency in flexible materials remains a fundamental challenge, as it requires balancing chiral assembly against self-quenching. Herein, we construct a chiral liquid crystal elastomer film that integrates chirality, fluorescence, and elastomeric responsiveness into a single multifunctional material. Specifically, this tunable one-dimensional photonic crystal exhibits three critical improvements: (i) substantial enhancement of photoluminescence quantum yield through homogeneous fluorophore distribution within the elastomeric matrix, (ii) significant improvement of circularly polarized light emission achieved by precise bandgap-fluorescence spectral matching, which achieves high luminescence dissymmetry factor, and (iii) reversible polarization modulation realized via strain-responsive bandgap with excellent fatigue-resistant. The combination of broad multicolor tunability CPL and robust fatigue-resistant deformation enables the successful fabrication of a triplex flexible photonic encryption prototype through strain engineering. This study broadens the applicability of chiral photonic materials in flexible optoelectronics and establishes a generalizable strategy for engineering adaptive photonic films.

Inorganic fluoride-based compounds are present today as decisive components in many advanced technologies, including energy storage and conversion, dye-sensitized solar cell, microphotonics, medicine, pharmaceuticals, etc. Most of these outstanding behaviors can be correlated to the exceptional electronic properties of the element fluorine: “F₂.” The role of fluorinated rare-earth (RE)-based nanoparticles (NPs), mostly deriving from the fluorite structure, is also crucial in medicine and biotechnologies, where doped photoluminescent rare-earth fluoride nanoparticles (REFNPs), exhibiting high responsivity, can be used as bi- or multi-modal agents in theranostics, integrating both imaging probes and therapeutics; these materials can thus carry out both diagnosis and therapy within the same nano-object. Relevant nanotherapeutics also include fluorine-labeling of NPs, in vivo ¹⁹F magnetic resonance imaging, photodynamic therapy, up- and down-conversion luminescence, ultrafast upconversion superfluorescence, luminescent thermometry, photoacoustic imaging, radiotracers for positron emission tomography. Finally, research aimed at better understanding the toxicity risks of these NPs as well as better knowledge of the type of formulations of the used nano-sensors should make it possible to improve the correlations between the selected REFNPs and the expected responses.