Nanomaterial Shape Influence on Cell Behavior.

Nanomaterials are proven to affect the biological activity of mammalian and microbial cells profoundly. Despite this fact, only surface chemistry, charge, and area are often linked to these phenomena. Moreover, most attention in this field is directed exclusively at nanomaterial cytotoxicity. At the same time, there is a large body of studies showing the influence of nanomaterials on cellular metabolism, proliferation, differentiation, reprogramming, gene transfer, and many other processes. Furthermore, it has been revealed that in all these cases, the shape of the nanomaterial plays a crucial role. In this paper, the mechanisms of nanomaterials shape control, approaches toward its synthesis, and the influence of nanomaterial shape on various biological activities of mammalian and microbial cells, such as proliferation, differentiation, and metabolism, as well as the prospects of this emerging field, are reviewed.

NaK alloy as a versatile reagent for template-free synthesis of porous metal- and metalloid-based nanostructures.

Using the strong reduction potential of the liquid NaK-78 alloy, we present a new versatile template-free approach to the synthesis of porous metal- and metalloid-based nanomaterials. With this novel approach, NaK can be simultaneously used as an agent for reduction, structure directing, and pore formation without the use of additional reagents.

Phase Transition Liquid Metal Enabled Emerging Biomedical Technologies and Applications.

Phase change materials that can absorb or release large amounts of heat during phase transition, play a critical role in many important processes, including heat dissipation, thermal energy storage, and solar energy utilization. In general, phase change materials are usually encapsulated in passive modules to provide assurance for energy management. The shape and mechanical changes of these materials are greatly ignored. An emerging class of phase change materials, liquid metals (LMs) have attracted significant interest beyond thermal management, including in transformable robots, flexible electronics, soft actuators, and biomedicine. Interestingly, the melting point of LM is highly tunable around body temperature, allowing it to experience considerable stiffness change when interacting with human organisms during solid-liquid change, which brings about novel phenomena, applied technologies, and therapeutic methods, such as mechanical destruction of tumors, neural electrode implantation technique, and embolization therapy. This review focuses on the technology, regulation, and application of the phase change process along with diverse changes of LM to facilitate emerging biomedical applications based on the influences of mechanical stiffness change and versatile regulation strategies. Typical applications will also be categorized and summarized. Lastly, the advantages and challenges of using the unique and reversible process for biomedicine will be discussed.

Liquid metal-mediated fabrication of metalloid nanoarchitectures.

By overcoming all conventional limitations associated with the synthesis of metalloid micro- and nanoparticles in aqueous media, we present a new one-step approach to the synthesis of highly crystalline metalloid hollow architectures. The liquid metal-mediated synthesis of Ge- and Sb-based hollow structures with satisfactory reaction kinetics at room temperature and normal pressure is presented.

Single Particle Color Switching by Laser-Induced Deformation of Liquid Metal-derived Microcapsules.

Active controlling of optical properties of metallic particles holds great promise for nonlinear nanophotonics and compact optoelectronic devices. Except for the electronic and chemical tuning of their properties, active control through fast and reversible shape modulation remains a significant challenge. Here, we report on the concept for changing the color and brightness of single particles by reversible/irreversible tuning of their shapes. As a family of plasmonic materials with low melting points and high flexibility, we synthesized liquid metal microparticles with different interior (dense/hollow) and morphology from Ga and its alloys (GaNi, GaCu). Utilizing near-infrared femtosecond laser pulses, we achieve two regimes for reversible/irreversible optical tuning due to consequent weak/strong perturbation of the microcapsules (MC) shapes. The chemical composition and MCs morphology significantly affect the tuning of color and brightness, as well as the rigidity of the MCs to extreme laser conditions.