Developing materials for "Nano-vehicles" with clinically approved drugs encapsulated is envisaged to enhance drug therapeutic effects and reduce the adverse effects. However, design and preparation of the biomaterials that are porous, nontoxic, soluble, and stable in physiological solutions and could be easily functionalized for effective drug deliveries are still challenging. Here, we report an original and simple thermal substitution method to fabricate perfectly water-soluble and porous boron nitride (BN) materials featuring unprecedentedly high hydroxylation degrees. These hydroxylated BNs are biocompatible and can effectively load anticancer drugs (e.g., doxorubicin, DOX) up to contents three times exceeding their own weight. The same or even fewer drugs that are loaded on such BN carriers exhibit much higher potency for reducing the viability of LNCaP cancer cells than free drugs.

Distinct from pure graphene, N-doped graphene (GN) has been found to possess high rate capability and capacity for lithium storage. However, there has still been a lack of direct experimental evidence and fundamental understanding of the storage mechanisms at the atomic scale, which may shed a new light on the reasons of the ultrafast lithium storage property and high capacity for GN. Here we report on the atomistic insights of the GN energy storage as revealed by in situ transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The lithiation process on edges and basal planes is directly visualized, the pyrrolic N "hole" defect and the perturbed solid-electrolyte-interface configurations are observed, and charge transfer states for three N-existing forms are also investigated. In situ high-resolution TEM experiments together with theoretical calculations provide a solid evidence that enlarged edge {0002} spacings and surface hole defects result in improved surface capacitive effects and thus high rate capability and the high capacity are owing to short-distance orderings at the edges during discharging and numerous surface defects; the phenomena cannot be understood previously by standard electron or X-ray diffraction analyses.

Electrospun ZnO-SnO2 heterojunction nanofibers are demonstrated to be promising candidates for easily assembled fully transparent high-performance photodetectors.

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The application of nanofilm networks made of branched ZnS-ZnO nanostructures as a flexible UV photodetector is demonstrated. The fabricated devices show excellent operational characteristics: tunable spectral selectivity, widerange photoresponse, fast response speed, and excellent environmental stability.