Chromophores that exhibit aggregation‐induced emission (i.e., aggregation‐induced emission luminogens [AIEgens]) emit intense fluorescence in their aggregated states, but show negligible emission as discrete molecular species in solution due to the changes in restriction and freedom of intramolecular motions. As solvent‐swollen quasi‐solids with both a compact phase and a free space, gels enable manipulation of intramolecular motions. Thus, AIE‐active gels have attracted significant interest owing to their various distinctive properties and promising application potential. Herein, a comprehensive overview of AIE‐active gels is provided. The fabrication strategies employed are detailed, and the applications of AIEgens are summarized. In addition, the gel functions arising from the AIE moieties are revealed, along with their structure–property relationships. Furthermore, the applications of AIE‐active gels in diverse areas are illustrated. Finally, ongoing challenges and potential means to address them are discussed, along with future perspectives on AIE‐active gels, with the overall aim of inspiring research on novel materials and ideas.

The cation antisite is the most recognizable intrinsic defect type in nickel‐rich layered and olivine‐type cathode materials for lithium‐ion batteries, and important for electrochemical/thermal performance. While how to generate the favorable antisite has not been put forward, herein, by combining first‐principles calculation with neutron powder diffraction (NPD) study, a defect inducing the favorable antisite mechanism is proposed to improve cathode stability, that is, halogen substitution facilitates the neighboring Li and Ni atoms to exchange their sites, forming a more stable local octahedron of halide (LOSH). According to the mechanism, it is demonstrated by NPD that F‐doping not only induces the antisite formation in layered LiNi 0.85 Co 0.075 Mn 0.075 O 2 (LNCM), but also increases the antisite concentration linearly. F substitution (1%) induces 5.7% antisite, and it displays an excellent capacity retention of 94% at 1 C for 200 cycles under 25 °C, outstanding high temperature cyclability (153.4 mAh·g –1 at 1 C for 120 cycles under 55 °C). The onset decomposition temperature increases by 48 °C. The ultrahigh cycling/thermal stability is attributed to the stronger LOSH, and it keeps the structural integrity after long cycling and develops an electrostatic repulsion force between oxygen layers to increase the lattice parameter c , which benefits Li‐ion migration.

Living systems, including human beings, animals, and plants, display the power to self-heal spontaneously after being damaged. The self-healing is usually selective, which means that the healing efficiency is related to the spatial distribution of dynamic interfacial interactions of the two rupturing surfaces. Current artificial systems use noncovalent interactions or dynamic covalent bonds to prepare self-healing materials. However, they can only show nonselective self-healing due to their homogeneous internal structures. Herein, we report the construction of a composite hydrogel Gel-C consisting of three different self-healing hydrogels (Gel-Y, Gel-G, and Gel-O) through the use of classic bilayer hydrogel technology. When the composite hydrogel was cut into two pieces, the relative orientation of the parts was rotated through different angles to study the differences in self-healing. Owing to the heterogeneous internal structure of the composite hydrogel and the recognition specificity of each included hydrogel, the interfacial dynamic interactions distribution of the two rupturing surfaces is diverse. The results of tensile tests demonstrated that these rotated samples exhibited different self-healing efficiencies. This system realized the transformation of artificial materials from nonselective self-healing to selective selfhealing, providing inspiration for the development of novel biological materials and engineering materials.