Read the full articles here: Adv. Mater. DOI:10.1002/adma.201905111 (2019) Soft matter systems and materials are moving toward adaptive and interactive behavior, which holds outstanding promise to make the next generation of intelligent soft materials systems inspired from the dynamics and behavior of living systems. But what is an adaptive material? What is an interactive material? How should classical responsiveness or smart materials be delineated? At present, the literature lacks a comprehensive discussion on these topics, which is however of profound importance in order to identify landmark advances, keep a correct and noninflating terminology, and most importantly educate young scienti

Read the full article here: Nanoscale DOI:10.1039/C9NR06835J (2019). Recently the role of protein absorption in nanoparticle drug delivery has gathered significant attention as the protein corona can significantly decide on the fate of nanoparticles in the body. Although it is known that the surface chemistry will significantly influence the amount and type of bound protein, there is little known about the effect of surface roughness and surface topography on the interaction. In this work, we show how patchy nanoparticles can noticeably reduce the adsorption of proteins compared to spherical nanoparticles with a smooth surface as demonstrated using six ABC triblock terpolymers based on gluco

Read the full article here: ACS Appl. Polym. Mater, 2019, DOI: 10.1021/acsapm.9b00774 Cellulose nanofibrils (CNFs) are attractive, renewable building blocks for high-performance and lightweight nanocomposites of high sustainability. Following bioinspired design principles, meaning the organization of large fractions of reinforcing CNFs in a minority matrix of suitably designed polymers, promises the best mechanical performance. However, thus far, truly synergetic mechanical behavior in such nanocomposites—as often found in biological load-bearing tissues—with a simultaneous increase of stiffness, toughness, and strength have remained elusive. Here we describe such a system realizing outstand