The most popular Nanoscale articles from 2023

We wanted to share with you some of the most popular articles published in Nanoscale over the last year, determined by their citations, downloads and altmetric scores.

Read the most popular Nanoscale articles

All of the articles in the collection are free to access until the end of February 2024. Discover some of the featured articles below.

Reviews

In vivo applications of micro/nanorobots Cagatay M. Oral and Martin Pumera* Nanoscale, 2023, DOI: 10.1039/D3NR00502J

Recent advances in self-healing polyurethane based on dynamic covalent bonds combined with other self-healing methods Ze-Wei An, Rui Xue, Kang Ye, Hui Zhao,* Yang Liu, Peng Li, Zhen-Ming Chen, Chong-Xing Huang and  Guo-Hua Hu Nanoscale, 2023, DOI: 10.1039/D2NR07110J

Assessment of biomass-derived carbon dots as highly sensitive and selective templates for the sensing of hazardous ions Permender Singh, Arpita, Sandeep Kumar,* Parmod Kumar, Navish Kataria, Vinita Bhankar, Krishan Kumar,* Ravi Kumar, Chien-Te Hsieh* and Kuan Shiong Khoo* Nanoscale, 2023, DOI: 10.1039/D3NR01966G

Communications

Support-facet-dependent morphology of small Pt particles on ceria Henrik Eliasson, Yubiao Niu, Richard E. Palmer, Henrik Grönbeck and Rolf Erni* Nanoscale, 2023, DOI: 10.1039/D3NR04701F

Enhanced water transportation on a superhydrophilic serial cycloid-shaped pattern Defeng Yan, Yi Lu, Jinming Liu, Yang Chen, Jing Sun and Jinlong Song* Nanoscale, 2023, DOI: 10.1039/D3NR02180G

Photon pairs bi-directionally emitted from a resonant metasurface Changjin Son,* Vitaliy Sultanov, Tomás Santiago-Cruz, Aravind P. Anthur, Haizhong Zhang, Ramon Paniagua-Dominguez, Leonid Krivitsky, Arseniy I. Kuznetsov and Maria V. Chekhova Nanoscale, 2023, DOI: 10.1039/D2NR05499J

We hope you enjoy reading these popular articles and would be delighted if you would consider Nanoscale for your next submission.

Looking back at 2023

An overview of the exciting events, activities and news for Nanoscale from 2023

2023 was another great year for nanoscience research and recognition in the field, with the award of the Chemistry Nobel Prize to Moungi Bawendi, Louis Brus and Alexei Ekimov for the discovery, synthesis, and development of quantum dots. Now that the year has come to an end, we want to share some of the exciting events and activities that happened last year for Nanoscale. Thank you for your engagement last year and for enabling the journal to continue to support the community. We look forward to another great year for the journal and nanoscience research in 2024.

Board updates

Professor Chunli Bai (Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China) was appointed as Honorary Editor-in-Chief. Professor Bai was one of the inaugural Editors-in-Chief of both Nanoscale and Nanoscale Advances, working with the Royal Society of Chemistry for the past 14 years. We would like to thank him for his ongoing support of the journals and nanoscience community and look forward to working with him in this new role.

We welcomed Professor Yue Zhang (University of Science and Technology Beijing, China) as our new Editor-in-Chief working across Nanoscale and Nanoscale Advances, joining Professor Dirk Guldi (Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany) as co-Editor-in-Chief for the journals.

Emerging investigators

We were proud to present our 2023 Emerging Investigators collection, recognizing the rising stars of nanoscience and nanotechnology by gathering some of the very best work from researchers in the early stages of their independent careers.

Congratulations to all the featured researchers on their important work so far in the field. Meet the featured authors in our Profile article.

Themed collections

Nanoscale published 16 themed collections in 2023, and we have many more exciting themed collections planned.

• Nanomaterials for printed electronics. Guest edited by Cinzia Casiraghi, Oana Jurchescu, Shlomo Magdassi and Wenming Su.
• Emerging concepts in nucleic acids: structures, functions and applications. Guest edited by Arun Richard Chandrasekaran, Dhiraj Bhatia, Xiaogang Liu and Prabal Maiti.
• Nanoscale quantum technologies. Guest edited by Qing Dai, Chao-Yang Lu and Zhipei Sun.
• Halide perovskite optoelectronics. Guest edited by Lakshminarayana Polavarapu, Maria Antonietta Loi, Haibo Zeng and ‪Joseph M. Luther.
• Celebrating 25 years of the Key Laboratory for Special Functional Materials at Henan University. Guest edited by Guohua Jia, Feng Bai, Gang Cheng and Zuliang Du.
• Celebrating the 20th anniversary of the National Center for Nanoscience and Technology (NCNST). Guest edited by Yuliang Zhao, Zhixiang Wei, Chunying Chen, Qing Dai and Xinfeng Liu.
• Honorary themed collection for Thomas P. Russell. Guest edited by Zhiqun Lin, Xiaodan Gu, Ilja Gunkel, Du Yeol Ryu, Jiun-Tai Chen and Jodie Lutkenhaus.
• Fundamental Processes in Optical Nanomaterials. Guest edited by Arindam Chowdhury, Alison Funston, Eva Hemmer and Jonathan Veinot.
• Celebrating the 150th anniversary of Vanderbilt University. Guest edited by De-en Jiang, Janet Macdonald and Sharon Weiss.
• Micro- and nano-motors. Guest edited by Martin Pumera, Xing Ma, Samuel Sánchez Ordóñez and Li Zhang.
• Theranostic nanoplatforms for biomedicine. Guest edited by Nguyen T. K. Thanh, Sophie Laurent, Sylvie Begin-Colin and Teresa Pellegrino.
• Sustainable Composites. Guest edited by Ian Hamerton, Lois Hobson and Jonathan Wagner.
• Nanozymes. Guest edited by Shaoqin Liu, Vincent Rotello, Asier Unciti-Broceta and Hui Wei.
• Graphene and 2D Materials in Healthcare. Guest edited by Laura Ballerini, Alberto Bianco, Kostas Kostarelos and Maurizio Prato.
• Celebrating the scientific accomplishments of RSC Fellows
• Nanoscale 2024 Emerging Investigators

International Women’s Day

To celebrate International Women’s Day 2023 we highlighted some of the excellent female researchers publishing impactful work in nanoscience in a special collection published in Nanoscale Horizons, Nanoscale and Nanoscale Advances. The collection featured work led by female scientists around the world and showcased the impact these leading individuals have on the research published within our nanoscience journals.

Explore our Women in Nanoscience collection

If you have published in Nanoscale in 2023, and either the first and/or corresponding author of your article is a woman, you can feature in our 2024 collection! Please contact the Editorial office with the title of your article, DOI and a headshot photo of the eligible author by 1 March 2024 if you wish to be included in the collection, which will be promoted this International Women’s Day, 8 March 2024. At the Royal Society of Chemistry, we foster a culture of inclusion of women from all walks of life and look forward to continuing to celebrate all of the wonderful women in nanoscience.

Editor’s choice collections

We showcased a variety of articles in collections curated by our editors. Our Associate Editor Professor Xiaogang Liu (National University of Singapore, Singapore) selected some outstanding recent publications to feature in an Editor’s Choice Collection on Photon Upconversion.

We collated several other topical collections throughout the year with our companion journal Nanoscale Horizons to promote some of our best work in certain areas.

• Nanobiotechnology and Nanomedicine
• Nanomaterials for Energy
• Nanocatalysis
• Nanoparticle Synthesis
• Carbon-based nanomaterials

We also highlighted the Nanoscale Most Popular 2022 Articles and celebrated a variety of events throughout the year with special collections.

• Nanoscale 2023 Lunar New Year Collection
• Celebrating International Women’s Day: Women in Nanoscience
• Quantum Dots: A Nanoscience Nobel Prize
• Quantum Dots: Celebrating the 2023 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
• mRNA vaccines against COVID-19: Celebrating the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
• Top articles from NCNST
• US National Nanotechnology Day 2023

Look out for the upcoming collections that we will be publishing throughout 2024!

Outstanding reviewers

We once again recognised the significant contributions that our reviewers have made to the journal and highlighted our 2022 Outstanding Reviewers for Nanoscale.

“Following a long-standing Nanoscale tradition, Outstanding Reviewers are recognized. Guaranteeing the quality and impact of Nanoscale is only made possible through a stringent peer review process. Two aspects stand out: on one hand, excellence of the reviews, and, on the other hand, timeliness. At the heart of peer review are carefully drafted reports. Reports that provide a valuable service to the scientific community and to the readers of Nanoscale. On this occasion, I want to extend a big thank you to these Outstanding Reviewers and everyone else who has reviewed manuscripts for Nanoscale.” – Professor Dirk Guldi, Editor-in-Chief

HOT articles

Finally, be sure to read the exciting articles featured in the 2023 Nanoscale HOT Article Collection.

The Nanoscale team wish you a Happy New Year!

With best wishes,

Dr Heather Montgomery
Managing Editor, Nanoscale

Looking back at 2022

An overview of the exciting events, activities and news for Nanoscale from 2022

2022 was another great year for nanoscience research and now that the year has come to an end, we want to share some of the exciting events and activities that happened last year for Nanoscale. Thank you for your engagement last year and for enabling the journal to continue to support the community. We look forward to another great year for the journal and nanoscience research in 2023.

Board updates

We welcomed Professor Gianaurelio (Giovanni) Cuniberti (TU Dresden, Germany), Professor Christian Klinke (University of Rostock, Germany), Professor Zhiqun Lin (National University of Singapore, Singapore), Professor Janet Macdonald (Vanderbilt University, USA) and Professor Teresa Pellegrino (Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Italy) to the Editorial Board of Nanoscale and Nanoscale Advances as Associate Editors.

Professor Chunying Chen (National Center for Nanoscience and Technology of China, China), Professor Yamuna Krishnan (University of Chicago, USA), Professor Liberato Manna (Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Italy) and Professor Paolo Samorì (Université de Strasbourg, France) all completed their final terms as Associate Editors for Nanoscale and Nanoscale Advances in 2022 and joined our Advisory Board. We would like to thank them for their excellent service to the journal and community over many years.

Along with Professor Chen, Professor Krishnan, Professor Manna and Professor Samorì, we welcomed five other new Nanoscale Advisory Board members in order to better represent the ever-increasing diversity of our authors and readers.

• Guohua Jia, Curtin University, Australia
• Katharina Landfester, Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research, Germany
• Lakshminarayana Polavarapu, University of Vigo, Spain
• Narayan Pradhan, Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science, India
• Hyeon Suk Shin, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology, South Korea

Discover our full list of the Nanoscale Advisory Board.

Outstanding reviewers

Nanoscale once again recognised the significant contributions that our reviewers have made to the journal and highlighted our 2021 Outstanding Reviewers for Nanoscale.

“By now, it is a good old tradition that Nanoscale recognizes its Outstanding Reviewers. Key in terms of guaranteeing the quality and impact of Nanoscale is the peer review process. As such, peer review depends not only on the excellence of the reviews but also on their timeliness. All of it comes on top of the many burdens that we face as active researchers. At the heart of the peer review process are carefully drafted reviews; they provide a valuable service that we owe to the scientific community in general, and to the readers of Nanoscale in particular. I want to extend a big thank you to these Outstanding Reviewers and everyone else who has reviewed manuscripts for Nanoscale”. – Professor Dirk Guldi, Editor-in-Chief

Emerging investigators

We were proud to present our 2022 Emerging Investigators collection, recognizing the rising stars of nanoscience and nanotechnology by gathering some of the very best work from researchers in the early stages of their independent careers.

Congratulations to all the featured researchers on their important work so far in the field. Meet the featured authors in our Profile article.

Themed collections

Nanoscale published 11 themed collections in 2022, and we have many more exciting themed collections planned.

• Advanced Functional Nanomaterials for Biomedical Applications. Guest edited by Nguyễn T. K. Thanh, Chenjie Xu, Yu Shrike Zhang and Sylvie Begin
• Design and function of materials nanoarchitectonics. Guest edited by Katsuhiko Ariga and Omar Azzaroni
• CO₂ capture and conversion. Guest edited by A.-H. Alissa Park, Elena Shevchenko, Shouheng Sun and Professor Tierui Zhang
• Nanomaterials for printed electronics. Guest edited by Cinzia Casiraghi, Oana Jurchescu, Shlomo Magdassi and Wenming Su
• Emerging concepts in nucleic acids: structures, functions and applications. Guest edited by Arun Richard Chandrasekaran, Dhiraj Bhatia, Xiaogang Liu and Prabal Maiti
• Nanoscale quantum technologies. Guest edited by Qing Dai, Chao-Yang Lu and Zhipei Sun
• Halide perovskite optoelectronics. Guest edited by Lakshminarayana Polavarapu, Maria Antonietta Loi, Haibo Zeng and ‪Joseph M. Luther
• Nanoscale Most Popular 2021 Articles
• Nanoscale 2022 Lunar New Year Collection
• Quantum computing and quantum information storage: Celebrating the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics
• Bioorthogonal and click chemistry: Celebrating the 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry

Editor’s choice collections

Nanoscale published an Editor’s Choice Collection on Functional MOFs and COFs selected by Paolo Samorì (University of Strasbourg, France). Look out for the upcoming collections that we will be publishing throughout 2023!

Journal metrics

This year we were pleased to see that Nanoscale’s impact factor increased to 8.307 in the 2021 Journal Citation Reports (Clarivate Analytics, 2022), with over 370k monthly downloads and a fast time to peer reviewed first decision of 35 days. These are just a few of the many metrics that can be used to measure the journal’s reach, quality and impact.

HOT articles

Finally, be sure to read the exciting articles featured in the 2022 Nanoscale HOT Article Collection.

The Nanoscale team wish you a Happy New Year!

With best wishes,

Dr Heather Montgomery
Managing Editor, Nanoscale

Looking back at 2021

An overview of the exciting events, activities and news for Nanoscale from 2021

Now that 2021 has come to an end, we look back at some of the exciting events and activities that happened last year for Nanoscale. Thank you for your engagement in 2021, and for enabling the journal to continue to support the community. With your support, we look forward to another great year for the journal in 2022.

Board updates

We welcomed Professor Jinlan Wang, Southeast University, China, to the Editorial Board of Nanoscale and Nanoscale Advances as an Associate Editor. Professor Shouheng Sun, Brown University, USA, and Professor Xiao Cheng Zeng, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA, completed their final terms as Associate Editors for Nanoscale and Nanoscale Advances in 2022 and joined our Advisory Board. We would like to thank them both for their excellent service to the journal and community over many years.

Along with Professor Sun and Professor Zeng, we welcomed seven other new Nanoscale Advisory Board members in order to better represent the ever-increasing diversity of our authors and readers.

• Suryasarathi Bose, Indian Institute of Science Bangalore, India
• Wenlong Cheng, Monash University, Australia
• Anna Fontcuberta i Morral, EPFL, Switzerland
• Michael Sailor, University of California, San Diego, USA
• Xiaoming Sun, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, China
• Sarah Tolbert, University of California, Los Angeles, USA
• Miqin Zhang, University of Washington, USA

A full list of the Nanoscale Advisory Board members can be found here.

Outstanding reviewers

Following on from recent years, Nanoscale once again recognised the significant contributions that our reviewers have made to the journal and highlighted the 2020 Outstanding Reviewers for Nanoscale in this Editorial.

Emerging investigators

In 2021, Nanoscale launched our inaugural Emerging Investigators themed collection, recognising the rising stars of nanoscience and nanotechnology in the early stages of their independent careers. Congratulations to all the featured researchers on their important work so far in the field. You can meet the featured authors in this Profile.

Themed collections

Nanoscale published six themed collections in 2021, and we have many more exciting themed collections planned.

• Advances in Plasmonics and Its Applications. Guest edited by Xing Yi Ling, Ramón Álvarez Puebla, and Jian-Feng Li
• Advanced Nanomaterials for Energy Conversion and Storage. Guest edited by Wee-Jun Ong, Markus Antonietti and Nanfeng Zheng
• Nanoscale Most Popular Articles
• Nanoscale Lunar New Year Collection 2021
• Battery science and technology – powered by chemistry
• Polymers in liquid formulations

Editor’s choice collections

Nanoscale published five Editor’s Choice Collections on topics selected by our Associate Editors. Look out for the upcoming collections that we will be publishing throughout 2022!

• Single-atom and nanocluster catalysis, selected by Manzhou Zhu (Anhui University, China).
• Thermoelectric nanostructures, selected by Jin Zou (University of Queensland, Australia).
• Recent breakthroughs in nanobiotechnology, selected by Yves Dufrêne (UCLouvain, Belgium).
• Computational studies of nanomaterials for energy, catalysis and electronics, selected by Xiao Cheng Zeng (University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA).
• Controlling anisotropy in nanomaterials, selected by Shouheng Sun (Brown University, USA).

HOT articles

Finally, be sure to read the exciting articles featured in the 2021 Nanoscale HOT Article Collection.

The Nanoscale team wish you a Happy New Year!

With best wishes,

Dr Heather Montgomery

Managing Editor, Nanoscale

We would like to highlight the Outstanding Reviewers for Nanoscale in 2019, as selected by the editorial team, for their significant contribution to the journal. The reviewers have been chosen based on the number, timeliness and quality of the reports completed over the last 12 months.

We would like to say a big thank you to those individuals listed here as well as to all of the reviewers that have supported the journal. Each Outstanding Reviewer will receive a certificate to give recognition for their significant contribution.

Prof Dr Liqiang Mai, Wuhan University of Technology
Professor Qiang Zhang, Tsinghua University, orcid.org/0000-0002-3929-1541
Dr David Lou, Nanyang Technological University
Prof Dr Hui Wei, Nanjing University, orcid.org/0000-0003-0870-7142
Dr Xuping Sun, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, orcid.org/0000-0001-5034-1135
Dr Huiyu Liu, Beijing University of Chemical Technology
Dr Yu Chen, Shaanxi Normal University, orcid.org/0000-0001-9545-6761
Dr Zhanhu Guo, The University of Tennessee Knoxville, orcid.org/0000-0003-0134-0210
Prof. Xiaoji Xie, Nanjing Tech University, orcid.org/0000-0002-4830-1246
Dr Yu-Jin Chen, Harbin Engineering University, orcid.org/0000-0002-6794-2276
Dr Bohayra Mortazavi, Bauhaus-Universitat Weimar, orcid.org/0000-0003-3031-5057
Dr Xiaosi Zhou, Nanjing Normal University, orcid.org/0000-0001-9641-7166
Dr Shichun Mu, Wuhan University of Technology, orcid.org/0000-0003-3902-0976
Professor Jinghong Li, Tsinghua University, orcid.org/0000-0002-0750-7352
Dr Bin Dong, China University of Petroleum, orcid.org/0000-0002-4817-6289
Dr Zhiyong Tang, National Center for Nanoscience and Technology, orcid.org/0000-0003-0610-0064
Prof. Han Zhang, Shenzhen University, orcid.org/0000-0002-0166-1973
Dr Rong Cai, National Center for Nanoscience and Technology, orcid.org/0000-0001-6793-5765
Prof. Zhong Jin, Nanjing University, orcid.org/0000-0001-8860-8579
Dr Yusuke Yamauchi, The University of Queensland, orcid.org/0000-0001-7854-927X
Dr Wenping Sun, University of Wollongong, orcid.org/0000-0003-3021-6382
Z. J. Gu, Institute of high energy physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, orcid.org/0000-0003-3717-2423
Dr Yun Zong, Agency for Science Technology and Research, orcid.org/0000-0001-9934-0889
Prof. Timon Rabczuk, Bauhaus-University Weimar
Dr Vincenzo Caligiuri, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia

We would also like to thank the Nanoscale board and the nanoscience community for their continued support of the journal, as authors, reviewers and readers.

If you would like to become a reviewer for our journal, just email us with details of your research interests and an up-to-date CV or résumé.  You can find more details in our author and reviewer resource centre