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Nanosystems have shown encouraging outcomes and substantial progress in the areas of drug delivery and biomedical applications. However, the controlled and targeted delivery of drugs or genes can be limited due to their physicochemical and functional properties. In this regard, core–shell type nanoparticles are promising nanocarrier systems for controlled and targeted drug delivery applications. These functional nanoparticles are emerging as a particular class of nanosystems because of their unique advantages, including high surface area, and easy surface modification and functionalization. Such unique advantages can facilitate the use of core–shell nanoparticles for the selective mingling of two or more different functional properties in a single nanosystem to achieve the desired physicochemical properties that are essential for effective targeted drug delivery. Several types of core–shell nanoparticles, such as metallic, magnetic, silica-based, upconversion, and carbon-based core–shell nanoparticles, have been designed and developed for drug delivery applications. Keeping the scope, demand, and challenges in view, the present review explores state-of-the-art developments and advances in core–shell nanoparticle systems, the desired structure–property relationships, newly generated properties, the effects of parameter control, surface modification, and functionalization, and, last but not least, their promising applications in the fields of drug delivery, biomedical applications, and tissue engineering. This review also supports significant future research for developing multi-core and shell-based functional nanosystems to investigate nano-therapies that are needed for advanced, precise, and personalized healthcare systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is challenging to integrate porous graphene foam (GF) and GF-based nanocomposites into microfluidic channels and even create microfluidic structures within these materials. This is because their irregular interior pore shape and geometry, rough exterior surface, and relatively large material thickness make it difficult to perform conventional photolithography and etching. This challenge has largely hindered the potential of using GF-based materials in microfluidics-based sensors. Here we present a simple approach to create well-defined flow-through channels within or across the GF-based materials, using a liquid-phase photopolymerization method. This method allows embedding of a nanocomposite-based scaffold of GF and titanium nitride nanofibers (GF–TiN NFs) into a channel structure, to realize flow-through microfluidic electrochemical sensors for detecting nitrate ions in agricultural soils. The unique GF–TiN nanocomposite provides high electrochemical reactivity, high electron transfer rate, improved loading capacity of receptor biomolecules, and large surface area, serving as an efficient electrochemical sensing interface with the help of immobilized specific enzyme molecules. The microfluidic sensor provides an ultralow limit of detection of 0.01 mg L−1, a wide dynamic range from 0.01 to 442 mg L−1, and a high sensitivity of 683.3 μA mg−1 L cm−2 for nitrate ions in real soil solution samples. The advantageous features of the GF–TiN nanocomposite, in conjunction with the in situ integration approach, will enable a promising microfluidic sensor platform to monitor soil ions for nutrient management towards sustainable agriculture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]