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Screening and regulation of nanozyme activity via liquid metals coined electron rearrangement and phase engineering
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  • Published: 26 March 2026

Screening and regulation of nanozyme activity via liquid metals coined electron rearrangement and phase engineering

  • Wenting Zhang1,2,
  • Jiawei Zhu1,2,
  • Jinsong Ren1,2 &
  • …
  • Xiaogang Qu  ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-2868-32051,2 

Nature Communications , Article number:  (2026) Cite this article

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We are providing an unedited version of this manuscript to give early access to its findings. Before final publication, the manuscript will undergo further editing. Please note there may be errors present which affect the content, and all legal disclaimers apply.

Subjects

  • Biomedical materials
  • Nanoparticles
  • Nanotechnology in cancer

Abstract

Liquid metals (LMs) have been used for design of advanced materials by leveraging their unique liquid and electronic properties. Here, we design a series of liquid metal-buffered amorphous molybdenum sulfide nanozymes with different gallium indium ratios, in which Ga75.5In24.5 MoSX nanozymes exhibit the enzyme-like activity, superior to the crystalline MoS2. This has been verified and assigned to the roles of liquid metal: (i) serving as the building template, (ii) phase engineering with catalytic active sites, (iii) electron-rich microenvironment for improving catalytic activity. Besides, the amorphous Ga75.5In24.5 MoSX nanozyme possesses oxidase (OXD)-like and nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide oxidase (NOX)-like activity to achieve multiple-enzyme-like cascade catalytic reactions, disrupting intratumoral redox and metabolism homeostasis. As the example of leveraging liquid metal as a well-designed platform to screen high-performance nanozyme with excellent therapeutic effects, this work highlights the roles of tailored electronic structure and phase engineering for regulation of catalytic activity of nanozymes and may also broaden the application of liquid metal in catalysis and biomedical field.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are presented in the article and Supplementary Information. Source data are provided with this paper. All data underlying this study are available from the corresponding author upon request. Source data are provided in this paper.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (T2495262, X.Q., 22437006, X.Q., 22237006, J.R.).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory of Chemical Biology and State Key Laboratory of Rare Earth Resource Utilization, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun, Jilin, P. R. China

    Wenting Zhang, Jiawei Zhu, Jinsong Ren & Xiaogang Qu

  2. School of Applied Chemistry and Engineering, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui, P. R. China

    Wenting Zhang, Jiawei Zhu, Jinsong Ren & Xiaogang Qu

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  1. Wenting Zhang
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  2. Jiawei Zhu
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X.Q. and J.R. designed research; W.Z. and J.Z. performed research and analyzed data; W.Z. and X.Q. wrote the paper.

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Correspondence to Xiaogang Qu.

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Zhang, W., Zhu, J., Ren, J. et al. Screening and regulation of nanozyme activity via liquid metals coined electron rearrangement and phase engineering. Nat Commun (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-70795-4

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  • Received: 26 May 2025

  • Accepted: 04 March 2026

  • Published: 26 March 2026

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-70795-4

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