Recent progress of heterojunction materials for tumor diagnosis and treatment

At present, cancer is one of the major fatal diseases worldwide, and traditional treatment methods have many drawbacks. New therapeutic methods such as photodynamic therapy (PDT) and photothermal therapy (PTT) have effectively made up for the deficiency of traditional therapeutic methods with the development of nanomaterials. Heterojunction which combines nanomaterials of different compositions into a nanostructure exhibits an excellent performance in photodynamic therapy and photothermal therapy. Heterojunction materials have great application potential in the fields of catalysis, detection, multi-modal imaging and collaborative treatment of tumors due to their inherent peculiarities, including magnetic properties, optical properties and structural design. This article systematically reviews the recent progress of heterojunction materials in single tumor therapy, cooperative therapy and the integration of diagnosis and treatment, and the future development direction of heterojunction materials is also prospected.