Table 1.

Advanced materials and devices for the study and regulation of NK cells.

Type	Function	Major Contribution	General References	References on Application for NK Cells
Planar lipid bilayer	Mimic the membrane of target sell, and provide supporting 2D medium for mobile ligands	Describing receptor clustering in NK immune synapse	[25,26,27,28,29]	[30,31,32,33,34,35]
Ligand nanopatterns	Mimic the spatial distribution of discrete ligands within the membrane of target cell	Elucidating the role of antigen spatial organization in NK cell activation	[36,37,38,39,40,41,42,43]	[44,45]
Ligand Micropatterns	Mimic the clustering of ligands within the membrane of target cells	Revealing of the response of NK cells to antigen spatial segregation	[14,46,47]	[48,49,50]
Devices for physical guidance of cells	Confine or guide cells for their high-resolution microscopy	Observing the immune response of individual NK cells, and screening of NK cell sub-populations	[51,52,53,54]	[55,56,57,58,59,60,61,62,63,64,65,66,67,68,69]
Nanomaterials for the interaction with cells in 3D	Targeted delivery of controllably clustered ligands	Improving the specificity and efficacy of anti-tumor treatment	[70]	[71,72,73,74,75,76,77]
Nanodevices for the study of cell mechanical activity	Characterize forces applied by cells and its role in the cell immune function	Exploring mechanosensing in NK cells	[78,79,80,81,82,83,84,85,86,87,88,89]	[90]