Reviews & Analysis

Unrecycled post-consumer plastic waste is an enormous, growing problem. Chemical recycling to monomer (CRM) delivers recycled material without degradation in properties. This Review assesses the viability of commercial polymer CRM, the flourishing of CRM with new polymers and opportunities for the field.

Owing to their layered structure, the properties of 2D perovskites can be controlled by tuning their thickness. This Review surveys how fine-tuning the thickness of 2D perovskites from the sub-micrometre to the molecularly thin regime helps to optimize their electrical and optical properties for use in different applications.

Engineering the phase of metal nanocrystals while simultaneously achieving shape-controlled synthesis can enable new and desirable properties. This Review highlights the synthetic strategies for generating Ru nanocrystals with different crystal phases and surface structures, and outlines their implementation in catalytic applications.

Chiral hybrid organic–inorganic perovskites combine the remarkable optical, electrical and spintronic properties of perovskites with chirality. This Review systematically introduces the latest advances in chiral perovskites, surveys their structure–property relationships and details their chiroptical and ferroelectric applications.

Materials engineering enables the control of water–material interactions in solar vapour generators, which aim to efficiently utilize solar energy for the cost-effective production of clean water. This Review discusses material-design principles for solar evaporators, spanning from macrostructures to molecular configurations.

Over the past five years, advances in materials science, chemistry, engineering and artificial intelligence have yielded a new class of affordable image cytometers for automated single-cell phenotyping of scant samples. In this Review, these technologies are introduced and their potential molecular-diagnostic roles in resource-limited oncology settings are discussed.

To design and construct tissue adhesives tailored for site-specific actions, it is necessary to understand the interaction between the adhesive and the targeted tissue. In this Review, the development of adhesives for soft tissues is outlined, including discussions of in vivo properties and biocompatibility, as well as the key design criteria for accelerating their translation into clinical practice.

Molecular clusters can be used as tuneable, superatomic building blocks to create new functional materials. This Review outlines the synthesis and assembly of superatoms into superatomic crystals and the resulting collective material properties.

The complexity of biological tissue presents a challenge for engineering of mechanically compatible materials. In this Review, the stiffness of tissue components — from extracellular matrix and single cells to bulk tissue — is outlined, and how this understanding facilitates the engineering of materials with lifelike properties is discussed.

The scalable fabrication of perovskite solar cells and solar modules requires the development of new materials and coating methods. In this Review, we discuss solution-based and vapour-phase coating methods for large-area perovskite films and examine the progress in performance and the parameters affecting large-area coatings.

The valuable combination of disorder and non-metallic bonding gives rise to high-entropy ceramics. This Review explores the structures and chemistries of these versatile materials, and their applications in catalysis, water splitting, energy storage, thermoelectricity and thermal, environmental and wear protection.

Increasing demand for energy-storage systems will inevitably stress the Earth’s lithium supply; thus, the research focus is shifting towards other alkali and alkali earth metals. This Review compares and connects strategies to enable different multivalent and monovalent metal-ion battery anodes, including metal anodes and intercalation-based, alloy-based and conversion-reaction-based anodes.

Solid-state batteries based on electrolytes with low or zero vapour pressure provide a promising path towards safe, energy-dense storage of electrical energy. In this Review, we consider the requirements and design rules for solid-state electrolytes based on inorganics, organic polymers and organic–inorganic hybrids.

Fire endangers lives and property worldwide. Significant efforts are underway to develop flame-retardant surface treatments that minimize the weight added to a given object and preserve its intrinsic mechanical properties. This review summarizes the history and latest developments in flame-retardant treatments, as well as outlining the challenges ahead.

The preparation of multiphase nanodroplets has enabled the fabrication of emulsions with novel structures and functions for nanomaterials design and formulation. In this Review, the strategies and challenges to produce, stabilize and characterize such multiple nanoemulsions are discussed, as well as the applications they enable.

Compounds that adopt the ReO₃-type structure, like their perovskite counterparts, are both numerous and wide ranging in their chemistries and their properties. In this Review, the similarities between the subfamilies of this exciting class of materials are illustrated, showing that often the materials are more alike than they are different.

Resistive switching materials enable novel, in-memory information processing, which may resolve the von Neumann bottleneck. This Review focuses on how the switching mechanisms and the resultant electrical properties lead to various computing applications.

Multifunctional materials are critical to enable next-generation implantable and wearable photonic healthcare devices. This Review examines these emerging materials and discusses the path for their clinical translation, along with the future research directions for the field, particularly regarding mobile healthcare and personalized medicine.