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Ever since the designation of 1959 as World Refugee Year, the United Nations has used the concept of the International Year to draw public attention to issues and areas of worldwide importance. While the topics singled out for special recognition by the UN typically embrace societal concerns such as population (1974), human rights (1967) and peace (1986), overtly scientific topics have also been the subject of UN International years, with physics (2005), outer space (1992) and health and medical research (1961) being prime examples.

This year sees chemistry in the limelight, with 2011 being declared the International Year of Chemistry (IYC) as part of a somewhat eclectic bundle of topics that also includes People of African Descent, Forests and six months of the International Year of Youth, which rather fittingly was too impatient to wait for the rest of the bunch and actually started celebrating half way through 2010.

It is perhaps surprising, and to chemists more than a little frustrating, that chemistry — often called ‘the central science’ owing to the crucial role it plays in the physical and natural sciences — suffers from widespread misunderstanding amongst non-scientists. The word ‘chemicals’ illustrates the general bad press surrounding the discipline. The word is variously (mis)used to mean substances that are either toxic in some way towards the environment or human health, or which have as yet unknown but potentially life-threatening properties and that are, in any case, best avoided. Despite a crucial impact on sciences ranging from archeology to zoology, the role of chemistry has thus consistently been misjudged by the general public over the years. The International Year of Chemistry prospectus outlines a wide variety of national and international activities scheduled for the next 12 months “to celebrate the achievements of chemistry and its contributions to the well-being of humankind” — an initiative that represents an excellent opportunity for chemists to reach out to the general public and try and improve the general perception of the field.

The breadth of areas involving chemistry is well reflected by the wide variety of events planned throughout the year. The list can be found on the IYC website (www.chemistry2011.org) and is not yet exhaustive as everyone is encouraged to organize their own activities. Many of the events listed are of direct interest to those involved in the materials sciences, which have always nurtured a close relationship with chemistry, both topics benefitting from a significant overlap between the two disciplines. As the IYC prospectus puts it, “humankind’s understanding of the material nature of our world is grounded in our knowledge of chemistry”.

The strong connection between chemistry and materials science is reflected in the research highlights published on the NPG Asia Materials website (www.natureasia.com/asia-materials) since 2008, and the peer-reviewed field reviews that first appeared in the journal in October 2009. From supramolecular materials to conjugated polymers, from graphene or carbon nanotubes to metal oxides, the properties of materials that are ultimately of interest to practical applications are often determined — and thus tuned — at the molecular level.

The reviews published in this issue of NPG Asia Materials also echo the connection between chemistry and materials sciences in terms of the relationship between structure and properties of a material. In the first review on page 17, Bansi Malhotra and colleagues from the National Physical Laboratory of the Council of Scientific Industrial Research in New Delhi, India, discuss how metal oxides show promise as supporting matrices for biosensing applications. By altering the metal oxide nanostructure — for example through the use of a particular synthetic process, by introducing spikes at the nanoscale to modify surface morphology or through the tuning of composition by doping additional nanoparticles — materials scientists can endow these materials with the desired properties for the recognition of particular bioagents and diagnostic applications.

Following this, Seung-Man Yang, Gi-Ra Yi and colleagues from KAIST and Chungbuk National University in Korea and Harvard University in the USA consider how photonic crystals formed by colloidal self-assembly can be used for applications such as optical devices or biosensors (see page 25). They show that that these characteristics can be readily modified by disturbing the self-assembly through the application of external stimuli.

Finally, on page 34, Hon K. Tsang and colleagues from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, China, present recent advances in the engineering of photonic devices based on silicon. Silicon is widely used in the area of electronics, and using it to construct photonic devices would mean that different types could be more easily coupled together, thus paving the way for the development of more complex and efficient devices.

As well as being the International Year of Chemistry, 2011 also marks the fourth year of NPG Asia Materials and the third year of publication of review articles in the journal, which first appeared in October 2009.

In this, the first issue of volume 3 of NPG Asia Materials, we are happy to be publishing reviews that reflect the interplay between chemistry and materials science. They are just one more reason why materials scientists can fully embrace the celebrations of IYC 2011. Now is a good time to think about future directions, and attract scientists, students and the general public to our field.