Hydrogels are promising in various fields, but improving their mechanical properties is critical for certain applications. This Review comprehensively explores design principles to construct hydrogels with superior mechanical strength, toughness and fatigue resistance, and discusses self-growing and self-reinforced hydrogels.

Nonlinear optical interactions can be substantially enhanced by the wavelength-scale confinement in integrated photonics, providing transformative capabilities for controlling, enhancing and manipulating material nonlinearities in miniaturized platforms. In this Review, we outline the design principles that harness the potential of nonlinear optical materials on integrated platforms and their utility in applications including broadband frequency conversion, frequency-comb generation, quantum light sources and nonlinear optical quantum logic gates.

Harvesting freshwater from the air using water sorption materials is an innovative strategy to address water scarcity. This Review offers a multiscale perspective to design the next generation of sorption-based atmospheric water harvesting technology by bridging materials innovations to device realization and provides practical guidelines to understand its real-world impact.

Moiré materials are a versatile and tunable platform that offers a wide variety of lattice constants, energy scales and symmetries, leading to a rich interplay of electron correlations and topology. This Review summarizes recent breakthroughs in topological and Berry physics in moiré materials.

Developing circuits for flexible and stretchable devices demands not only high performance but also reliable and predictable components, such as organic thin-film transistors. High-throughput characterization is required to build reliable structure–property relationships, which are critical for the commercialization of new materials.

Disabled scientists are under-represented in STEM and face additional barriers at all career stages. The DisabledInSTEM mentoring programme provides support, an opportunity to learn from others and a sense of community to empower disabled scientists and help them succeed in their careers.

An article in Nature Energy reports an epitaxial entropy-assisted oxide coating strategy to suppress the propagation of structural fatigue in ultrahigh-Ni cathodes while maintaining desired ion transport capacity.

An article in Nature Communications describes a straightforward strategy to synthesize chemically recyclable polytrithiocarbonates with diverse structures.

An article in Nature Communications presents a method for the nanoscale integration of metal atoms with elastomeric chains, leading to stretchable conductors that are environmentally resilient.

Interdisciplinary strategies bridging oncology, neuroscience, bioelectronics and materials science will facilitate the development of next-generation therapies and devices for cancers of the central nervous system.