Artistic rendering illustrating the concept of reversible clamping strategies, such as in Lock-and-Play devices

Our March issue

Clamping strategies for organ-on-a-chip devices, reactions in single-molecule junctions, semitransparent organic photovoltaics & machine learning for a sustainable energy future.

Featured

  • Ternary organic solar cells adhere to a simple device fabrication strategy and are among the highest performing organic solar cells to date. This Review examines the multiple models of operation that have emerged for ternary cells, highlighting new insights and still-existing gaps in knowledge.

    • Marcella Günther
    • Negar Kazerouni
    • Tayebeh Ameri
    Review Article

  • Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are lipid-bound nanoscale mediators of intercellular communication. This Review discusses EVs in the context of the extracellular matrix, highlighting how the understanding of their interactions inspires materials design to control the release, retention and production of EVs for various biological and therapeutic applications.

    • Koushik Debnath
    • Kevin Las Heras
    • Jae-Won Shin
    Review Article

  • Getting diagnosed with a physically disabling illness in graduate school can be overwhelming and isolating. This article shares a researcher’s personal journey with such an experience, offering advice and encouragement to those facing similar challenges. By confronting the disease, the author found resilience and developed appreciation for life beyond work.

    • Xiaolin Liu
    Comment

  • Progress in biomimetics allows for the fabrication of man-made materials and surfaces with properties similar to biological ones. These advancements enable the development of a new generation of building materials for architecture that have remarkable properties typically unachievable with a traditional approach.

    • Anna Sandak
    Comment

Current issue

Volume 8 Issue 3
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Announcements

  • Conceptual illustration of an artificial leaf for solar fuel production

    Materials science plays a major role in the development of green technologies, which are key to address climate change. Our collection of articles highlights advances in batteries and energy storage, solar energy, catalysis and approaches to create a sustainable future.

  • Two faces looking at each other are overlaid on a neural network

    Plastics shape the modern world, but between their reliance on fossil fuels and their massive accumulation as waste, plastics are at the heart of a dual environmental crisis.

  • A colorful metal-organic framework

    Making the materials science community more inclusive is an important goal to work towards. This collection brings together articles discussing how the materials science community can become more inclusive, featuring action points and uncovering systemic problems underlying the current lack of diversity in academia and beyond.

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Latest Reviews & Analysis

    • Ternary organic solar cells adhere to a simple device fabrication strategy and are among the highest performing organic solar cells to date. This Review examines the multiple models of operation that have emerged for ternary cells, highlighting new insights and still-existing gaps in knowledge.

      • Marcella Günther
      • Negar Kazerouni
      • Tayebeh Ameri
      Review Article

    • Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are lipid-bound nanoscale mediators of intercellular communication. This Review discusses EVs in the context of the extracellular matrix, highlighting how the understanding of their interactions inspires materials design to control the release, retention and production of EVs for various biological and therapeutic applications.

      • Koushik Debnath
      • Kevin Las Heras
      • Jae-Won Shin
      Review Article

    • Exascale computers — supercomputers that can perform 1018 floating point operations per second — started coming online in 2022: in the United States, Frontier launched as the first public exascale supercomputer and Aurora is due to open soon; OceanLight and Tianhe-3 are operational in China; and JUPITER is due to launch in 2023 in Europe. Supercomputers offer unprecedented opportunities for modelling complex materials. In this Viewpoint, five researchers working on different types of materials discuss the most promising directions in computational materials science.

      • Choongseok Chang
      • Volker L. Deringer
      • Christopher M. Wolverton
      Viewpoint

    • Solution-processable semiconductors based on small molecules, polymers or halide perovskites combine sustainable manufacturing with exceptional optoelectronic properties that can be chemically tailored to achieve flexible and highly efficient optoelectronic and photonic devices. A new exciting research direction is the study of the influence of chirality on light–matter interactions in these soft materials and its exploitation for the simultaneous control of charge, spin and light. In this Viewpoint, researchers working on different types of chiral semiconductors discuss the most interesting directions in this rapidly expanding field.

      • Jeanne Crassous
      • Matthew J. Fuchter
      • Sascha Feldmann
      Viewpoint

    • The field of organic electronics has acknowledged that the key to process and device optimization is to elucidate the correlation between the active layer morphology and performance. This Review outlines how this can be achieved using accessible approaches from materials science and classical polymer thermodynamics.

      • Zhengxing Peng
      • Natalie Stingelin
      • Jasper J. Michels
      Review Article

News & Comment

  • Getting diagnosed with a physically disabling illness in graduate school can be overwhelming and isolating. This article shares a researcher’s personal journey with such an experience, offering advice and encouragement to those facing similar challenges. By confronting the disease, the author found resilience and developed appreciation for life beyond work.

    • Xiaolin Liu
    Comment

  • Progress in biomimetics allows for the fabrication of man-made materials and surfaces with properties similar to biological ones. These advancements enable the development of a new generation of building materials for architecture that have remarkable properties typically unachievable with a traditional approach.

    • Anna Sandak
    Comment

  • An article in Nature presents a conceptually new scanning probe microscope, called a quantum twisting microscope, which enables both momentum-resolved measurements and in situ tuning of the twist angle between 2D materials stacked on top of each other.

    • Giulia Pacchioni
    Research Highlight

  • Academia can offer a wonderful career path, but the power differentials at play in university life can turn promising careers into nightmares. Academic bullying is an age-old serious issue that affects people in a variety of positions across all branches of science. This Comment discusses how bullying slows the progress of science.

    • Morteza Mahmoudi
    Comment

  • A paper in Nature reports the observation of spin-polarized excitonic topological states in the topological insulator Bi2Te3.

    • Giulia Pacchioni
    Research Highlight

  • An article in Nature Communications reports a solvent-free electronic material that is as soft as biological tissue like the brain.

    • Ariane Vartanian
    Research Highlight

Collections

A colorful artistic impression of a metal-organic framework

Inclusivity in materials science

This collection brings together articles discussing how the materials science community can become more inclusive, featuring action points and uncovering systemic problems underlying the current lack of diversity in academia and beyond.
Collection

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