Volume 6 Issue 11, November 2021

Service activities are critical in the pursuit of a more equitable and inclusive academic environment. We must ensure that the efforts required by these activities are properly recognized through rebalancing the academic workload, such that service is not provided at the expense of career progression.

Scientists have reacted to COVID-19 restrictions by organizing virtual seminars and journal clubs to maintain engagement. The authors reflect on their experiences and lessons learned from organizing such initiatives and highlight how, far from being temporary substitutes of in-person counterparts, they can help foster more diverse, inclusive and environmentally friendly scientific exchange.

An article in Nature Chemistry reports a tip-manipulated approach to build custom nanoarchitectures on a surface by activating, orienting and coupling together individual building blocks.

An article in Scientific Data reports a universal application programming interface that can be implemented across a range of materials databases, giving researchers standardized access to materials science data.

An article in Nature reports the observation of the quantum anomalous Hall effect in freestanding bilayer graphene.

Low-nuclearity catalysts incorporating supported metal atoms or small clusters on appropriately tailored carriers are growing in diversity and have great potential in catalysis. This Review examines progress in their synthesis and characterization towards the atomically precise design of high-performing new architectures.

Metal halide perovskites (MHPs) have substantial potential for solar cell applications. This Review critically assesses recent advances in elucidating the physical and chemical activity of defects in both high-bandgap and low-bandgap MHPs, and correlates it to performance and stability losses.

Inorganic–polymer composites have emerged as viable solid electrolytes for the mass production of solid-state batteries. In this Review, we examine the properties and design of inorganic–polymer composite electrolytes, discuss the processing technologies for multilayer and multiphase composite structures, and outline the challenges of integrating composite electrolytes into solid-state batteries.

Sodium batteries are promising candidates for mitigating the supply risks associated with lithium batteries. This Review compares the two technologies in terms of fundamental principles and specific materials, and assesses the performance of commercial prototype sodium cells.

Rechargeable Li metal batteries are currently limited by electrolyte decomposition and rapid Li consumption. Li plating and stripping greatly depend on the solid electrolyte interphase formed at the Li metal–liquid electrolyte interface. This Review discusses the reactions occurring at this interface from a corrosion science perspective, highlighting the requirements for an ideal passivation layer.

Myriad complex colloidal particles have been engineered to investigate the growth of microscopic architectures from the bottom up. This Review provides a framework for the synthesis of such particles using an analogy to traditional total synthesis, describing how elementary particles are combined and transformed into new forms of colloidal matter.