Volume 7 Issue 7, July 2022

An article in Nature Communications reports a wireless theranostic contact lens that can sense and treat the onset of glaucoma.

An article in Nature Materials uses entropy engineering to fabricate capacitors with high energy density.

An article in Nature Materials sheds light on the mechanisms underlying dendrite formation in solid-state batteries and shows that a well-chosen metallic interlayer at the electrode–electrolyte interface can mitigate dendrite growth.

An article in Angewandte Chemie International Edition finds that a frozen environment can accelerate the degradation of microplastics.

Defects have a key role in determining the functionality of solids and can make them powerful catalysts. This Review examines defect chemistry in metal oxides and discusses the role that charged defects and polarons have in enabling photoelectrochemical reactions.

Layered oxide compounds with anion redox are among the most promising positive electrode materials for next-generation Li-ion batteries. In this Review, we discuss the thermodynamics and kinetics of the proposed redox mechanisms, and the implications of these mechanisms for designing engineering strategies to achieve stable anion redox.

Polymer materials that can reorganize over time or under specific conditions have enormous advantages over static polymer networks. This Review discusses the many classes of molecular bonding motifs used to introduce dynamicity to polymer materials and outlines the design rules for engineering the interaction timescales for desired applications.

Inflammation plays a central role in our body’s response to injury or infection. If dysregulated, inflammatory responses can lead to chronic inflammation and the development of inflammatory diseases. This Review discusses biomaterials-based anti-inflammatory therapies, including scavenging, blockage and drug delivery strategies.

Memristors are devices that possess materials-level complex dynamics that can be used for computing, such that each memristor can functionally replace elaborate digital circuits. This Review surveys novel material properties that enable complex dynamics and new computing architectures that offer dramatically greater computing efficiency than conventional computers.