Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Volume 8 Issue 9, September 2023

Sodium-ion batteries (SIBs) are an emerging type of sustainable battery, but for them to be environmentally viable they need to be recycled. Strategies to recycle spent SIBs should be taken into account already during the initial stages of commercialization to ensure that SIBs are designed for ease of recycling, efficiency and low operation costs. The cover image shows schematic illustrations of a qualified and a spent SIB. See Yun Zhao et al.

Image adapted from Yun Zhao et al., Nature Reviews Materials. Cover design: Charlotte Gurr.

Volume 8 Issue 9

Subscribe

Comment

  • Active learning and automation will not easily liberate humans from laboratory workflows. Before they can really impact materials research, artificial intelligence systems will need to be carefully set up to ensure their robust operation and their ability to deal with both epistemic and stochastic errors. As autonomous experiments become more widely available, it is essential to think about how to embed reproducibility, reconfigurability and interoperability in the design of autonomous labs.

    • Zhichu Ren
    • Zekun Ren
    • Ju Li
    Comment

    Advertisement

  • Nature provides an endless source of inspiration for advanced materials, fuelled by evolutionary innovations over many millions of years. Capitalizing on this wealth of biological solutions requires an approach to materials innovation that is informed by a holistic understanding of multi-functional biological systems and leverages the defining feature of the natural world — diversity.

    • Devi Stuart-Fox
    • Leslie Ng
    • Gregory S. Watson
    Comment
Top of page ⤴

Research Highlights

  • An article in Nano Letters presents a method to transfer metallic nanopatterns to soft matter such as tissues or single cells.

    • Charlotte Allard
    Research Highlight
Top of page ⤴

Reviews

  • Although perovskite solar cells now have competitive efficiencies compared with silicon solar cells, their low stability has hindered their commercial application thus far. This Review summarizes the tremendous improvements made over the past decade and offer a perspective on how to reach >25-year stable perovskite solar cells.

    • Hongwei Zhu
    • Sam Teale
    • Osman M. Bakr
    Review Article

  • UV photodetectors based on low-dimensional wide-bandgap semiconductors offer wearable, multidimensional and intelligent functions in the scenarios of imaging, communication, multispectral and/or weak light detection and flexible electronics. This Review focuses on the material design, dimensionality engineering and device engineering of wide-bandgap semiconductors in diversified UV applications.

    • Ziqing Li
    • Tingting Yan
    • Xiaosheng Fang
    Review Article

  • Combining poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):polystyrene sulfonate (PEDOT:PSS) with 3D-printing techniques enables the customization of compliant conductive materials for soft robotics, towards the goal of merging humans and robots. This Review discusses the fundamentals of 3D-printed PEDOT:PSS for soft robotics, from printable ink design and evaluation to printing strategies and promising soft robotic systems.

    • Jinhao Li
    • Jie Cao
    • Guoying Gu
    Review Article
Top of page ⤴

Perspectives

  • Sodium-ion batteries (SIBs), an emerging type of sustainable battery, still need to be recycled for environmental and economic reasons. Strategies to recycle spent SIBs should be made during the initial stages of commercialization to ensure that SIBs are designed for ease of recycling, efficiency and low operation costs. This Perspective article summarizes the material components of SIBs, discusses strategies for their recycling and outlines the associated challenges and future outlook of SIB recycling.

    • Yun Zhao
    • Yuqiong Kang
    • Baohua Li
    Perspective
Top of page ⤴

Search

Advanced search

Quick links