Aims & Scope

Nature Materials is a monthly multi-disciplinary journal aimed at bringing together cutting-edge research across the entire spectrum of materials science and engineering. Materials research is a diverse and fast-growing discipline, which has moved from a largely applied, engineering focus to a position where it has an increasing impact on other classical disciplines such as physics, chemistry and biology. Nature Materials covers all applied and fundamental aspects of the synthesis/processing, structure/composition, properties and performance of materials, where "materials" are identified as substances in the condensed states (liquid, solid, colloidal) designed or manipulated for technological ends.

Nature Materials provides a forum for the development of a common identity among materials scientists while encouraging researchers to cross established subdisciplinary divides. To achieve this, and strengthen the cohesion of the community, the journal takes an interdisciplinary, integrated and balanced approach to all areas of materials research while fostering the exchange of ideas between scientists involved in the different disciplines. Nature Materials is an invaluable resource for all scientists, in both academia and industry, who are active in the process of discovering and developing materials and materials-related concepts.

Nature Materials offers an engaging, informative and accessible product including papers of exceptional significance and quality in a discipline which promises to have great influence on the development of society in years to come.

Research areas covered in the journal

  • Engineering and structural materials (metals, alloys, ceramics, composites)
  • Organic and soft materials (glasses, colloids, liquid crystals, polymers)
  • Bio-inspired, biomedical and biomolecular materials
  • Optical, photonic and optoelectronic materials
  • Magnetic materials
  • Materials for electronics
  • Superconducting materials
  • Catalytic and separation materials
  • Materials for energy
  • Nanoscale materials and processes
  • Computation, modelling and materials theory
  • Surfaces and thin films
  • Design, synthesis, processing and characterization techniques

In addition to primary research, Nature Materials also publishes review articles, perspectives, news and views, commentaries, correspondence, interviews and analysis of the broader materials picture. In this way, the journal aims to be the voice of the worldwide materials science community.

Nature Materials offers readers and authors high visibility, access to a broad readership, high standards of copy editing and production, rigorous peer review, rapid publication, and independence from academic societies and other vested interests.