Reviews & Analysis

Moisture-sorption-based energy harvesting (MSEH) is a promising strategy for obtaining heat, cold and electricity from ubiquitous moisture anywhere and anytime. This Perspective article discusses the thermodynamic characteristics of MSEH, evaluates global energy production potential and highlights challenges and strategies for realizing high-energy-productivity MSEH.

Multijunction solar cells can overcome the fundamental efficiency limits of single-junction devices. This Perspective article highlights tandem solar cells based on a wide-gap perovskite and a narrow-gap organic subcell, which could achieve efficiencies beyond 30% and can be produced without large carbon emissions.

Single-atom catalysts benefit from metal–support interactions that enable the support to be directly involved in the reaction, accelerating specific mechanistic steps to obtain unique electrocatalytic properties. This Review discusses state-of-the-art techniques for synthesizing active co-catalytic single-atom structures and explores the design strategies that enhance their catalytic performance.

Immunotherapy represents an important advance in cancer treatment, yet faces challenges owing to lack of precise control, leading to systemic effects and suboptimal results for patients. This Review explores how responsive biomaterials can enhance cancer immunotherapies by responding to various internal and external stimuli to regulate the delivery and behaviour of therapeutic agents, thereby improving efficacy and reducing toxicity in treatment methods such as cancer vaccines, T cell-based therapies and sustained delivery systems.

Current technologies of bioinspired and neuromorphic electronics still lack a universal framework for integration into everyday life. This Perspective highlights how bioinspired electronics with soft electrochemical matter based on organic mixed conductors can potentially enable the integration of diverse forms of intelligence everywhere.

Incorporating in the curriculum active learning and project-based teaching, assuming minimal prior knowledge and emphasizing the real-world relevance of the covered topics result in better learning outcomes and help engage a more diverse group of students. In this Viewpoint, five educators who have been involved in reimagining undergraduate teaching in materials science and engineering share their insights and perspective.

Mucosal vaccines are critical in the fight against mucosal pathogens because they enable the immune system to directly neutralize these pathogens at their primary site of entry. This Review examines the role of material design in addressing the challenges associated with mucosal vaccine delivery.

Ultra-high temperature ceramics (UHTCs), with their exceptionally high melting points and outstanding thermomechanical behaviour, are critical materials for extreme environment technologies. This Review establishes the key UHTC composition–synthesis–property relations and discusses the design of UHTCs for application in extreme environments.

Advances in photoactive-layer materials have contributed to the increase in the performance of organic solar cells. This Review summarizes the types of materials used in the photoactive layer of solution-processed organic solar cells, discusses the advantages and disadvantages of combinations of different materials and considers molecular design strategies for future development.

Broken symmetries at the nanoscale can greatly modify the emergent nanophotonic responses enabled by phonon polaritons. This Review discusses how lowering the degree of symmetry in natural and artificial materials gives rise to a wide spectrum of low-loss, directional, confined light–matter quasiparticles.

Incorporating fluorine into battery components can improve the energy density, safety and cycling stability of rechargeable batteries. This Review explores the broad use of fluorinated compounds in battery design, examines the relationship between their chemical structure and battery performance and discusses the challenges and opportunities of fluorinated batteries within the present regulatory framework.

Carbon nanotubes are used in a growing number of applications, but recent European Union actions propose to ban them. This Perspective highlights gaps in knowledge regarding potential safety and environmental risks throughout the life cycle of carbon nanotubes and provides a framework to inform policy decisions.

Vapour-phase deposition holds promise for synthesizing two-dimensional layered chalcogenides that are intriguing for fundamental research and emerging technological applications. This Review summarizes the advancements and future opportunities for translating this synthesis approach from laboratory to manufacturing scale.

Methylammonium-free wide-bandgap metal halide perovskites are attractive for tandem photovoltaics but routinely perform worse than their methylammonium-containing counterparts. This Review discusses the factors contributing to their constrained performance, progress made in these tandem devices and promising strategies for their continued development.

Electrons in strongly interacting materials can flow collectively, exhibiting hydrodynamic phenomena such as viscous flow. This Review highlights recent experimental advances, including high-quality materials growth, that have enabled these observations and surveys the spatially resolved theoretical frameworks necessary to interpret and predict these phenomena.

Organic photovoltaics show promising efficiencies and attractive properties, but their commercialization is limited by their poor operational stabilities. In this Perspective, the authors examine how bottom-up molecular design can be applied to organic semiconducting materials to achieve improved device stability.

Owing to their suitable and tunable optoelectronic properties, regulation-compliant InP-based colloidal quantum dots have attracted considerable academic and industrial interest for visible and near-infrared photonics. This Review covers the fundamentals, the design, the fabrication and the many applications of this class of materials, highlighting current challenges and future prospects.

Phosphors are important for optimizing the energy efficiency and colour quality of modern light-emitting diode light bulbs and displays. This Perspective article discusses the optical properties required for a phosphor to be viable for commercialization and the synthetic and data-driven methods that have been developed to accelerate the discovery of phosphor materials with these properties.

Lightwave electronics could enable the control of interactions in quantum materials and provide access to the quantum phases and quantum information of condensed-matter systems. This Review discusses the fundamental concepts of lightwave electronics and outlines key advances and potential applications.

The interactions between macrophages and endothelial cells are regulated by microenvironmental cues in the extracellular matrix. This Perspective highlights recent advances in using biomaterials as extracellular matrix to mimic macrophage–endothelium niches and to regulate cell fate in tissue homeostasis and disease progression.