Reviews & Analysis

Spintronic devices for artificial intelligence hardware can bridge the gap between neuroscience and electronics. Here we discuss the dynamics of such devices, enabling neural and synaptic functionalities, alongside a cross-layer approach — from devices to circuits and systems — for efficient neural computing systems.

This Review showcases the research progress and prospects of spintronic logic, which encodes information using spin and magnetism. Focusing on five exemplary types, we discuss the promise, challenges and future research directions in the context of high-performance computing needs.

Advances in electrokinetics enable high-throughput microsystems integrating fluid dynamics and electric field forces to manipulate bioparticles. This Review covers fundamental phenomena, existing technologies, challenges and future directions in the development of electrokinetic microdevices for diagnostics and healthcare.

Automated face recognition systems are widely adopted in different operational systems, ranging from authentication with smart personal devices to access control and forensics. This Perspective analyses the critical challenges and proposed solutions for the optimized use of these recognition systems.

This Review provides an overview of haptic perception principles and rendering strategies developed for wearable haptics solutions. The Review then revises the scientific literature regarding emerging actuators and device prototypes, and their applications in innovative scenarios focused on, but not limited to, virtual reality (VR).

Low-Earth orbit constellations and their potential to connect the unconnected are at the forefront of the new space era. This work provides an overview of the low-Earth orbit broadband communications and their integration with 5G and 6G cellular networks.

This Perspective discusses the status and challenges of remote epitaxy technology towards industrialization of wide bandgap semiconductors for the future electronics.

This Review discusses system technology co-optimization across the technology–hardware–software stack to guide broader research and development efforts towards the realization of future heterogeneously integrated computing systems.

This Review resolves the age-old problems of Galvani’s irritability, the Hodgkin–Huxley ‘all-or-none’ mystery, the Turing instability and the Smale paradox, by applying the findings in 2023 that memristors operating on the ‘edge of chaos’ can model the nonlinear dynamics of these problems, complementing the second law of thermodynamics.

This Review examines fundamental principles and recent breakthroughs in X-ray detection and imaging technologies, with a focus on the interplay between electrical engineering techniques and materials science.

Organic photovoltaics are flexible, lightweight and widely applicable, but they face commercialization challenges owing to stability and fabrication issues. This Review explores progress and technological bottlenecks in material innovation, morphology control, device stability and large-scale module fabrication for commercial use.

Graph neural networks (GNNs) are an important technology for electrical engineering, physics, materials science and biology. This Review discusses how GNNs can help these research fields and how electrical engineering can resolve the technical challenges of GNNs.

Soft robots are evolving to perform increasingly complex tasks, with biomimicry having a fundamental role in their development. This Review details biomimetic strategies and pivotal advances in sensors, actuators and applications of intelligent soft robotics.

This Review examines the unique electronic properties of semi-metals and their microelectronics applications, highlighting recent advancements, challenges and future prospects for semi-metal-based technologies in logic, memory, interconnects and high-frequency devices.

This Review examines the latest advances in non-destructive operando characterization techniques and their potential to improve our comprehension of degradation mechanisms and enhance battery performance during the manufacturing process, utilization and at the end of life.

Polymeric insulating materials are crucial for high-voltage electrical equipment. This Review describes the insulation failure mechanisms of polymeric insulating materials used in high-voltage applications, introduces ways to improve insulating performance and discusses the open challenges and future development directions.

This Perspective highlights the design concepts, fabrication strategies and recent achievements in textile displays, including promising applications, advances in luminescent materials, design of device interfaces, development of display modules, integration of displaying systems and the remaining challenges.

Wind-driven triboelectric nanogenerators have the potential to revolutionize wind energy harvesting technologies. This Review analyses developments, costs and challenges of wind-driven triboelectric nanogenerators and evaluates research directions towards industrial applications.

The application of generative artificial intelligence to mobile devices has the potential to enable integrated, personalized, contextually aware experiences. However, the computational energy demand is challenging. This Perspective article introduces an intelligent mobile edge computing paradigm for the implementation of generative artificial intelligence on the Internet of Things system.

Quantum dot light-emitting diodes (QD-LEDs) are attractive for display and lighting applications. Precise understanding of their operational and degradation mechanisms will greatly promote the commercialization of this technology. This Review summarizes the key understanding and remaining challenges of QD-LEDs.