Reviews & Analysis

Amorphous materials are increasingly central components of key technologies, but their structures remain challenging to study. This Perspective highlights how recent advances in computational materials modelling and artificial intelligence are now bringing the ‘design’ of amorphous materials within reach.

A junction between an ionic conductor and an electronic conductor is called non-faradaic if no electrochemical reaction takes place. Such a junction can be used to sense various environmental signals, including pressure, sound, temperature and chemicals. This Review discusses non-faradaic junction sensors, with emphasis on the development of devices and materials.

The need for materials with hard-to-combine properties has spurred advancements in bioinspired nanostructures. They are difficult to replicate because they combine order and disorder. Their properties are also difficult to predict because of abundance of interfaces. This Perspective suggests using a quantitative framework based on interface chemistry and Taylor series to accelerate materials design, integrating theory, simulations and machine learning for optimizing materials with multiscale architectures.

Inspired by biological systems, artificial vision technologies have advanced considerably, particularly with the development of curved image sensors, which improve visual data capture, and neuromorphic optoelectronics, which enable efficient in-sensor processing. This Review provides a comprehensive discussion of current nanomaterial-based biomimetic optoelectronics.

Binding energy referencing is critical for the reliability of chemical analysis performed by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. This Perspective discusses the essential concepts related to this procedure and formulates the criteria for the ultimate charge reference, using them to expose problems with the existing referencing methods with the goal of stimulating the development of new approaches.

Organic two-dimensional crystals represent a versatile toolkit for exploring intriguing electronic and quantum phenomena. This Review discusses the structure–property relationships and synthetic methods of these materials, highlighting their electronic and quantum properties and emerging device applications.

Ligand-protected metal nanoclusters, with their molecule-like structures and properties, represent the molecular state of metal materials. This Review examines what is currently possible in their precise synthesis — from size control at the molecular level to composition and morphology control at the atomic level.

Tissue-like bioelectronics offer seamless integration with the human body, with 2D materials such as graphene being ideal for creating ultrathin interfaces with biological tissues. This Perspective covers the properties of 2D materials relevant to bioelectronics, showcases examples of their use in tissue and organ interfacing, and outlines future development directions and challenges in the field.

Tissue biomechanics provides essential biological information that is important for various biomedical applications. This Review discusses the potential of conformable electronic devices for decoding tissue biomechanics, focusing on different decoding principles, data analysis methods and relevant application examples.

Digital electronics capable of operating at elevated temperatures are gaining importance in aerospace, space and geothermal energy as well as oil and gas exploration. This Review presents recent advances and future outlook on critical materials and devices for the same.

CRISPR–Cas9 technology is a powerful tool for immune cell engineering. Ex vivo editing has progressed to clinical trials, but in vivo applications are still limited owing to delivery challenges. This Review summarizes these challenges as well as strategies and progress in delivering CRISPR–Cas9 to immune and non-immune cells.

High-entropy materials leverage phase stabilization through mixing several elements and are primarily known for their mechanical strength and high toughness. This Review explores their use as a platform for multifunctional material design, in which several, even conflicting, properties can be reconciled because of the compositional tolerance inherent in the high-entropy concept, including electronic, magnetic, mechanical, catalytic, thermal expansion and hydrogen storage properties.

Sorption-based atmospheric water harvesting offers a potential solution to address global water scarcity. This Review provides a framework for guiding future designs of sorbent materials through understanding key sorption characteristics — capacity, enthalpy, kinetics and stability — derived from the thermodynamic analysis of the interactions among hygroscopic salts, water and salt solutions.

Inorganic lithium superionic conductors are central to the development of solid-state batteries, but the availability of practical superionic conductors is still limited. This Review highlights structural and chemical strategies to enhance ionic conductivity and maps a strategic approach to discover, design and optimize fast lithium-ion conductors for safe and high-energy-density all-solid-state batteries.

To meet the physical demands of a new environment, organisms evolve morphological and behavioural adaptations that specialize their locomotor performance to that niche. This Perspective discusses how robots can emulate — and perhaps even exceed — biological levels of adaptability through shape-morphing mechanisms and complementary control strategies to achieve compressed, rapid and reversible ‘evolution on demand’.

This Perspective proposes nine performance metrics for the assessment of the functionality of shape-morphing devices across material, device and system levels and introduces a mathematical method for evaluating the surface complexity and standard surfaces for assessing the programmability of shape-morphing devices, offering benchmarks for this growing field.

Non-collinear antiferromagnets with chiral spin textures exhibit unexpected charge and spin transport effects with potential applications in spintronics, from magnetic random access memories to racetrack memories and beyond. This Review discusses non-collinear antiferromagnetic materials, their distinctive properties and potential applications.

Artificial intelligence (AI)-based methods continue to make inroads into accelerated materials design and development. This Review focuses on AI-enabled advances in polymer informatics, highlighting practical design protocols and exemplar applications in energy and sustainability, while also addressing challenges to industrial adoption.

Additives are essential to the diverse use of plastics, yet pose risks to health and recycling quality. Collaboration across supply chains, disclosure of composition and risks, and improved additive design can enable more sustainable plastics.

Dielectric breakdown is a major reliability issue in electronic devices. This Review discusses the data and knowledge accumulated from experimental and theoretical studies of dielectric breakdown in different insulating materials, with a focus on phenomenological models and novel computational approaches.