Themed collection Journal of Materials Chemistry C Recent Review Articles

In this Highlight, we present a recent advance in near-infrared LEDs based on electroluminescence from lanthanide-doped fluoride nanoparticles. We review the mechanisms and propose future directions for materials, devices, and applications.

Various doping strategies have been explored to improve the properties of CuSCN and continue to enhance the performance of CuSCN-based electronic and photonic devices. The underlying mechanisms and technological advancements are summarized herein.

Functionalizing organic RTP materials widens their scope and endows them with immense applicability across diverse fields. These functionalities can either be intrinsic or transductive, with multiple design strategies preferring polymeric systems.

This perspective highlights micro/nanofluidic ion-based memristors across aqueous, polymer, and ionic liquid electrolytes, linking fundamental ion transport to brain-inspired computing applications and future hybrid arrays.

In this perspective, we summarize recent advances in MXene-based composites for EMW absorption and reveal critical issues and highlight possible future research directions.

Development in circularly polarized organic light-emitting diodes (CP-OLEDs).

This overview presents AIEgens integrated with phthalocyanines and subphthalocyanines, summarizing how the conversion of aggregation-caused quenching to aggregation-induced emission-active systems enhances their emission-related applications.

A dimensionality-based taxonomy of high-sensitivity and linear-response EDL iontronic skins for healthcare, robotics, and human–machine interaction.

This review categorizes carbazole-based hosts into push-pull, symmetric, asymmetric, and special designs. We outline structure-function principles and future directions to achieve high efficiency and long-term stability in red-to-NIR OLEDs.

Innovative hole-injection layer materials play a crucial role in optimizing the energy-level alignment and enhancing the performance of multilayer organic optoelectronic devices.

This review highlights recent advances in 2D TMDs for dopamine sensing, focusing on various synthesis strategies, intrinsic properties, and sensing mechanism, while also outlining the key challenges and future research directions in this field.

Physical vapor deposited nanomaterials for gas sensing.

Comprehensive review of transient extreme ultraviolet spectroscopy for probing ultrafast charge dynamics in solid-state materials, highlighting element specificity and insights into charge localization, charge transfer, and many-body interactions.

The study of columnar liquid crystals (LCs) has historically been dominated by discotic molecules, where planar disc-shaped molecules stack into one-dimensional wires.

Biomass-based fibrous materials provide sustainable platforms for flexible electronics. This review highlights their structural design, fabrication strategies, and emerging applications in sensing, therapeutic electronics, and energy devices.

A structure–function coupling in MXene-based PTM is systematically revealed.

This review summarizes photo-responsive polymeric materials over the past three years based on host–guest interactions between azobenzene and molecular containers, categorized by polymerized component: azobenzene, molecular container, or both.

This article reviews the detailed synthesis, characterization, and applications of Ag₃SbS₃. It provides critical benchmarks, structure–property insights, and design strategies for improved photocatalytic, photovoltaic, and energy storage performance.

Nonlinear optical (NLO) materials underpin frequency conversion, ultrafast modulation, and light–matter control, yet conventional bulk crystals face practical constraints in tunability and integration.

Single crystals are attracting increased interest in photovoltaics research due to their superior material properties.

Hydrogen sensors are crucial for energy, industry, battery safety, healthcare, and aerospace. This review links material properties, sensing mechanisms, and design strategies for high-performance MOS hydrogen sensors.

Perovskite light-emitting diodes (PeLEDs) have emerged as a promising technology for next-generation displays.

Electrochromic materials have attracted extensive attention due to their ability to achieve rapid and reversible regulation of optical properties under low-voltage driving.

A comprehensive categorization of factors limiting OFET stability is presented, classifying degradation into two internal and five external pathways, with a structured overview of stabilization strategies across six key aspects.

Organic electron transport layers (ETLs) promote the development of perovskite solar cells. This review summarizes the research progress of five organic ETLs, analyzes structure-performance relationships, and existing challenges.

Polycrystalline SnSe thermoelectrics gain high performance via structural and microstructural optimization. The improved power factor and ZT endow them bright prospects for waste heat recovery in aviation and civilian fields.

Integrated diagnosis and treatment: metal–organic frameworks as an innovative platform for neurodegenerative diseases.

Alkali ions tune interface microenvironments for photothermal CO₂ conversion. A unified 3D framework elucidates cross-scale regulation across C, metal, semiconductor & insulator interfaces, enabling efficient conversion to multi-carbon products.

Wide and ultrawide bandgap semiconductors have emerged as a class of ultraviolet (UV) photosensitive semiconductors, displaying huge potential for internet of things, optical communications and imaging.

The roadmap for >20% efficient Si-PEDOT:PSS HSCs is presented, highlighting the role of interface engineering, light trapping mechanism, and surface passivation in overcoming PCE limits and stability challenges for flexible PVs and niche BIPVs.

Engineering molecular designs for organic near-infrared (NIR) emitters.

Alternative interconnect materials with short electron mean free paths can mitigate the resistivity size effect beyond Cu. Single-element, binary, ternary, and topological candidates are discussed with key integration challenges.

Deploying electrochemiluminescence (ECL) sensors beyond controlled laboratory settings remains a formidable challenge.

Common types of organic framework materials and their applications in conductivity, catalysis, adsorption, separation, and biomedicine.

A design-oriented review of bio-organic resistive switching memory, which highlights how material selection, interfaces, additives, processing, and electrical testing strategies influence the switching mechanism, stability, and device performance.

White light-emitting electrochemical cells (LECs) are advanced by rational emissive material design and device engineering that combine electrical and optical optimization.

Summarizing RRAM-enabled reservoir computing, linking device nonlinearity and volatile relaxation to fading-memory dynamics, covering wide and hybrid optical–RRAM architectures, discussing readout learning for hardware implementation.

Fluorescent probes, nanomaterials, and integrated platforms drive next-generation point-of-care diagnostics with enhanced brightness, stability, multiplexing, and portable sensing performance.

This review highlights recent advances in imidazole-based donor–π–acceptor fluorophores, emphasizing their structural design, photophysical properties, and multifunctional applications in optoelectronics and sensing.

Single-atom catalysts (SACs) have attracted wide interest in the field of gas sensing, owing to their high atomic utilization efficiency, distinctive electronic structures, and exceptional catalytic performance.

Growing demand for high-power, smart electronics drives air-sinterable copper paste development, addressing their oxidation and strict sintering issues. This work reviews its advances, applications and industrialization challenges.

This review summarizes CMP abrasive design, properties, removal mechanisms, optimization, applications, challenges, and future directions for balancing removal rate and surface quality in ultra-precise processing of hard-brittle materials.

This review summarizes the mechanisms, process and recent developments of dynamically regulating electromagnetic interference shielding materials through external stimuli (mechanical force, chemical reagents, heat, electricity, etc.).

Transient degradable electronics enabled by systems of conducting polymers and natural biopolymers.

An interfacial electric field strategy effectively enhances the performance of perovskite X-ray detectors.

This review summarizes the advances in visible-light-responsive metal (oxy)sulfides for artificial photosynthesis, highlighting key strategies that improve activity and durability in water splitting and CO₂ reduction towards scalable implementation.

This review categorizes elastic conductive textiles into three fabrication strategies: structural design, coating/deposition, and composite fiber approaches, analyzes mechanisms, compares trade-offs, and highlights emerging wearable applications.

Wearable devices in healthcare have garnered significant attention in recent years due to their flexibility, high biocompatibility, and small size, which enable them to predict and even modulate disease outcomes.

This paper reviews large-area metal paste sinter joining, focusing on the progress and challenges related to delamination, warpage, and reliability—findings that are crucial for the development of highly reliable power electronics.

Progress in flexible inorganic nanomaterials near-infrared photodetectors: work principles, materials, applications and challenges.

This review presents an overview of heterostructures integrating gallium oxide with 2D materials in the fields of logic functional transistors, ultraviolet photodetectors, flexible electronics, optoelectronic synapses, and memory devices.

This review explores how human–machine augmented intelligence is accelerating the OLED innovation pipeline—from material discovery to manufacturing process control.

The review summarizes advances in lanthanide upconverting luminescence from complexes and MOFs, addressing mechanisms, structure–property relationships, strategies, challenges, and opportunities for improving efficiency, stability, and applications.

Summary of the properties and biomedical applications of PVA-based composite hydrogels.

This review highlights the significant influence of molecular conformation on RTP effects, including the conformation-dependent RTP phenomenon, precise control of molecular conformation and dynamic regulation of molecular conformation.

This review explores the role of AFM in bridging nanoscale domain physics and intrinsic properties. We highlight how multimodal characterization and active manipulation serve as essential strategies for studying ferroelectric materials.

This review summarizes recent progress of double perovskite oxide half-metals (DPOHMs) for magnetic storage devices from experimental and theoretical aspects as well as their applications in MTJs, spin valves, and spin field-effect transistors.

In recent years, metal halide perovskites have gained research interest owing to the direct and tunable bandgaps, narrow bandwidth, and high carrier mobility, which are mainly driven by their potential application in the optoelectronics field.

Perovskite manganites exhibit unique phenomena such as phase diversity and colossal magnetoresistance (CMR), originating from the strong interplay between charge, spin, orbital, and lattice degrees of freedom.

This review examines nickel oxide (NiO_x) as a stable p-type hole injection/transport material for QLEDs, summarizing advances in synthesis, optimization, and device integration that enable the development of efficient, commercial QLEDs.

This paper reviews the preparation and piezo-optimization of flexible PZT films, notes their uses in wearables, and points to future research directions.

Multiple states and dynamics of polarization in ferroelectric materials provide nonlinearity and short-term memory, enabling state richness required for physical reservoir computing.

Application of polyurethane-based triboelectric electrical materials in medical health and tactile sensing.

This review summarises recent advances in perovskite nanocrystal LEDs, highlighting how synthesis, emission-colour design, device engineering, and patterning collectively enable high-efficiency electroluminescence from blue to near-infrared.