Themed collection 2023 Materials Horizons Most Popular Articles

Bridging the gap between academia and industry in plastic recycling will accelerate innovation and deployment toward solving the global challenge of plastic waste management and establishing net zero carbon society.

Here, we introduce bio-piezoelectric platforms from the perspective of antitumor therapy, review their recent applications as nanomedicines and carriers in tumor diagnosis and treatment, and discuss future challenges and opportunities.

Novel carbon materials with grafted high-entropy alloying quintuple nanoparticles exhibit multifunctionality in seawater splitting, including catalysis for hydrogen evolution reactions, oxygen evolution reactions, and chlorine evolution reactions.

A scalable, two-step synthesis facilitates the preparation of a polymer library of varying side chain and co-monomer, enabling rapid photovoltaic device screening. FO6-T emerged as the optimal donor achieving 15.4% PCE with L8BO as the acceptor.

A strong and ductile polyurethane adhesive with mechano-responsive characteristics is synthesized to exceptionally show the different phenomenon of only interfacial failure yet still exhibiting superior adhesive strength and toughness.

A kirigami-inspired smart window is presented with a solar/radiative cooling dual-control function and improved durability. It is promising for building energy saving and outperforms state-of-the-art dual-regulation smart windows in the literature.

Rigid ladder-type conjugated polymers enable the development of stable and high-performance organic electrochemical transistors (OECTs) and complementary OECT-based amplifiers for brain-inspired artificial neurons.

Our study demonstrates the significant role of phonons in the transient band gap renormalization of MAPbBr₃ single crystals following photoexcitation, in addition to the well-known contribution of photo-generated hot carriers.

The developed highly efficient and versatile organocatalyst can deconstruct multiple condensation polymers selectively and sequentially into corresponding monomers, while keeping other polymers such as polyolefins or cotton intact.

We present a generalisable methodology based on fluorescent non-covalent mechanophores for producing quantitative maps of local strain around defects within three-dimensional polymeric matrices.

Chitosan/poly(vinyl alcohol) hydrogels with high adhesion of up to 527 kPa due to the synergy of phytic acid and boric acid. The hydrogel-based strain sensor has high sensitivity (gauge factor = 4.61) and wide linear strain range (up to 1000%).

Soft-hard interface has been developed by introducing conducting polymer hydrogels to improve the cycling electrochemical deionization performance of Prussian blue analogues.

Electrical doping of metal halide perovskites (MPHs) is a key step towards the use of this efficient and cost-effective semiconductor class in modern electronics.

Living probiotics secrete bioactive substances to accelerate wound healing, but the clinical application of antibiotics inhibits the survival of probiotics.

The liquid metal hydrogel with multiple physical cross-links possesses super-stretchability, notch resistance, self-healing properties, and photothermal properties, which give it the potential for human–computer interaction and infrared camouflage.

Anomalously abrupt nucleation and growth kinetics in polarization switching of wurtzite ferroelectrics are demonstrated. The anomaly inspires an extension of the traditional model to a regime that simultaneous non-linear nucleation and growth occur.

Large-scale computer simulations of layered covalent-organic frameworks reveal temporal and spatial fluctuations that can be described as zigzag disorder.

A tough adhesive hydrogel composed of cellulose nanofibril, poly acrylic-acid with a tight hydrogen-bond network is realized via turning the perceived intrinsic flaws of sweat into merits, showing great potential in self-powered e-skins.

A physical crosslinked thermochromic smart hydrogel demonstrated easy fabrication, improved anti-freezing and good structural integrity across phase transition, to be used in smart windows, sensing, camouflage, etc.

Morphological modification by DIO additive facilitates charge generation in the bulk of Y6, suppresses the bimolecular recombination, which results in an increased J_SC and FF of single component Y6 solar cells.

Illustration of improved solar absorption capabilities of transparent 3D lattice structured electrodes compared to conventional flatbed electrodes for photoelectrochemical water electrolysis.

A simple yet powerful strategy of carrying out free radical polymerization of methacrylate monomers using a MOF-based initiator. The obtained composites maintain high catalytic activity towards a chemical warfare agent (CWA) simulant.

We report a new paradigm, via a decoupled approach, in the design of acousto-mechanical multifunctional metamaterials.