The field of self-assembly has moved far beyond early work, where the focus was primarily the resultant beautiful two- and three-dimensional structures, to a focus on forming materials and devices with important properties either otherwise not available, or only available at great cost. Over the last few years, materials with unprecedented electronic, photonic, energy-storage, and chemical separation functionalities were created with self-assembly, while at the same time, the ability to form even more complex structures in two and three dimensions has only continued to advance. Self-assembly crosscuts all areas of materials. Functional structures have now been realized in polymer, ceramic, metallic, and semiconducting systems, as well as composites containing multiple classes of materials. As the field of self-assembly continues to advance, the number of highly functional systems will only continue to grow and make increasingly greater impacts in both the consumer and industrial space.

Precise control of the life cycle of materials has become critical. Long-lasting materials are not always the best—for example, nondegradable plastic waste is now a serious environmental problem. Transient electronic devices have a prescribed life cycle in which all or part of the device can physically dissolve, disappear, or degrade after their utility ends. This concept creates compelling opportunities for biodegradable temporary, implantable electronics that do not require removal; environmentally benign biodegradable electronics with zero waste; and security hardware with on-time system destruction. Nanoscale materials provide new uses for transient materials dissolution by scaling up the rate of degradation; for example, a microscale Si single crystal is not dissoluble, but at around 100 nm, the Si single crystal dissolves in approximately one month. Significant advances have been made in exploring transient, water-soluble, and biodegradable nano-/micromaterials, and their degradation chemistry and kinetics. Advancing the state of the art in transient electronics requires contributions from many disciplines of materials science ranging from materials analysis to applications. This article outlines the history of transient electronics and briefly overviews concepts and issues from inorganic- and organic-based electronic materials, process technology, and energy devices to trigger transient electronics.

Living organisms have engineered remarkable protein-based materials through billions of years of evolution. These multifunctional materials have unparalleled mechanical, optical, and electronic properties and have served as inspiration for scientists to study and mimic these natural protein materials. New tools from synthetic biology are poised to revolutionize the ability to rapidly engineer and produce proteins for material applications. Specifically, advancements in new production hosts and cell-free systems are enabling researchers to overcome the significant challenges of cloning and expressing large nonnative proteins. The articles in this issue cover the mechanical and rheological properties of structural protein materials and nanocomposites; advancements in the synthesis and assembly of optical, electronic, and nanoscale protein materials; and recent development in the processing of protein materials using liquid–liquid phase separation and three-dimensional printing.

The main goal of the field of neuromorphic computing is to build machines that emulate aspects of the brain in its ability to perform complex tasks in parallel and with great energy efficiency. Thanks to new computing architectures, these machines could revolutionize high-performance computing and find applications to perform local, low-energy computing for sensors and robots. The use of organic and soft materials in neuromorphic computing is appealing in many respects, for instance, because it allows better integration with living matter to seamlessly meld sensing with signal processing, and ultimately, stimulation in a closed-feedback loop. Indeed, not only can the mechanical properties of organic materials match those of tissue, but also, the working mechanisms of these devices involving ions, in addition to electrons, are compatible with human physiology. Another advantage of organic materials is the potential to introduce novel fabrication techniques relying on additive manufacturing amenable to one-of-a-kind form factors. This field is still nascent, therefore many concepts are still being proposed, without a clear winner. Furthermore, the field of application of organic neuromorphics, where bioinspiration and biointegration are extremely appealing, calls for a co-design approach from materials to systems.

Light absorption in nanoparticles of semiconductors and metals excites electrons from ground states to high-energy levels, generating hot electrons with the addition of kinetic energy, and consequently, complimentary hot holes in the nanoparticles. These hot electrons are capable of injecting themselves into the empty antibonding orbitals of chemical bonds of reactant molecules adsorbed on the surface of the nanoparticles, thereby weakening the chemical bonds to trigger corresponding desirable chemical reactions. Hot-electron chemistry represents a fundamentally different mechanism of solar-to-chemical energy conversion compared to the traditional photochemistry that relies on the direct photo-excitation of electrons in reactant molecules and thermal catalysis. This issue of MRS Bulletin examines the generation and relaxation of hot electrons in typical nanoparticle systems, and the flow of hot electrons across the surfaces of the nanoparticles. The promise of hot-electron chemistry (and the complementary hot-hole chemistry) is supported by its application in many important reactions, including CO2 reduction, water splitting, hydrogenation, and coupling reactions, highlighting its great potential in achieving high energy-conversion efficiency and product selectivity.

Water-splitting electrolysis, using a renewable power source, has been widely considered as a promising energy conservation and storage technology that is environmentally friendly. In order to lower the required energy barrier and to improve the energy-conversion efficiency of hydrogen evolution and oxygen evolution on the electrodes, highly efficient and durable electrocatalysts are essential. To date, various preparation methods and theoretical models have been developed to accelerate the catalyst design and to further understand the associated electrocatalytic mechanism. In this issue of MRS Bulletin, all aspects of non-noble metal-based electrocatalysts for water splitting involving standard methodology, surface electronic structure engineering, morphology design, interface effects, pH operation range, activity descriptors, and operational stability are discussed. These discussions indicate the importance of materials innovations for the realization of highly efficient and durable electrocatalysts for large-scale cost-effective water splitting.

The term quantum materials refers to materials whose properties are principally defined by quantum mechanical effects at macroscopic length scales and that exhibit phenomena and functionalities not expected from classical physics. Some key characteristics include reduced dimensionality, strong many-body interactions, nontrivial topology, and noncharge state variables of charge carriers. The field of quantum materials has been a topical area of modern materials science for decades, and is at the center stage of a wide range of modern technologies, ranging from electronics, photonics, energy, defense, to environmental and biomedical sensing. Over the past decade, much research effort has been devoted to the development of quantum materials with phenomena and functionalities that manifest at high temperature and feature unprecedented tunability with atomic-scale precision. This thriving research field has witnessed a number of seminal breakthroughs and is now poised to rise to the challenges in a new age of quantum information science and technology. This issue summarizes and reviews recent progress in selected topics, and also provides perspective for the future directions of emergent quantum materials in the years to come.

Miniaturization is a strong demand of modern scientific technology. However, conventional optical components based on refraction suffer from functional degradation as the device size decreases. Metasurfaces consisting of subwavelength optical antenna arrays have emerged as planar optical devices that enable many promising applications in lenses, holograms, and optical cloaks. During recent decades, metasurfaces have been developed for their specific functionalities by exploiting new materials and design algorithms. In this issue of MRS Bulletin, progress in metasurfaces is discussed to provide a comprehensive understanding of metasurfaces and their novel applications in optics and photonics.

Halide perovskites have attracted tremendous attention from many researchers recently, particularly for their excellent optoelectronic properties in applications such as photovoltaic solar cells and light-emitting diodes. In recent years, the application of halide perovskites has rapidly extended into nanoelectronics, such as thermoelectric, memory, and artificial synapse applications. Halide perovskites can be synthesized easily, even at relatively low temperatures, and organic and inorganic ions can even coexist in one crystal structure. Moreover, the structural flexibility is excellent, where two- and three-dimensional crystals can be linked together. The combination of various types of halide ions not only controls the physical properties of the halide perovskite, but also facilitates control of the bandgap by varying the size of nanoparticles when they exhibit quantum effects. Halide perovskites thus provide an excellent platform for optoelectronics with interesting optical, electrical, and magnetic properties. The articles in this issue introduce the wide range of basic properties and potential applications of halide perovskites.

Liquid phase (also called “liquid cell”) transmission electron microscopy (TEM) is a powerful platform for nanoscale imaging and characterization of physical and chemical processes of materials in liquids. It is a direct approach to address critical scientific questions on how materials form or transform in response to external stimuli, such as changes in chemical potential, applied electric bias, and interactions with other materials or their environment. Answers to these questions are essential for understanding and controlling nanoscale materials properties and advancing their applications. With the recent technical advances in TEM, such as the development of sample stages, detectors, and image processing toolkits, liquid phase TEM is transforming our ability to characterize materials and revolutionizing our understanding of many fundamental processes in materials science and other fields. In this article, we briefly review the current status, challenges, and opportunities in liquid phase TEM. More details of the development and applications of liquid cell TEM are discussed in the articles in this issue of MRS Bulletin.

The field of solidification has evolved from metallurgical alchemy to a predictive science over the past century. Our particular focus is on metals and their alloys, whose thermophysical properties tend to differ distinctively from that of organic systems. Rapid advances in modeling efforts and real-time experiments have yielded a wealth of new and quantitative information across relevant length- and time scales, thereby expanding our understanding of the liquid-to-solid phase transition. The articles in this issue highlight some important recent developments in the field, including solidification at extreme rates, as well as the state-of-the-art computational and experimental techniques that allow us to probe the otherwise improbable. In light of this progress, we identify critical issues and open questions that point to future research directions in solidification science.

Three-dimensional (3D) tomographic imaging of the structural, chemical, and physical properties of a material provides key knowledge that links the structure of a material to both its processing and structure that is central to studies across a broad spectrum of materials. For many decades, tomography using x-rays or electrons has proven to be an essential 3D characterization tool. In recent years, advances in technology have significantly pushed the envelope of these techniques in many respects, enabling new imaging capabilities at the nanometer and atomic scale. This article highlights several such developments in nanoscale x-ray and electron tomography. The five articles that appear in this issue of MRS Bulletin discuss research frontiers that include multimodal x-ray tomography at the nanoscale, x-ray spectroscopic tomography, dark-field x-ray microscopy, electron nanotomography for functional nanomaterials, and atomistic imaging by electron tomography. These articles give a holistic view of the status of these techniques and promising future directions, as well highlighting their applications for scientific problems.

Understanding fundamental mechanisms for surface electronic excitation is of great importance in surface chemistry. Charge transport through metal–oxide interfaces plays a significant role in heterogeneous catalysis. Over the last several decades, a number of experimental and theoretical results suggest that this charge flow through metal–support interfaces leads to catalytic enhancement often observed in mixed catalysts. Direct measurement of charge flow on actual catalysts is a rather challenging task because it requires the use of an electronic circuit. This approach has been enabled by a catalytic nanodiode that is mainly composed of a catalytic metal and semiconducting oxides that form a Schottky contact. In this article, we describe the advances in this approach. We show that there is close connection between the phenomena of hot-electron creation and chemical reaction that occur at both gas–solid and liquid–solid interfaces. The intensity of hot-electron flow is well correlated with the turnover rates of corresponding reactions, which opens the possibility for developing new operando methodologies to monitor catalytic reactions as well as a novel scheme for the electronic control of chemical reactions.

This article reviews the advancements and prospects of liquid cell transmission electron microscopy (TEM) imaging and analysis methods in understanding the nucleation, growth, etching, and assembly dynamics of nanocrystals. The bonding of atoms into nanoscale crystallites produces materials with nonadditive properties unique to their size and geometry. The recent application of in situ liquid cell TEM to nanocrystal development has initiated a paradigm shift, (1) from trial-and-error synthesis to a mechanistic understanding of the “synthetic reactions” responsible for the emergence of crystallites from a disordered soup of reactive species (e.g., ions, atoms, molecules) and shape-defined growth or etching; and (2) from post-processing characterization of the nanocrystals’ superlattice assemblies to in situ imaging and mapping of the fundamental interactions and energy landscape governing their collective phase behaviors. Imaging nanocrystal formation and assembly processes on the single-particle level in solution immediately impacts many existing fields, including materials science, nanochemistry, colloidal science, biology, environmental science, electrochemistry, mineralization, soft condensed-matter physics, and device fabrication.

In probing quantum materials, thermal transport is less appreciated than electrical transport. This article aims to show the pivotal role that thermal transport may play in understanding quantum materials—longitudinal thermal transport reflects itinerant quasiparticles, even in an electrical insulating phase, while transverse thermal transport such as the thermal Hall and Nernst effects is tightly linked to nontrivial topology. We discuss three examples—quantum spin liquids wherein thermal transport identifies its existence, superconductors wherein thermal transport reveals the superconducting gap structure, and topological Weyl semimetals where the anomalous Nernst effect is a consequence of nontrivial Berry curvature. We conclude with an outlook on the unique insights thermal transport may offer to probe a much broader category of quantum phenomena.

Many of the current artificial intelligence (AI) applications that are rapidly becoming indispensable in our society rely on software-based artificial neural networks or deep learning algorithms that are powerful, but energy-inefficient. The brain in comparison is highly efficient at similar classification and pattern finding tasks. Neuromorphic engineering attempts to take advantage of the efficiency of the brain by mimicking several crucial concepts to efficiently emulate AI tasks. Organic electronic materials have been particularly successful in mimicking both the basic functionality of the brain, including important spiking phenomena, but also in low-power operation of hardware-implemented artificial neural networks as well as interfacing with physiological environments due to their biocompatible nature. This article provides an overview of the basic functional operation of the brain and its artificial counterparts, with a particular focus on organic materials and devices. We highlight efforts to mimic brain functions such as spatiotemporal processing, homeostasis, and functional connectivity and emphasize current challenges for efficient neuromorphic computing applications. Finally, we present our view of future directions in this exciting and rapidly growing field of organic neuromorphic devices.

The ability to synthesize and assemble functional nanomaterials using proteins and peptides is an area of active research, merging various methodologies common in biochemistry and molecular biology to create a wide range of nanoscale materials with intriguing properties. These “bioenabled” nanomaterials have distinct advantages over their nonbiological counterparts, including diverse/precise chemical functionalization, benign aqueous-based processing conditions, and the inherent high specificity for targeted substrates. In parallel, the advent of synthetic biology is providing avenues to engineer novel protein chemistry and functionality, leading to commercialization in the startup sector. In this article, we provide a prospective review for fusing established methods in protein-enabled nanomaterials with those found commonly in synthetic biology. We first summarize significant findings and outcomes from the peptide and protein-enabled nanomaterials literature. The application of synthetic biology methodologies toward research areas of tangential similarity will also be summarized, including the directed evolution of enzymes for bioinorganic reactions, noncanonical amino acid engineering in proteins, and the incorporation of electrical active elements into anisotropic proteins. To conclude, we will suggest avenues for new research directions for protein-enabled nanomaterials that fully exploit the power of synthetic biology.

The electrochemical reaction that involves the splitting of water into hydrogen and oxygen gas is the superior technique for sustainable energy conversion and storage without the environmentally damaging effects of fossil fuels. To date, a large number of electrocatalysts have been used for electrochemical water splitting (EWS). Nowadays, the quest for a universal pH stable bifunctional electrocatalyst that can efficiently enhance the hydrogen and oxygen evolution reactions (HERs and OERs) is gaining significant interest in the research community. This approach avoids the divergence in the pH of the electrolyte for OER and HER activity and effectively reduces the difficulty and system cost in practical EWS. This article highlights engineering strategies and challenges in designing prospective universal pH-stable electrocatalysts with feasible OER and HER pathways for full water splitting over a wide pH range.

Rapid solidification gives rise to solute trapping, which decreases solute partitioning and alters equilibrium solidification velocity-undercooling relationships. These effects influence microsegregation, solidification morphology, and the emergent microstructure length scales. Here, we review solute trapping and solute drag in rapid solidification in terms of theory, simulation methods, and experimental techniques. The basic theory to describe solute trapping is contained in the continuous growth model. This model breaks down at high solidification velocities, where solidification transitions abruptly to complete trapping, a limit that can be captured with the local nonequilibrium model. Solute trapping theories contain unknown parameters. Their determination from atomistic simulations or pulsed laser melting experiments is discussed. Microstructural evolution in rapid solidification can be readily investigated with the phase-field method, various alternatives of which are presented here. Uncertainties related to kinetic parameters and heat transfer during rapid solidification can be studied by comparing phase-field simulations to dynamic transmission electron microscopy observations.

As plasmonic materials transition from three-dimensional to two-dimensional (2D) form, unique optical and electronic phenomena arise that are unattainable in bulk materials and conventional thin films. Exceptional sensitivity to external perturbations, including electrical biasing and optical excitation as well as quantum effects, are expected to emerge, as has been demonstrated in graphene. Similarly, metallic or plasmonic films with thicknesses down to a few monolayers, called transdimensional materials (TDMs), are predicted to exhibit remarkably strong tunability of their optical response. The unique properties of 2D materials and TDMs have established them as promising platforms for dynamic nanophotonic devices. While novel 2D materials have been widely explored for nanophotonic devices, until recently, there have been minimal studies on the evolution of the optical properties of plasmonic TDMs. In this article, we highlight progress in exploring the thickness-dependent optical response of plasmonic materials as they approach the 2D regime. Experimental and theoretical investigations of the plasmonic properties of 2D materials, such as graphene and tungsten diselenide, TDMs, and plasmonic thin films, are discussed, with a focus on prospects for their utilization in dynamically tunable flat optical devices or metasurfaces.