Reviews & Analysis

Graphite is a vital component of lithium-ion batteries, but it is challenged by supply-chain vulnerabilities and sustainability issues. This Perspective explores innovative synthesis and recycling methods, emphasizing the need for supportive policy frameworks to enable an economically viable and environmentally responsible graphite economy.

Two-dimensional framework materials offer atomic-level control over electronic properties and enable novel quantum phenomena and tunable functionality. This Review highlights how structural design, doping and measurement techniques influence conductivity, and it underscores key strategies for optimizing transport properties, with broad implications for electronics, energy and quantum technologies.

Airway mucus complicates treatment of respiratory disease by both defending the lungs and hindering inhaled drugs to cross the barriers. This Review explores translational advances in inhalable materials and biologics that enhance mucus protection or drug penetration.

Accurate, spatiotemporally resolved monitoring of environments and ecosystems serves as the starting point to both identify and remedy natural or anthropogenic environmental hazards. This Review covers materials science advances supporting a new paradigm in environmental sensing: distributed networks of sensing elements capable of system-level profiling with the possibility of harmless environmental resorption after a predetermined recording period.

The van der Waals MA₂Z₄ materials are a rapidly growing class of 2D materials with diverse electronic phases. This Review explores the structure, synthesis, properties and diverse applications of the emerging MA₂Z₄ family, highlighting their potential across electronics, catalysis and energy storage.

Discovering lipid nanoparticles for unmet clinical needs relies heavily on the screening of unique formulations incorporating distinct lipids and nucleic acid cargos. This Perspective highlights how automation and parallelization have accelerated the rate of lipid nanoparticle discovery and discusses how coupling these advances with machine learning enable the predictive design of new therapeutic candidates.

Coordination chemistry has a pivotal role in advancing redox-active electrolytes for energy technologies. This Review examines how ligand properties and coordination effects shape electrolyte thermodynamics, kinetics and electrochemical performance, guiding the rational design of next-generation aqueous redox flow batteries.

High-entropy nanomaterials are characterized by the incorporation of five or more principal elements in nearly equal proportions. This Review highlights how different synthetic methods for these nanomaterials can facilitate control of phase and particle size and shape for applications such as catalysis.

Perovskite and organic photodiodes are gaining traction for ultraviolet–visible and near-infrared photodetection owing to their tunable properties and low-cost fabrication potential. In this Review, we discuss recent progress in this area, focusing on specific detectivity, charge recombination and key performance metrics, while outlining future directions for real-world application and commercial viability.

Shape-morphing metamaterials use geometric design to achieve advantageous properties, enabling innovations in fields from robotics to wearable devices. This Review proposes a unified classification of the design principles underlying shape-morphing behaviour, discusses available design tools and highlights emerging challenges in the development of shape-morphing metamaterials.

Hidden orders involve phase transitions without obvious order parameters, challenging experimental detection and conventional theories. This Review summarizes recent advances in modelling hidden-order phases in correlated insulators, highlighting the role of material-specific theories in the interpretation and prediction of the experimental signatures of hidden orders.

Direct seawater electrolysis (DSE) offers a sustainable route for green hydrogen production but faces major challenges from corrosion and side reactions. This Review discusses key obstacles and potential solutions across electrolytes, catalysts, membranes and electrolyser designs to improve DSE performance.

Photocatalytic water splitting can produce renewable green solar hydrogen on a large scale at low cost. This Review surveys the development of materials, systems and processes for photocatalytic hydrogen production, aiming to help define a common vision for practical applications and facilitate collaboration among industry, government and academia.

Material selection has a crucial role in enhancing the functionality of medical microrobots. This Review highlights the synergy between contrast and responsive materials for real-time imaging and actuation in minimally invasive medical treatments.

Solid-state battery electrolytes offer the potential for enhanced safety, stability and energy density in both current and future technologies. This Review discusses the vital role that atomistic modelling and machine learning techniques continue to play in understanding and improving inorganic crystalline solid electrolytes for lithium-based and sodium-based batteries.

Advancing high-performance rechargeable batteries requires a deep understanding of the complex relationships among material composition, structure and property. This Perspective highlights the emerging role of ionic potential, defined as the charge-to-radius ratio of an ion, in guiding the design and optimization of battery materials.

Rigid wearable and implantable bioelectronic devices present mechanical mismatches with soft biological tissues that limit their applicability. This Review systematically outlines materials and integration strategies for soft bioelectronic devices that overcome this mismatch and have the potential to enable continuous health monitoring, therapeutic interventions and closed-loop healthcare.

Copper is the only electrocatalyst that converts carbon dioxide into multi-carbon products with ease, but it remains notoriously unstable. This Perspective explores the current state-of-the-art understanding of copper degradation mechanisms and uses these insights to motivate both atomistic and system-level approaches to overcome stability challenges.

Efficient and targeted delivery of nucleic acids is critical for realizing the full therapeutic potential of gene editing, vaccines and RNA-based drugs, and emerging delivery platforms offer innovative solutions through their diverse architectures, tunable properties and distinct biological interactions. In this Viewpoint, researchers working across different delivery platforms — including lipid nanoparticles, synthetic polymers, peptide amphiphiles, coacervate microdroplets, DNA nanostructures and extracellular vesicles — discuss the most promising directions and the main challenges in shaping the future of nucleic acid delivery.

Biological swarming behaviours inspire artificial motile nanosystems. This Perspective highlights recent advances in swarm navigation and biomedical applications, while addressing challenges such as communication, control and material constraints in developing intelligent synthetic swarms.