Reviews & Analysis

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.

Platinum group metal-free electrocatalysts that utilize atomically dispersed, nitrogen-coordinated transition-metal sites in carbon are a promising replacement for platinum-based oxygen reduction reaction catalysts in fuel cells. This Perspective article offers a concise discussion on addressing remaining challenges related to activity–stability trade-offs by precisely controlling catalyst structures at multiple scales.

Triplet states are crucial for enhancing interfacial energy transfer and enabling the development of organic–inorganic hybrid materials with improved properties. This Review examines the properties of triplet states, strategies for controlling these ‘hidden’ states, their role in interfacial energy transfer, and the associated challenges and future opportunities.

The development of therapeutics for central nervous system disorders suffers from high failure rates owing to poor blood–brain barrier penetration and lack of targeted delivery. This Review discusses how nanoparticles can help to overcome these challenges to enable precision targeting of the brain for different central nervous system diseases.

CO₂ electroreduction aims to decarbonize converting CO₂ and clean energy into chemicals. To have an impact, this technology should be scaled up into the gigatonne conversion range. In this Review, the authors analyse challenges related to resource and material scalability bottlenecks to enable the sustainable deployment of CO₂ electroreduction.

More than 40 years after the discovery of the quantum Hall effect, the investigation of new variants of this phenomenon and of the exotic physics they represent is still a lively research topic. In this Viewpoint, five scientists involved in the very recent discovery of a new type of Hall effect — the fractional quantum anomalous Hall effect — discuss their results and their implications.

Chronic wounds, a global health crisis, demand innovative approaches for healing and monitoring. This Review explores the progression of wound care, highlighting advanced biomaterials, emerging technologies and the intricate process of transforming laboratory breakthroughs into clinically applied solutions.

Space exploration amplifies medical risks to human health. Innovation in space medicine, drug delivery, regenerative medicine and 3D printing is key for astronaut health. This Perspective explores advanced material technologies for space health care and their applicability to terrestrial medicine.

Moiré materials are an emerging class of strongly correlated quantum materials designed by the rotational or lattice misalignment of 2D crystals. This Review discusses how local probe techniques are uniquely positioned to elucidate the microscopic mechanisms underlying the electronic phases in moiré materials.

Edible robots and robotic food that perceive, process and react to stimuli offer opportunities to develop new medical applications, emergency food-delivery systems, waste-reduction strategies in farming and novel gastronomic experiences. This Perspective surveys edible materials that can be used to manufacture robotic components and discusses examples of edible robots and robotic food.