Nature Reviews Materials (Impact Factor 86.2) has recently celebrated its 10th anniversary by inviting 12 early-career scientists to reflect on the most transformative breakthroughs over the past decade in key subfields of materials science and to outline critical directions for future research. These 12 focal areas are highlighted in the journal’s latest cover feature (Fig. 1).Among the invit...

Research BackgroundWith the rapid growth of electric vehicles, fast-charging all-solid-state lithium batteries (ASSLBs) are widely regarded as a key candidate for next-generation energy-storage technologies. Compared with conventional liquid-electrolyte batteries, all-solid-state batteries offer substantially improved safety and hold great promise for higher power density, enabling much shorter...

Materials informatics leverages advances in computer science and information technology to enhance the understanding, utilization, selection, and design of materials. The field encompasses a wide range of machine-learning approaches, including (but not limited to) machine-learning interatomic potentials and large language models (LLMs).Recently, a research team from the School of Materials Scie...

Poly(lactic acid) (PLA) is meant to be the prime biodegradable and biosourced substitute for classic polymers such as polypropylene. But crystallization of its desirable alpha-form is too slow for fast commercial processing, even slowing down instead of accelerating with increasing supercooling. So products end up brittle in the inferior alpha’ form with low crystallinity. The crystallization ...

​Flexible electronics hold great promise for applications such as implantable medical devices and human-machine interfaces. However, their practical reliability is often limited by the fatigue failure of metal thin-film conductors. Under repeated bending or stretching, conventional nanocrystalline metal films are prone to abnormal grain growth and strain localization, which accelerate crack in...

Research BackgroundSince the invention of the electron microscope in the 1930s, humanity’s exploration of the microscopic world has never ceased. With the commercialization of aberration correctors (Aberration Correctors) in the early 21st century, the resolution of Scanning Transmission Electron Microscopes (STEM) surpassed the sub-angstrom limit, enabling direct observation of atomic column ...

Research BackgroundWith the rapid development of renewable energy, electric vehicles, and portable electronic devices, efficient and fast charge/discharge energy storage devices have become one of the key technological bottlenecks. Dielectric capacitors, with their ultra-fast response speed (~μs) and long cycle life, are ideal for high power density storage systems. However, current high-perfo...

With the rapid evolution of the global electric vehicle (EV) industry towards the 800V high-voltage platform, key electronic components in automotive systems face stringent challenges. Dielectric capacitors, as core components for energy conversion, urgently need to achieve breakthroughs in energy storage density, charge/discharge efficiency, and cyclic stability. To address this critical natio...

Ultra-high-strength metallic materials are urgently required in aerospace and defense applications, where weight reduction and extreme load-bearing performance are critically important. Developing advanced alloys that simultaneously achieve ultra-high yield strength (σy ≈ 2 GPa) and appreciable uniform elongation (εu > 5%) has therefore emerged as a key research focus. To date, only a limite...

On Dec. 6th, Professor Xiangdong DING, Dean of the School of Materials Science and Engineering (MSE), presented an innovative talk during the “Meeting the Dean” session series.Professor Ding introduced in detail the latest research achievements of MSE, highlighting the school's expertise in materials science. To provide international students with a more intuitive understanding of the school'...