Journal of Materials Chemistry Blog

Here at the Royal Society of Chemistry, we want to make the publishing experience as an author as easy and transparent as possible. We’re therefore delighted to introduce two great new features for you when publishing with us: concurrent editing and transparent peer review!

Concurrent Editing

Concurrent editing is a new tool enabling you and your co-authors to work on an accepted manuscript’s corrections at the same time; while corresponding authors can track, review and approve all changes. Find out more.

The option to share access with co-authors will be listed on the initial instructions panel and tracked on the workflow and editing panel as you work on your corrections together.

To use concurrent editing, the corresponding author will need to share the proof with any co-authors using the “Invite Collaborators” feature in Proof Central. This will give each invited author a unique link, allowing their changes to be tracked and all authors to work on corrections at the same time. The corresponding author can then review and approve all changes before submitting the final corrections. You can find full instructions on Proof Central.

Alternatively, if you would prefer to supply proof corrections by annotating the PDF, this option will still be available and can also be done through Proof Central and an editor will apply the corrections on your behalf.

This feature is available on all Royal Society of Chemistry journals, including Journal of Materials Chemistry A, B and C and Materials Advances – so watch out for this exciting tool with your next proof!

Transparent Peer Review

Transparent peer review was introduced on Journal of Materials Chemistry A, B and C and Materials Advances in the summer of 2024 and is now offered to you at submission and throughout peer review. If you opt in during the submission or peer review process, the editor’s decision letter, reviewers’ comments and authors’ response for all versions of the manuscript are published alongside the article under an Open Access Creative Commons licence (CC-BY).

You can change your mind about transparent peer review at any point prior to acceptance. Reviewer comments remain anonymous unless the individual chooses to sign their report.

This has been introduced as The Royal Society of Chemistry supports the principles of open science, which include working towards a more open and transparent research culture. Transparent peer review is an important strand of our commitment to open science.

Transparent peer review serves to shed light on the aspects of the journal publication process that are usually hidden. The benefits include:

• Increased transparency in editorial decision-making.
• Readers can learn from the editors’ and reviewers’ insights, and the published peer reviews can serve as an educational tool for those new to peer review.
• It showcases the hard work and effort of the editors and reviewers in evaluating a manuscript, and of the authors in revising their work in response.
• It may encourage higher-quality and more constructive reviewer comments.

Find out more in this video https://youtu.be/-GvnyVZMNmk or on the RSC webpage: https://rsc.org/journals-books-databases/author-and-reviewer-hub/process-and-policies/#peerreview

The 7th Annual UK PorMat Symposium was held at University of Liverpool on 4th-5th June by the RSC Porous Materials Interest Group. To accompany a programme filled with exceptional talks from a number of  esteemed researchers, posters were presented by PhD and post doctorial researchers . With a huge number of posters, from 86 candidates, displaying a wide variety of work within the porous materials field, it is our great pleasure in congratulating our three poster prize winners.

Winner of the Journal of Materials Chemistry A B and C poster prize: Bethan Turner, University of Liverpool.

‘Strategies towards porous metal-organic framework (MOF) glasses.’

Bethan Turner

Bethan graduated with an MCHEM in chemistry and is currently in the first year of their PhD at the University of Liverpool with Dr Lauren McHugh as a supervisor and Professor Andy Cooper as a co-supervisor.

“The work I do is centred around MOF glasses with the aim of tailoring them for real life application. In my poster I discussed the trialling of a prospective porogen and the outcomes of those experiments. It was ultimately unsuccessful in increasing porosity, however, it was deduced that the incorporation method may be the fault. Subsequently, alternative methods were proposed such as experimenting with altered linkers in the structure and incorporating the porogen through saturating the pores of the crystalline material by soaking in a saturated solution. Long with porous materials, I also have an interest in accessibility in chemistry teaching. And ultimately with my project, I hope to contribute to the efforts in developing materials for water purification.”

Winner of the Dalton Transactions poster prize: Omar Al-Miqdadi, Imperial College London.

‘Accelerating discovery and implementation of porous liquids for CO2 removal.’

Omar Al-Miqdadi

Omar Al-Miqdadi’s background is in chemistry where they attended the University of Warwick for their undergraduate studies. During Omar’s master’s year, they worked under the supervision of Professor Richard Walton to discover iron-based metal organic frameworks which could be built from sustainably sourced organic ligands.

In 2022, Omar began their PhD at Imperial College London under the supervision of Dr Becky Greenaway and Professor Camille Petit. Their experience in metal organic frameworks proved to be useful when delving into the world of type III porous liquids; dispersions of metal organic frameworks in pore-excluded liquids. They are using automated high-throughput experimentation to discover effective type III porous liquids for CO₂ capture.

“In order to discover the ‘best’ porous liquid systems for carbon capture, we have employed an automated high-throughput workflow as our approach. Using 8 different ionic liquids as our pore-excluded liquids, we vary cation functional group and alkyl chain length using a constant anion and metal organic framework.

We are able to synthesise ZIF-8 on the automated platform and using solid dispensing, combine it with the 8 ionic liquids. Using a different liquid handling platform, we then test the viscosity of these dispersions based on a relationship between flow rate and viscosity. Following this, we use thermogravimetric analysis to measure CO₂ uptake of the dispersions and by comparing to the uptake of the neat ionic liquids, we’re able to determine whether they are porous combinations or not. Finally, we look at the stability of these porous liquids by using a camera and custom monitoring rack to analyse how well they remain dispersed and by using dynamic light scattering to analyse the ZIF-8 particle size over time looking for any potential aggregation.

We hope that by using this workflow we are able to elucidate key structure-property relationships and by continuing to study these systems are able to understand what makes a type III porous liquid a good CO₂ capture sorbent.”

Winner of the Materials Advances poster prize: Evandro Castaldelli, University of Nottingham.

‘The role of interfacial chemistry on MOF-coated optical fibres for gas sensing applications.’

Evandro Castaldelli

Evandro Castaldelli received his PhD in Chemistry in 2016 from Universidade de Sao Paulo, Brazil, working on the synthesis of a new semiconducting metal-organic framework with interesting photoelectronic properties. The electrical characteristics were investigated at University of Surrey, UK, where Evandro spent 12 months working with Prof Ravi Silva CBE. He followed up with his first post-doctoral position, in 2017, also at Universidade de Sao Paulo, working on the synthesis of phthalocyanine-based coordination polymers and derived graphene nanocomposites, for electrochemical applications in water splitting and glucose sensing.

In 2018, alongside Evandro’s post-doc, he was offered a position in industry as main researcher and scientific consultant at Golden Technology LDTA, Brazil, working in fine chemicals for textiles. Projects and interests encompassed all aspects of this industry, from pre-treatments, dyeing, finishing, and water treatment. Evandro was particularly excited to be part of the development of products to obtain functional textiles, including antimicrobial, insect repellent and flame-retardant coatings. During this time, he also had an active role in bridging the gap between academia and industry, when they attracted the interest of local research institutions for innovation partnerships.

In 2021 Evandro  decided to return to academia, when he started as a Lecturer in Physical Chemistry at Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Brazil, teaching Thermodynamics, Kinetics, Chemistry of Interfaces and Quantum Mechanics. Then, in 2022, he started my current role as Post-Doctoral Research Associate at University of Nottingham, UK, working with the development of optical fibres coated with metal-organic frameworks for gas sensing in healthcare. Evandro is also a volunteer demonstrator, for laboratory and outreach events, and tutor in Inorganic Chemistry.

“The development of sensors for gases and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) is key for a range of applications such indoor air quality control and healthcare. Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are promising candidates as they have been demonstrated to have excellent and tuneable selectivity for different gases and VOCs. Despite recent progress, MOF integration into devices is still a major challenge, as synthetic conditions are often harsh and deposition mechanisms are not yet fully understood1. Furthermore, studies are often limited to layer-by-layer deposition of archetypal MOFs. In this work we show: the rapid solvothermal deposition of isostructural MFM-101 and MFM-190(CH3) frameworks onto optical fibres; and the influence of synthetic conditions and role of surface functionalisation on coverage, morphology, and phase purity. Our results will fill a knowledge gap in this field and move towards a general protocol for controlled MOF deposition onto various substrates.
Surface-mounted MOFs are usually obtained via liquid phase epitaxial layer-by-layer growth on substrates featuring some surface functionalisation, which can be achieved via sol-gel, self-assembled monolayers or nanoparticle deposition. While it affords great control over film thickness, morphology, and homogeneity, it is often slow and may not be applicable to all MOFs. On the other hand, simple solvothermal techniques usually yield poor coverage and little control over thickness, crystal phase and orientation2. In our case study, we have used MFM-101 and MFM-190(CH3), two isostructural copper-based MOFs which are typically synthesized solvothermally at 80 °C, using HCl as modulator, with reaction times varying from 2 to 4 days3. These conditions are usually optimized to yield high quality, large crystals, which are often contradictory with effective surface coverage and fibre optic sensors. For the latter, crystals larger than 5 μm fall outside the effective sensing area. We were able to achieve phase purity and reduce crystal sizes to the 1-5 μm range by removing the modulator, while optimizing deposition temperatures and significantly reducing reaction times to 15 min.
U-shaped optical fibres were functionalised with hydroxyl (-OH) groups to provide initial anchoring for MOF deposition, while a non-functionalised (bare) fibre was included as reference. SEM/EDX and Raman analyses of the coatings revealed that morphology and phase purity can be controlled via surface functionalisation alone. Real-time spectroscopical investigation of MFM-101 and MFM-190(CH3) depositions provided information about growth kinetics and surface coverage, revealing the unexpected influence of interfacial chemistry not only on surface coverage, as well as in crystal density and size. On average, non-functionalised fibres had crystals in the 5-20 μm range while hydroxylated fibres showed crystals in the 1-5 μm range. The resulting sensors can be used with a range of VOCs, and, surprisingly, their performance is also affected by the initial anchoring group. Preliminary results in VOC sensing indicate that hydroxylated fibres perform significantly better than their non-functionalised counterparts.”
References
[1] A. Kirchon, L. Feng, H. F. Drake, E. A. Joseph and H.-C. Zhou, Chem. Soc. Rev. 2018, 47, 8611
[2] A. L. Semrau, Z. Zhou, S. Mukherjee, M. Tu, W. Li and R. Fischer, Langmuir 2021, 37, 6847-6863
[3] W. Li et al, J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2022, 144, 13196-13204

Congratulations once again to our UKPorMat 2024 poster prize winners!

The 42nd RSC Solid State Chemistry Group Christmas Meeting (SSCG 2023) took place in Edinburgh, UK from 18–19 December 2023. Materials Chemistry Frontiers, Materials Advances, Dalton Transactions, New Journal of Chemistry, CrystEngComm, RSC Mechanochemistry and Inorganic Chemistry Frontiers were pleased to support awards at this event and we would like to congratulate our winners! In addition to the awards supported by our RSC journals, the Roy Prize for best graduate student oral presentation and the Dent-Glasser Prize for best crystallography in oral or poster were awarded by the RSC Solid State Chemistry Group.

Group photo of the prize winners at SSCG 2023.

Learn more about the prize winners below:

Roy Prize for best graduate student oral presentation Anthony Onwuli (Imperial College London) Anthony Onwuli is a PhD Student in Materials Science at Imperial College London under the supervision of Prof. Aron Walsh. He obtained his MEng degree from Imperial College London, UK, with a First Class Honours in Materials Science and Engineering in 2020. His current doctoral research has focused on developing software and leveraging materials data to aid in the screening and identification of new chemical spaces. He uses chemical heuristics, density functional theory calculations and machine learning to explore and design novel chemical spaces to discover potential candidates for solid-state electrolytes.

Dent-Glasser Prize for best crystallography in oral or poster Eliza Dempsey (University of Edinburgh) Eliza Dempsey is a PhD student with Dr James Cumby at the University of Edinburgh. She completed her degree in Chemical Physics in 2021 and now researches the control of functional properties in metal oxyfluorides. Using solid-state synthesis, X-ray diffraction and density functional theory she is exploring the links between chemical composition, structure and properties in these materials. Alongside her PhD she also works on science communication as president of EUSci: the Edinburgh University Science Media society.

Materials Chemistry Frontiers Prize for Characterisation Cara Hawkins (University of Liverpool) Cara Hawkins is a PhD student in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Liverpool, studying under the supervision of Prof. Matthew Rosseinsky FRS in the Materials Innovation Factory. Cara obtained her Master’s degree in Physics from the University of Liverpool in 2021, before moving into Chemistry as a postgraduate. Her research focuses on the discovery of new inorganic materials for use in energy technologies. She is particularly interested in the synthesis of novel mixed anion compounds for photovoltaic applications, with the aim of engineering improved properties beyond single anion compositions.

Materials Advances Prize for Computational Science Andrew McCluskey (University of Bristol) Andrew McCluskey is a lecturer in Chemistry at the University of Bristol. He moved to Bristol in 2023 following periods at the European Spallation Source and Diamond Light Source to establish a research group focusing on the role of mathematical modelling in materials science. In particular, he is interested in using Bayesian and probabilistic approaches to offer improved analysis of both simulation and experiment.

Dalton Transactions Poster Prize Alexandra Morscher (University of Liverpool) Alexandra Morscher is originally from Austria and moved to Scotland for her undergraduate studies where she received her master’s degree from the University of Aberdeen in 2019 under the supervision of Professor Abbie McLaughlin. Her master’s work focused on the investigation of magnetocaloric materials and was carried out at the ICMCB in Bordeaux. After completing her master’s degree, she joined the University of Liverpool as a PhD student working under the supervision of Professor Matthew Rosseinsky and as part of the Faraday Institution’s SOLBAT project. Her work focuses on the discovery and characterisation of novel solid electrolytes for the use in All Solid-State Batteries. Her interest lies in utilising diffraction techniques to elucidate robust structure-property relationships and using this insight to guide research, striving for property optimisation.

New Journal of Chemistry Prize for Interdisciplinarity Giuditta Perversi (Maastricht University, Netherlands) Giuditta Perversi is an Assistant Professor of Materials Chemistry at Maastricht University (NL), which she joined in 2019. She obtained her PhD in 2018, under the supervision of Prof. Paul Attfield at the University of Edinburgh (UK), and was subsequently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Montpellier (FR) in the group of Prof. Werner Paulus. Her main research interests focus on functional materials, in particular transition metal oxides for energy applications: she tackles new synthesis methods and new phase spaces, but also performs in-depth structural analysis (including single crystal, local structure and magnetic structure work) to correlate structure and property in complex order-disorder systems. Giuditta is extensively active in teaching and research-base learning, leading inorganic chemistry education at the Maastricht Science Programme, and liaises with interdisciplinary institutes: a key example is the bridging of materials science into cultural heritage, as she works in support of painting conservation efforts alongside the Stichting Restauratie Atelier Limburg (SRAL).

CrystEngComm Poster Prize John Cattermull (University of Oxford) John Cattermull is a final year DPhil student at the University of Oxford, working in the groups of Prof Mauro Pasta and Prof Andrew Goodwin FRS. John read Chemistry for his undergraduate at the University of Oxford, winning a thesis prize in Inorganic Chemistry for his Master’s research project. His doctoral research focuses on investigating the structural chemistry of Prussian Blue Analogue materials in the context of their application in K-ion batteries. In 2021, John was awarded a Lord Bullock Memorial Scholarship from St. Catherine’s College, Oxford.

RSC Mechanochemistry Prize for Synthesis Craig Hiley (University of Warwick) Craig Hiley is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Warwick in the groups of Prof. Richard Walton and Dr Mark Senn. He received a Master’s degree and PhD in Chemistry from the University of Warwick after studying the synthesis and magnetic and catalytic properties of new oxide materials. After postdoctoral positions at the University of Liverpool and University of Leicester, in 2022 he returned to Warwick to explore solution synthesis of transition metal fluoride layered perovskites.

Inorganic Chemistry Frontiers Poster Prize Nataliia Hulai (University of Liverpool) Dr. Nataliia Hulai obtained her bachelor’s (2016) and master’s (2018) degrees at Ivan Franko National University of Lviv, Ukraine, under the guidance of Prof. Yaroslav Kalychak. After that, she joined the group of Prof. Rainer Pöttgen at the University of Münster, Germany, where she was studying crystal structure and physical properties of intermetallic compounds of indium. After receiving her PhD degree in 2022, she has joined the group of Prof. Matthew Rosseinsky at the University of Liverpool. Dr. Hulai’s current research is focused on discovery of new oxide materials, their structure and property characterization, and crystallography.

We’d like to congratulate all the prize winners once more, it’s a great achievement for their work to be selected from all the excellent research presented at the event. We’d also like to thank all organisers and the RSC Solid State Chemistry Group for organising this conference. You can follow the RSC Solid State Chemistry Group (@SscgR) on Twitter to keep up to date with their latest news.

We are delighted to announce that Materials Advances will run an annual Paper Prize to celebrate the most significant articles published in the journal in the previous calendar year.

This year we recognise 3 outstanding papers that were published in 2022. The authors of each paper will receive a free infographic (normally worth between £350 – £750), a signed certificate, and promotion of their work through the journal networks.

Find the winner and runner-up papers below, and keep an eye out for more information soon!

Materials Advances 2023 Paper Prize winner:

Facet-dependent carrier dynamics of cuprous oxide regulating the photocatalytic hydrogen generation
Cui Ying Toe, Marlene Lamers, Thomas Dittrich, Hassan A. Tahini, Sean C. Smith, Jason Scott, Rose Amal, Roel van de Krol, Fatwa F. Abdi and Yun Hau Ng

Materials Advances 2023 Paper Prize runner-up:

Metal-free polypeptide redox flow batteries
Zhiming Liang, Tan P. Nguyen, N. Harsha Attanayake, Alexandra D. Easley, Jodie L. Lutkenhaus, Karen L. Wooley and Susan A. Odom

Materials Advances 2023 Paper Prize runner-up:

White light emission generated by two stacking patterns of a single organic molecular crystal
Yuma Nakagawa, Kuon Kinoshita, Megumi Kasuno, Ryo Nishimura, Masakazu Morimoto, Satoshi Yokojima, Makoto Hatakeyama, Yuki Sakamoto, Shinichiro Nakamura and Kingo Uchida

If you want to be in with a chance of winning the Materials Advances Paper Prize in a future year then submit your next high quality materials science research to the journal here.

Journal of Materials Chemistry A and Materials Advances are delighted to welcome Dr Yang Xu from University College London to their Advisory Boards.

Dr Yang Xu, University College London, UK

Dr Yang Xu is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Electrochemical Energy Storage in the Department of Chemistry at University College London (UCL). He received his bachelor’s and PhD degrees at the University of Science and Technology of China under the supervision of Professor Yi Xie, and carried out his postdoctoral work in the US, Canada, and Germany. He joined UCL Chemistry in 2019 and started his independent research group. His research focus is emerging battery technologies including Na, K, and Ca-based systems, with particular interest in Na/K/Ca-ion intercalation chemistry, the electrodeposition of Na/K metal anodes, and the electrochemical mechanism of Na-S and K-S batteries. His group recently developed new interest in hybrid ion battery systems.

Here is what Prof. Xu had to say about joining the Materials Advances family:

• What does it mean to you to join the Advisory Board of Materials Advances?

 It means I will have the opportunity to share my knowledge, expertise, and ideas with the journal and engage to a large extent with the research community of materials science. At the same time, it will enhance the visibility of my research and my experience of getting involved in the functioning and development of a journal. Let’s not forget that this is also a great networking opportunity to me.

• What is the current biggest challenge you face in your field?

I think the biggest challenge for emerging battery technologies is the gap between academic research and industrial production and application. Often exciting results from publications can be insufficiently relevant to the practical use of the materials due to various reasons such as scalability of the synthesis, sustainability of the processing, the non-standardized testing protocols to test batteries and so on. Although the development of many emerging battery technologies is still at infancy, we can learn from the paths to commercialization of Li-ion batteries and more recent Na-ion batteries when researching new materials for new batteries. Another challenge I think is that we need more support for the research of emerging battery technologies, be it more funding, more attention from industry, or more opportunities for academics to talk with industry, even though the return to the support will be in a long term. The success of Na-ion batteries is a good example.

• What advances in your field are you most excited about?

I’m very excited about the new advances of Na-ion batteries transforming from lab research to commercial products, which has made Na-ion batteries coming into the spotlight of electrochemical energy storage. I’m also very excited to see a range of emerging battery systems including K, Ca, Mg, and Al are gaining rapidly increasing attention. Many interesting research results of these systems have diversified the energy research landscape and further our understanding of electrochemistry.

• Why do you feel that researchers should choose to publish their work in Materials Advances?

Gold open access allows research results to be disseminated quickly and widely. This is crucial for fast paced research areas like materials science and particularly beneficial for researchers working in these areas. Materials Advances is in the RSC materials journal family. It will give a wide exposure of the research published in the journal to the community.

Check out some of Yang’s recent publications in Royal Society of Chemistry journals:

• H. R. Tinker, C. A. Howard, M. Zhou, Y. Xu,* “Exploring anodes for calcium-ion batteries”, Mater. Advances, Just Accepted.
• A.P. Vijaya Saroja, B. Li, Y. Xu,* “Hybrid nanostructures for electrochemical potassium storage”, Nanoscale Adv., 2021, 3, 5442. (Front cover)
• W. Li, Y. Xu,* Y. Dong, Y. Wu, C. Zhang, M. Zhou, Q. Fu, M. Wu, Y. Lei,* “Bismuth oxychloride nanoflake assemblies as a new anode for potassium ion batteries”, Chem. Commun. 2019, 55, 6507.
• Y. Xu,* F. Bahmani, M. Zhou, Y. Li, C. Zhang, F. Liang, S. H. Kazemi, U. Kaiser, G. Meng,* Y. Lei,* “Enhancing potassium-ion battery performance by defect and interlayer engineering”, Nanoscale Horizons 2019, 4, 202.
• H. Dong, Y. Xu,* C. Zhang, Y. Wu, M. Zhou, L. Liu, Y. Dong, Q. Fu, M. Wu, Y. Lei,* “MoS₂ nanosheets with expanded interlayer spacing for enhanced sodium storage”, Inorg. Chem. Front. 2018, 5, 3099.

Join us in welcoming Yang to our Advisory Boards!