Journal of Materials Chemistry Blog

Emerging Investigators in materials science

29 Sep 2022

Journal of Materials Chemistry A, B and C are pleased to present the Emerging Investigator themed issues highlighting the rising stars of materials chemistry research in 2022.

These issues showcase the very best work from materials chemists in the early stages of their independent career. Each contributor was recommended by experts in their fields as carrying out work with the potential to influence future directions in materials chemistry. Congratulations to all the outstanding researchers featured!

Read each collection below:


Journal of Materials Chemistry A Emerging Investigators	Journal of Materials Chemistry B Emerging Investigators	Journal of Materials Chemistry C Emerging Investigators

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Congratulations to poster prize winners at the International Materials Research Congress (IMRC2022)

22 Sep 2022

By Rose Wedgbury Ph.D., Development Editor.

Materials Horizons, Materials Advances, Nanoscale Horizons, Nanoscale, Nanoscale Advances, and Digital Discovery sponsored poster prizes at the International Materials Research Congress (IMRC2022). Congratulations to all the winners as detailed below:

Jorge Aarón Castillo Hernández, Tecnológico Nacional de México – Instituto Tecnológico de Pachuca

Effect Of The Post-Curing Temperature In The Wear Resistance Of Composites Obtained By Vacuum Infusion Process

Jorge Aarón Castillo Hernández is a mechanical engineer currently studying a Mechanical Engineering masters degree at the Instituto Tecnológico de Pachuca. He is currently working with composite materials doing changes in some parameters during their fabrication and characterizing their mechanical properties but also the changes in their microstructure. He has more than five years of experience as a mechanical design engineer into which he has three years of experience as a tooling design engineer in aeronautics. He has interest in composite materials, design engineering, and rapid prototyping.

Ashok Adhikari, Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados del IPN

A New Approach Employed In The Scaps-1D Simulation For Modeling The Cigse Thin Film Solar Cells

Samuel Eduardo Salud Ordon, Universidad del Istmo

Relationship Between Hydrogen Diffusivity And Microhardness In A Tempered Experimental V-Mo Steel

I was born in a small town in the Istmo de Tehuantepec region in the Mexican state of Oaxaca. Since I was little I have always been curious to learn, I like to read and know about many topics, curiosity has been one of my virtues until now. All my student life has been developed in public schools in the cities near my town, throughout this journey I have met valuable people who have taught me a lot. In the last stage of my professional training I met the one who is now my thesis advisor, Dr. Edgar López Martínez, from the beginning I was curious about his line of research, this led me to investigate more about the subject and in the end decide to develop a project with him. Thanks to the formation of the UNISTMO SMMater student chapter within my university, I had the opportunity to be awarded a scholarship by the Mexican Society of Materials (Sociedad Mexicana de Materiales) as a student monitor to participate in the XXX International Material Research Congress in Cancun, Mexico where I applied for the Best Student Poster Award obtaining third place in the competition. This award has been a great motivation to continue pursuing my goals.

Oscar Luis Quintero Lizárraga, Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León

Synthesis Of Bismuth Halide Perovskite Photocatalysts To Produce Renewable Fuels From CO2 Photoreduction

Oscar L. Quintero-Lizárraga is a Chemical Engineer who received his bachelor’s degree in 2021 from the National Technological Institute of Mexico. He is now studying for his M.Sc. in Environmental Engineering at the Autonomous University of Nuevo León under the tutoring of Dr. Leticia M. Torres-Martínez and Dr. Edith Luévano-Hipólito. His current research interests focus on the photoconversion of atmospheric pollutants and the development of sustainable sources of energy.

Gloria I. Siller-Monroy, UPIITA – Instituto Politécnico Nacional

A Facile One-Pot Microwave-Assisted Hydrothermal Synthesis Of Bivo4 With Application In Ciprofloxacin Degradation

Luz Karyme del Real Herrera, Universidad Tecnológica de Tulancingo

A Novel Green Synthesis For Graphene Using Microwave Hydrothermal Method

Cindy Viridiana Peto Gutierrez, UNAM

Fabrication Of Microelectrodes With Large Electrochemically Active Surface Area Based On Shrink Polymer Film And Rapid Low-Cost Prototyping Techniques

I am Cindy Viridiana Peto-Gutiérrez, born in a small city at the Gulf of Mexico coast. My first life-changing scientific experience was representing Mexico at the International Chemistry Olympiad 2011, and ever since I’ve wanted to find ways for scientific reasoning and knowledge to feel accessible to those around me. I earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Physics and a MSc in Materials Science and Engineering from Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM, México). I am currently a PhD candidate at the same graduate programme and a subject teacher at the Faculty of Sciences. My research focuses on the development of miniaturized, highly sensitive electrochemical sensors via low-cost benchtop fabrication techniques and its integration into microfluidic devices. The final goal is to monitor electroactive soluble analytes released by cultured endothelial cells excited with different shear stresses. Broadly, I’m interested in interdisciplinary research geared towards solving biomedical problems.

Arely Núñez Serrano, Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León

Pectinase Immobilized On Core-Shell Magnetic Nanoparticles (Fe3O4@Sio2 ) For Juice Clarification

Arely Núñez is a Student-Researcher in Science, graduated in Food Science, with experience in the bio-production of metabolites from microorganisms and the development of new technologies for the food industry. PhD student in Applied Microbiology at Facultad de Ciencias Químicas of the Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León under the mentorship of Dr. Alcione García and Dr. Bernardo García, currently working on magnetic nanomaterials for enzymatic immobilization.

Mian Muhammad Faisal, Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León

Wood Waste-Derived Activated Carbon In Combo With Redox-Active Mesoporous Nimn-S Nanomaterial For Supercapattery Devices

Mr. Mian Muhammad Faisal is a young researcher currently developing hybrid supercapacitors or supercapattery based on various nanomaterials as battery-grade electrode material. He did his MS from Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute of Engineering Sciences and Technology, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan in 2020. His research interests are electrochemical energy storage devices, supercapacitors, supercapattery, electrochemical biosensors, and hydrogen evolution reactions. His research work can be traced through the link mentioned below: https://scholar.google.com.pk/citations?user=u-kwHl8AAAAJ&hl=en

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Congratulations to the winner of the Electrochem2022 RSC poster prize!

20 Sep 2022

By Daniel Smith.

In September 2022, ElectroChem 22, organised by the Royal Society of Chemistry‘s Electrochemistry and Electroanalytical Sensing Systems interest Groups, and the Society of Chemical Industry‘s Electrochemical Technology group, took place. Journal of Materials Chemistry C and Materials Advances were delighted to sponsor the poster prize.

We would like to congratulate the winner of the poster prize. Check out the award winner below:

The winner, Joanne Searle (pictured right), with Neil Robertson our Journals of Materials Chemistry and Materials Advances Associate Editor.

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Microneedles themed collection: Meet the Guest Editors

15 Sep 2022

By Natalie Cotterell, Development Editor.

Themed Collection: Microneedles

Meet the Guest Editors

Journal of Materials Chemistry B and companion journal Biomaterials Science are pleased to promote their themed collection on ‘Microneedles’.

This cross-journal themed collection on ‘Microneedles’ aims to bring together recent advancements in the field of microneedles that readers will find informative and useful. The collection includes work related to microneedle fabrication and development approaches, applications of microneedles that add a new dimension to existing core knowledge in the microneedles field, sensing applications and clinical studies that evaluate efficacy or other aspects of microneedle use in humans.

Read the collection here

The Guest Editors for this themed collection are: Ester Caffarel-Salvador, Ryan Donnelly, Harvinder Gill and Hyungil Jung

Find out more about the Guest Editors below:

Dr Ester Caffarel-Salvador
Chiesi, USA

‘Microneedles are no longer confined to transdermal drug delivery, they are also being used to deliver drugs to organs such as the eye and the gastrointestinal tract as well as for drug monitoring applications. I am particularly excited to see how microneedles are being employed in novel devices to help overcome the challenges of oral delivery of biologics.’

Dr. Ester Caffarel-Salvador is a multidisciplinary scientist with a background in biotechnology and biochemistry. At MIT, she developed a pill to administer insulin orally, now in clinical trials, which led the MIT Technology Review to recognize her as one of the 35 Innovators Under 35 in 2019.

After taking a mini-MBA at Harvard and working across startups, VCs, consulting, and pharmaceutical companies, Ester is now the Associate Director of Strategic Innovation for Rare Diseases at Chiesi USA. She is also a lecturer at MIT and an advisor to several startups. Ester speaks seven languages and is passionate about advocating on career development for women in science.

Prof. Ryan Donnelly
Queen’s University Belfast, UK

‘Why microneedles? Microneedles are one of the fastest growing areas of innovation in drug and vaccine delivery today. They offer the possibility of needle-free delivery of currently injectable medicines that could help overcome the COVID-induced backlog in healthcare provision globally. In developing countries needle-free vaccine administration would improve access to safe and effective vaccines for millions of people.’

Professor Ryan Donnelly holds the Chair in Pharmaceutical Technology at Queen’s University Belfast and is Director of QUB’s interdisciplinary research programme Materials & Advanced Technologies for Healthcare (MATCH). His personal research is centred on design and physicochemical characterisation of advanced polymeric drug delivery systems for transdermal and intradermal drug delivery, with a strong emphasis on improving patient outcomes. He is currently developing a range of novel microneedle technologies through independent research, but also in collaboration with several major pharma partners. He has obtained substantial UK Research Council, charity and industrial funding and authored over 600 peer-reviewed publications (H-index = 73), including 6 patent applications, 6 textbooks, 23 book chapters and approximately 300 full papers. He has been an invited speaker at numerous national and international conferences. Professor Donnelly is Europe/Africa Editor of Drug Delivery & Translational Research and the Controlled Release Society’s Communications Chair. He has won the Academy of Pharmaceutical Science’s Innovative Science Award (2020), the Controlled Release Society’s Young Investigator Award (2016), BBSRC Innovator of the Year and the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists Pharmaceutical Research Meritorious Manuscript Award (2013 and 2022), the GSK Emerging Scientist Award (2012) and the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s Science Award (2011).

Prof. Harvinder Gill
Texas Tech University, USA

‘The first microneedle paper was published in 1998. I am thrilled at this opportunity to co-edit a joint themed edition for Journal of Materials Chemistry B and Biomaterials Science to showcase the achievements that have been made in the field over the past nearly 25 years. By pairing these two journals for the themed edition, we have a unique opportunity of highlighting both the materials and manufacturing aspects, and the biological applications aspects of microneedles. I look forward to reading the outstanding work in the field from colleagues around the world.’

Dr. Gill is a Professor of Chemical Engineering at Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX, USA. His research interests are in the fields of immunoengineering and micro-nano medicine. He has expertise in delivery systems such as microneedles, pollen grains, polymeric micro-nano particles, and gold nanoparticles. He has a history of innovativeness, and of providing fresh and unique perspectives to research and medical problems. Dr. Gill is working towards the development of a universal influenza vaccine using nanoparticle systems to enhance vaccine efficacy. He is amongst the pioneers of microneedle technology and has produced seminal work in the field. He was also the first to propose use of pollen grains as “Trojan horses” for oral vaccination and has published original and seminal papers in this field, which has attracted other researchers. He is also the pioneer of the use of microneedles for allergen immunotherapy and his lab is currently developing microneedles for the treatment of airway and peanut allergen immunotherapies. This technology is being commercialized through a startup company called Moonlight Therapeutics, which Dr. Gill has co-founded.

Dr. Gill completed his Bachelor of Engineering in Chemical Engineering with honors and a gold medal from Panjab University, India (1994). After graduation, he worked in the petroleum industry for seven years. Subsequently he obtained his doctoral degree in Bioengineering from Georgia Institute of Technology (2007). Dr. Gill received his postdoctoral training in the field of influenza vaccines at Emory University (2009). Dr. Gill has received numerous awards and honors, including the prestigious NIH Director’s New Innovator Award (DP2 award) and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Young Faculty Award for his pollen research, Chancellor’s Council Distinguished Research Award, Barney E. Rushing, Jr. Faculty Distinguished Research Award STEM, Ed and Linda Whitaker Faculty Fellow Award, and Whitacre Engineering Research Award. For his accomplishments and contributions to Biomedical Engineering, he was awarded the Whitacre Endowed Professorship in Science and Engineering at Texas Tech.

Prof. Hyungil Jung
Yonsei University, Korea

‘Microneedles are truly an exciting platform for next generation drug delivery’

Hyungil Jung is a Professor in the Department of Biotechnology at Yonsei University, where he is also the Chair of the Bio & Living Engineering Major in Global Leaders College, as well as Director of the Institute of Bio-Medical Health Care Convergence and the Department Head of Integrative Biotechnology & Translational Medicine. He is also the founder and CSO of JUVIC Inc., a company developing microneedle-based products. He received his B.S. and M.S. from Yonsei University in 1993 and 1995, and his Ph.D. from Cornell University in 2002. He worked at Caltech as a Postdoctoral scholar from 2002 through 2004 and then joined Yonsei University at 2004. His main interests lie in commercialization of microneedles and overcoming the pressing challenges in microneedle development for commercialization. During his spare time, his hobby is indulging in board games, his favorite being Baduk, a widely popular traditional board game in Korea.

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Open Call: Bioinspired Artificial Synapses and Neurons Based on Memristors

01 Sep 2022

By Hannah Kerr, Deputy Editor.

We are delighted to announce a new themed collection on bioinspired artificial synapses and neurons based on memristors, to be published in Materials Advances, a gold open access journal from the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Guest Edited by Niloufar Raeis-Hosseini, Ruomeng Huang, and Sujaya Kumar Vishwanath.

Brain-inspired artificial synapses compute beyond the bottlenecks of von Neumann architectures by adapting highly sustainable information processing. Fabrication of artificial synapses in a physical device with the functionality of the biological neural network is an attractive research area. Complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) analog circuits emulate the synaptic performance of hardware-based neural networks. Since the hardware implementation of neuromorphic computation systems based on CMOS consumes much more energy than a natural system, numerous devices have been studied to realize an effective neuromorphic computing system. Among the proposed devices, memristors have emerged as the most efficient candidates to emulate biological synapses with high learning speed.

Memristors are two-terminal nanoelectronic devices with low power consumption, sustainable scaling, cost-effectiveness, and superior computing efficacy. They process information and compromise various fundamental operations that surpass typically integrated circuit technology. The temporal switching recommends that memristors are capable of acting as a physical system that imitates the synaptic memory function more precisely than the CMOS system.

This themed collection aims to highlight the recent developments, opportunities, and challenges in memristors and their applications in neuromorphic devices. We will outline the recent advances in neuromorphic nanodevices based on memristors by focusing on their fabrication and characterization methods. We will emphasize emerging bioinspired memristive devices and their improved performance by device structure and applied pulses engineering. We will also present outlooks of nanoelectronic devices and nanomaterials such as 2D materials, hybrid perovskites, and natural polymers.

We welcome contributions on memristors and artificial synapses in the form of research articles, communications, and reviews in the following categories.

Novel nanomanufacturing and processing methods of memristors:

Fabrication and characterization of memristors, memtransistors, and memcapacitors
Novel top-down and bottom-up approaches for nanofabrication of memristors
Specified electrical and structural characterization techniques
Novel approaches to realize flexible or rigid electronic synapses
Novel nanomaterials and device structures to increase memristive device reliability and performance

Novel Memristive Materials:

2D materials such as graphene, phosphorene, and transition metal dichalcogenides
Renewable materials, including biodegradables and biocompatible materials
Organic and bio-electronic materials
Heterogenous structures with organic-inorganic hybrid materials
Flexible memristive materials

Emerging memristive devices and architectures:

Biomemristors
Optoelectronic memristors
Ferroelectric memristive systems
Spintronic memristors
Assimilation of nanomaterials in neuromorphic computing systems based on memristors

Memristive devices enabled neuromorphic computing applications:

Artificial synapses and neurons
Artificial synapses by renewable materials
Photonic and optoelectronic synapses
Artificial neural networks
Convolutional neural networks
Recurrent neural networks such as reservoir computing
Logic-in-memory system
Neuromorphic and bio-inspired circuits and systems
Explanation of operational principle of artificial synapses via modeling

Keywords: memristor, nanoelectronics, neuromorphic computing, artificial synapse, brain-inspired nanodevice

New submission deadline: Submit before 30 June 2023!

All submitted papers will go through the standard peer review process of Materials Advances and should meet the journal’s standard requirements as well as fit into the general scope of materials science.

Manuscripts can be submitted here https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ma

Please add a “note to the editor” in the submission form when you submit your manuscript to say that this is a submission for the themed collection. The Editorial Office and Guest Editors reserve the right to check suitability of submissions in relation to the scope of the collection and inclusion of accepted articles in the collection is not guaranteed. Accepted manuscripts will be added to the collection as soon as they are online, and they will be published in a regular issue of Materials Advances.

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Repair and re-use of the outer casing for a Lithium-ion battery cell

19 Aug 2022

By Hannah Kerr, Deputy Editor.

An infographic describing a new method to repair and recycle a Li-ion battery pouch

Benign solvents for recycling and re-use of a multi-layer battery pouch
Jean E. Marshall, Bethany Middleton, Dominika Gastol, Roberto Sommerville, Con R. McElroy, Emma Kendrick and Vannessa Goodship
Mater. Adv., 2022, 3, 4973-4981, DOI: 10.1039/D2MA00239F

Meet the authors

	Dr. Jean Marshall gained her Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge in 2008, for investigating surface-initiated polymer chemistry. Her subsequent research work includes postdoctoral work on stimulus-responsive polymeric materials, as well as industrial experience in novel polymers for ink formulations. Since joining the Warwick Manufacturing Group (University of Warwick) in 2019, she has worked on several projects, covering diverse areas including tailored polymers for use in Lithium-ion batteries, polymeric materials as part of a circular economy, and recycling of battery components.
	Dominika Gastol joined University of Birmingham in 2019 and has been involved in recycling of Li-ion batteries from EV since then. Her research activities cover development of material recycling streams combined with remanufacturing, automated methods of electrode deposition and advanced microscopic characterisation.
	Rob gained a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the university of Birmingham in 2017, where he worked on producing synthetic zeolites from fly ash. Rob worked at the University of Warwick for a year on Lithium-ion battery recycling under Professor Emma Kendrick, before returning to Birmingham to join the ReLiB project in 2018. Rob Sommerville is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with a focus on reutilisation of waste and the circular economy of Lithium Ion Batteries. He is currently a Faraday Institution Research Fellow working on the ReLiB (Recycling and Reuse of Lithium Ion Batteries) project funded by the Faraday Institution, looking at physical separation techniques in the recycling of lithium-ion batteries.
	Dr Rob McElroy gained his Ph.D in 2007 at Keele University working on the production of composite materials from copolymers incorporating renewable resources. In 2009 he joined Prof. Pietro Tundo’s Carbonate Chemistry Group at Ca Foscari University of Venice looking into applications of dialkyl carbonates. He joined the Green Chemistry Centre of Excellence, University of York as a PDRA in 2011 and has worked on a variety of projects including extraction and separation in supercritical CO2, greening of pharmaceutical chemistry, production of bio-derived polymers, production of bio-derived surfactants, running an industry facing club focusing on circular economy related research called RenewChem, development of new green solvents and solvent applications. His current role is looking at green solvents in electrode formulation and as deputy director of the Circa Renewable Chemistry Institute.
	Following 14 years working in industry as a plastic engineer, Dr. Vannessa Goodship joined WMG, University of Warwick in 1997. She gained a PhD in 2002 on multi-material injection moulding and has continued working across multiple sectors on polymer related topics at the academic and industry interface.
	Prof Emma Kendrick is Professor of Energy Materials, lead of the Energy Materials Group (EMG) in the School of Metallurgy and Materials and co-director of the Centre for Energy Storage (BCES) at the University of Birmingham (UoB). Her research focus is upon sustainable energy storage technologies, the objective to understand the science and engineering principles which underpin manufacturing and lifetime. Before UoB, she spent two years as Reader in WMG, University of Warwick, and before academia, she led innovations in the battery industry. Latterly as Chief Technologist in Energy Storage at SHARP Laboratories of Europe Ltd (SLE) and prior to that for two highly innovative lithium-ion battery SMEs, Fife Batteries Ltd and Surion Energy Ltd. She completed her PhD in Ceramics at Ceram Research and Keele University, MSc in New Materials at University of Aberdeen, and BSC in chemistry from the University of Manchester.

An interview with Dr. Jean Marshall:

a) What aspect of your work are you most excited about at the moment and what do you find most challenging about your research?

I am currently gaining a lot of new knowledge about how lithium-ion batteries work and how complex they are as chemical systems. The electrochemistry of batteries is not necessarily an obvious area for a polymer chemist, but batteries are enormously complicated and there is a lot of scope for experimenting with novel materials in this area. The most difficult challenge here is deciding which research question to tackle first!

b) How do you feel about Materials Advances as a place to publish research on this topic?

Materials Advances is an excellent ‘home’ for our work. Open access publishing is great for us as academics and publishing with an RSC journal lends articles good credibility.

c) Can you share one piece of career-related advice or wisdom with other early career scientists?

Some researchers prefer to have laser-focus on one niche subject, and that’s definitely the approach that’s encouraged for gaining a PhD. However, in my ‘postdoctoral life’ I’ve definitely found that the most productive projects are really collaborative. So, my advice is to collaborate with as many people as possible, and make sure that they aren’t all in your direct field of research. The more people you talk to, the more you can bounce ideas around, and you’ll find yourself with far more new avenues to explore.

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Congratulations to the winners of the Society for Biomaterials Three Minute Thesis Award

02 Aug 2022

By Natalie Cotterell, Development Editor.

In April 2022, the Society for Biomaterials held their annual meeting in Baltimore, USA. Journal of Materials Chemistry B and Materials Advances sponsored this event along with companion journal Biomaterials Science.

We would like to congratulate the winners of the SFB Three Minute Thesis Award. Check out the award winners and learn about their research in our interviews below.

Kevin Grassie: 1st Prize

My PhD research is focused on a new approach for bone regenerative engineering that combines stem cell therapy and low-intensity pulsed ultrasound (LIPUS) stimulation to enhance the repair of complex bone defects. LIPUS serves as a non-invasive mechanical stimulus to deliver additional forces that may trigger more robust bone formation. My work thus far aims to 1) develop a computational tool for quantifying 3D externally-applied forces on cells, and 2) use this tool to estimate the LIPUS-derived 3D acoustic radiation forces that hydrogel-encapsulated experience under different ultrasound and gel conditions. By uncovering how ultrasound influences cell behavior, we hope to develop and optimize new strategies that combine cell therapy and finely-tuned mechanical stimuli to improve bone regeneration.

1. What inspired you to go into your area of specific research?
I have always been passionate about science and surrounded by critical-thinkers;my parents and other family members have studied and/or worked in technological or scientific industries. I was taught at a young age to be curious about the world around us. Throughout high-school and during my undergraduate education at the University of Connecticut (UConn), I became eager to study a scientific field which sits at the intersection of my favorite disciplines: physics, mathematics, engineering, biology, and medicine. At the same time, my life-long athletic outlets in martial arts and acrobatic movements enhanced my curiosity in biomechanics and, through two injuries requiring surgery, gave me first-hand experience with clinical challenges in musculoskeletal health. Finally, in my undergraduate years at UConn, I took a tissue engineering class taught by Dr. Yusuf Khan (now my PhD advisor) that perfectly mixed all of my academic interests. These experiences all inspired me to pursue research in bone tissue/regenerative engineering, allowing me to integrate concepts from nearly every corner of science to find solutions to real-world, clinically-relevant problems.

2. What is one of the most rewarding things about your area of research?
One of the most rewarding aspects of my area of research is the collaborative and multidisciplinary nature of the work. I am very fortunate to be part of the Connecticut Convergence Institute for Translation in Regenerative Engineering at UConn Health, which offers a diverse group of faculty and students with wide-ranging expertise and technical skills. The days are never dull and there is always a lot to learn, which is exciting to me.

3. What are your next steps for your research/career?
In my research, the next steps are to dig deeper into the mechanotransduction events and osteogenic responses in hydrogel-encapsulated cells exposed to different types of low-intensity pulsed ultrasound stimulation. As for my career after my PhD, I am still undecided but considering the many possibilities that await. My several years as a tutor for college mathematics and physics have given me a strong desire to teach in some capacity, regardless of my career path. However, my primary goal is to stay connected to cutting-edge biomedical research, whether that be through academia, industry-based research-and-development, or government agencies/institutes such as NASA.

Gabriel Rodriguez- Rivera: 2nd Prize

My thesis is focused on developing an injectable hydrogel to terminate lethal arrhythmias in the ventricles without the pain induced by high-energy defibrillation shocks. Our initial work demonstrated that the proposed hydrogel electrode is conductive, hydrolytically stable, and compatible with the body, allowing us to reach areas of the heart that would not be reachable using commercial pacing leads.

1. What inspired you to go into your area of specific research?
Curiosity, possibilities, and opportunities. I worked in a biopharmaceutical company in Puerto Rico for seven years in the technology transfer of new products. Working at the interphase of development and commercialization sparked my interest in creating products that could impact the patient’s quality of life and using my tools as a chemical engineer to design and improve new biomaterials.

What is one of the most rewarding things about your area of research?
Being able to design a biomaterial that could eventually save and improve lives. Also, just seeing how we can use materials to induce a response in our bodies is incredible. Additionally, interacting with other scientists and clinicians with different areas of expertise helped me learn and grow.

What are your next steps for your research/career?
I am excited to continue understanding the fundamental properties of biomaterials for cardiovascular applications as a postdoc in Jason Burdick’s lab at the University of Colorado – Boulder.

Sarah Jones: 3rd Prize

I presented on my thesis project focused on developing a wrap to optimize the healing environment in large bone defects to reduce the risk of amputation or severe disability and improve patient outcomes. For wrap fabrication, I am co-electrospinning a durable synthetic polymer loaded with antibiotics along with extracellular matrix containing growth factors into a fibrous wrap. The wrap will be placed around a cement bone spacer used in a two-stage procedure to guide the membrane formation that is responsible for enveloping a bone graft and guiding bone formation. The synthetic fibers will improve barrier performance, preventing graft resorption, and will support sustained local antibiotic release to eradicate infection. Secondly, the matrix fibers will provide angiogenic and immunomodulatory cues to improve the membrane’s regenerative potential. Together this wrap aims to improve bone healing and overall quality of life for survivors of traumatic injury.

What inspired you to go into your area of specific research?
I have always been interested in pursuing a career to improve human health, specifically by developing new techniques or products. However, my interest in biomedical engineering started quite broad. I initially imagined working on prosthetics or robotic surgical systems. However, once attending classes at Texas A&M University, I became increasingly interested in biomaterials and their ability interact with the human body. I joined the Grunlan Research Group and really discovered and developed a passion for materials-guided tissue regeneration. This is the idea that the chemistry/structure of an implanted material can guide tissue regeneration and healing without exogenous biologics. This field spoke to me as a way to sustainably and reliably enhance human health. This passion led me to the Cosgriff-Hernandez Lab at The University of Texas at Austin, focusing on polymeric materials for tissue engineering, to pursue my PhD in biomedical engineering. I hope to continue to develop and refine my passion for biomaterials throughout my education and career.

What is one of the most rewarding things about your area of research?
I believe the wide application of my research area is extremely rewarding. We spend so much time developing this wrap for a specific procedure for traumatic bone injuries. However, the things we learn from this process can be applied to almost any area of the body. Discovering structure property relationships and cell material interactions can contribute to the overall body of knowledge in biomedical engineering. For example, nutrient supply and blood flow is a common hurdle faced in all areas of tissue engineering, and my project has the potential to reveal a new technique to improve vascularization in new tissue.

What are your next steps for your research/career?
After completing my doctorate, I plan to continue in the field of biomaterials for tissue engineering. I hope to join the medical device industry as a research engineer and continually work to design and develop new products to aid in tissue regeneration.

Please join us in congratulating all the winners of the SFB Three Minute Thesis Award!

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Congratulations to the winners of the Society for Biomaterials Postdoctoral Research Award

02 Aug 2022

By Natalie Cotterell, Development Editor.

We would like to congratulate the winners of the SFB Postdoctoral Research Award. Check out the award winners and learn about their research in our interview below.

Mykel Green: 1st Prize

The success of stem cell regenerative therapies has been crippled by low cell survival, poor retention in the target tissue, uncontrolled differentiation, and induction of host immune response. My work seeks to develop a PEG-based hydrogel carrier to address these concerns and improve engraftment efficiency by protecting the fragile blood-producing stem cells during direct delivery into the bone marrow and increasing cell retention through controlled cell release. Successful completion of this work and its subsequent studies will lead to an improved understanding of the pathophysiology of SCD and the development of my hydrogel system as a tool to target other bone marrow transplantation-reliant curative therapies.

1. What inspired you to go into your area of specific research?
While studying biology at Morehouse College, I fell in love with sickle cell disease. It’s a simple mutation, but the consequences are physiologically disastrous. Blood is nearly ubiquitous; therefore, all biomedical researchers can study it, but it is significantly under-resourced and under-studied relative to other conditions. I want to correct this injustice for patients with sickle cell and other health disparities.

2. What is one of the most rewarding things about your area of research?
I love creating polymers! Something about synthesis excites me, especially trying to develop a new protocol. It is akin to cooking from scratch; you always take great pride in the final product (except when results are unfavorable).

3. What are your next steps for your research/career?
In the immediate future, I hope to create a definitive body of research supporting my hydrogel carrier as a functional bone marrow transplantation modality in a non-diseased animal model. Eventually, I will begin testing in a sickle cell model and tailor the hydrogel to address its many challenges. I expect these studies to be a significant part of my early-stage investigator work, among many other related projects.

Teresa Rapp: 2nd Prize

Ruthenium Crosslinkers for Hydrogel Formation with Applications in Tissue Culture and Cell Delivery
My work focuses on the development of new molecular crosslinkers that respond to unique external stimuli, specifically light. This work discussed the synthesis and application of two new ruthenium-based hydrogel crosslinkers that can selectively respond to red (617 nm) and green (530 nm) light. Used in conjunction with an ortho-nitrobenzyl-based hydrogel crosslinker, I created a hydrogel system that softens in response to three unique, visible light inputs. I showed these hydrogels are cytocompatible, orthogonal, and can be used to study cellular fate in 3D.

1. What inspired you to go into your area of specific research?
A chemist by training, I was first inspired by the incredible potential to create new functional biomaterials by innovation in the chemistry space. This field has allowed me to pursue both my interest in basic science as I discover new molecules, and demonstrate their real world feasibility in a product that could transform the work of so many research groups across the world. I hope to continue to work at the forefront of biomaterial development throughout my academic career.

2. What is one of the most rewarding things about your area of research?
The depth of knowledge I get to pursue as I work in this area. I love my work in synthetic chemistry and materials development, and this area provides many opportunities for me to collaborate with bioengineers, biologists, clinicians, and many others; opportunities that allow me to learn about a vast range of natural sciences.

3. What are your next steps for your research/career?
I will be entering the tenure track faculty job market this year, looking to start my own research lab to explore the potential of these new photochemistries in the next generation of biomaterials.

Kimberly Nellenbach: 3rd Prize

I presented research focused on our lab’s novel hemostatic materials. We’ve developed Platelet-like Particles or PLPs that are capable of mimicking the ability of native platelets to form a platelet plug and stem bleeding during traumatic injury. My recent efforts have been focused on analyzing the in vivo safety and efficacy of these PLPs. In my research, it was determined that at an optimized dose, PLPs are able to significantly reduce blood loss across multiple models of traumatic injury without any deleterious off-target thrombotic effects.

1. What inspired you to go into your area of specific research?
Tissue engineering has been a long interest of mine because of family and friends who experienced tissue and organ damage due to injuries or chronic inflammatory illnesses. I wanted to play an integral role in helping restore, maintain, or improve this damage. I narrowed my focus of research on wound healing/hemostatic materials when I became part of the Advanced Wound Healing Lab at NCSU and wanted to contribute to moving this research forward.

2. What is one of the most rewarding things about your area of research?
One of the most rewarding aspects of developing hemostatic materials is that our lab is working towards filling a critical need, especially given the current nationwide blood shortage.

3. What are your next steps for your research/career?
The next steps in my research career are to continue to explore ways to enhance wound healing and treat bleeding by investigating the efficacy of our lab’s platelet-like technology in different models of coagulopathies and impaired wound healing

We would also like to congratulate the following finalists for the SFB Postdoctoral Research Award:

Jason Guo

Ana Mora Boza

Jingjing Gao

Please join us in congratulating all the winners and the finalists of the SFB Postdoctoral Research Award 2022!

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Open call to submit your plastics research to these cross-journal themed collections on ‘Polymer Upcycling’ and ‘Plastic Conversion’

29 Jul 2022

By Natalie Cotterell, Development Editor.

The Royal Society of Chemistry has announced an open call to submit your plastics research to our themed collections on ‘Polymer Upcycling’ and ‘Plastic Conversion’

The Royal Society of Chemistry is committed to sustainable plastics research and has published a policy statement regarding plastic waste. With increasing impact of plastic waste on the environment, it is necessary to research ways in which we can have a sustainable future for plastics.

Plastics research is interdisciplinary and involves a wide range of chemical scientists. As such, we invite you to contribute to our cross-journal themed collections by submitting your work to Journal of Materials Chemistry A, B, C, Polymer Chemistry or Catalysis Science & Technology.

Polymer Upcycling

Joint themed collection between Journal of Materials Chemistry A, B and C

In 2015 alone, the global waste generated by plastic packaging applications was 82.7 metric tons (Mt). Currently, waste management practices for the end-of-life plastics exploit landfilling, industrial energy recovery from municipal solid waste incineration, pyrolysis and recycling. Due to the ubiquity and necessity of plastics in our daily life, the elimination or reduction of plastics is not foreseeable in the near future and fundamentally new science is needed to describe and understand the polymers, interfaces, decomposition and upcycling of plastics. This Themed Collection aims to explore the latest developments in materials characterization, polymer design and synthesis, physical chemistry and molecular understanding of plastic decomposition and transformation that contribute to a broad knowledge base for upcycling waste plastics.

Submissions should fit within the scope of Journal of Materials Chemistry A, Journal of Materials Chemistry B or Journal of Materials Chemistry C. We welcome high quality studies across all fields of materials chemistry in the form of full Papers, Communications and Review-type articles (Reviews, Highlights or Perspectives) and we invite authors to select the journal that best suits their submission.

For more information, visit our open calls page

Guest Edited by:

Blair Brettmann (Georgia Institute of Technology), Marco Fraga (Instituto Nacional De Technologia Brasil), Monika Gosecka (Polish Academy of Sciences) and Natalie Stingelin (Georgia Institute of Technology)

Submit your work to Journal of Materials Chemistry A, Journal of Materials Chemistry B or Journal of Materials Chemistry C now!

Plastic Conversion

Joint themed collection between Polymer Chemistry and Catalysis Science & Technology

Catalysts have been the main driver for the design of ever new polymers with highly diverse and specialized properties. In this themed issue, we aim to highlight research that makes use of catalysis to optimize the reverse. How can we get the most value out of plastic waste? In this quest, we especially welcome manuscripts that address the challenges unique to plastics. These include but are not limited to additive impurities; mixed polymer streams; how to contact the very viscous, high molecular weight polymer with the (micro-)porous catalyst or a cleavage agent and more broadly catalytic conversion of sustainable polymeric materials for a circular plastic economy. Unconventional approaches via photo-, electro- or mechano-catalytic approaches and combinations thereof are also very welcome. We highly encourage to place the work in the context of performance metrics of green chemistry.

Submissions should fit the scope of either Polymer Chemistry or Catalysis Science & Technology. We would suggest that articles focused on synthetic and polymer chemistry aspects would be best suited to Polymer Chemistry, whereas articles focused on catalytic and/or related methodological advances would be appropriate for Catalysis Science & Technology. The collaborative joint special issue recognizes that management of plastic wastes relies on research conducted at the intersection of polymer chemistry and catalysis. You may submit to whichever journal you feel is most relevant to your current research. Please note that your article may be offered a transfer to the alternate journal if deemed more appropriate by the handling editor.

For more information, visit our open calls page

Guest Edited by:

Professor Ina Vollmer (Utrecht University, Netherlands), Professor George Huber (University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA), Professor Haritz Sardon (POLYMAT, University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU, Spain) and Professor Zhibo Li (Qingdao University of Science and Technology, China)

Submit your work to Polymer Chemistry or Catalysis Science & Technology now!

If you would like to contribute to either of these themed collections, you can submit your article directly through the journal’s online submission service. Please add a “note to the editor” in the submission form when uploading your files to say that this is a contribution to the respective themed collection. The Editorial Office reserves the right to check suitability of submissions in relation to the scope of the collection, and inclusion of accepted articles in the final themed collection is not guaranteed.

If you would like more information about the ‘Polymer Upcycling’ themed collection, please email Materials-rsc@rsc.org. For more information about the ‘Plastic Conversion’ themed collection, please email Polymers-rsc@rsc.org.

We look forward to receiving your submissions and showcasing this important research in our collections.

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Congratulations to the poster award winners at ICSM 2022!

28 Jul 2022

By Daniel Smith.

We would like to congratulate the following poster award winners at the 2022 International Conference on the Science and Technology of Synthetic Metals.

Both the Journal of Materials Chemistry A, B and C, and Materials Horizons were delighted to sponsor the Best Poster prizes.

The Journal of Materials Chemistry A Best Poster prize was awarded to Urvashi Bothra (far right)

The Journal of Materials Chemistry B Best Poster prize was awarded to Anni Eklund (second from right)

The Journal of Materials Chemistry C Best Poster prize was awarded to Paloma Dos Santos (second from left)

The Materials Horizons Best Poster prize was awarded to Donato Ottomano (far left)

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Journal of Materials Chemistry Blog

Emerging Investigators in materials science

Journal of Materials Chemistry A, B and C are pleased to present the Emerging Investigator themed issues highlighting the rising stars of materials chemistry research in 2022.

Read each collection below:

Journal of Materials Chemistry A Emerging Investigators

Journal of Materials Chemistry B Emerging Investigators

Journal of Materials Chemistry C Emerging Investigators

Congratulations to poster prize winners at the International Materials Research Congress (IMRC2022)

Congratulations to the winner of the Electrochem2022 RSC poster prize!

Microneedles themed collection: Meet the Guest Editors

Open Call: Bioinspired Artificial Synapses and Neurons Based on Memristors

New submission deadline: Submit before 30 June 2023!

Repair and re-use of the outer casing for a Lithium-ion battery cell

An infographic describing a new method to repair and recycle a Li-ion battery pouch

Meet the authors

Congratulations to the winners of the Society for Biomaterials Three Minute Thesis Award

Congratulations to the winners of the Society for Biomaterials Postdoctoral Research Award

Open call to submit your plastics research to these cross-journal themed collections on ‘Polymer Upcycling’ and ‘Plastic Conversion’

Congratulations to the poster award winners at ICSM 2022!

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