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Introducing Jean-Luc Brédas as a new Scientific Editor on Materials Horizons

09 Jun 2022

Materials Horizons are delighted to welcome Professor Jean-Luc Brédas from the University of Arizona, USA as a Scientific Editor.

Professor Jean-Luc Bredas received his B.Sc. (1976) and Ph.D. (1979) degrees from the University of Namur, Belgium. In 1988, he was appointed Professor at the University of Mons, Belgium, where he established the Laboratory for Chemistry of Novel Materials. While keeping an “Extraordinary Professorship” appointment in Mons, he joined the University of Arizona in 1999. In 2003, he moved to the Georgia Institute of Technology where he became Regents’ Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry and held the Vasser-Woolley and Georgia Research Alliance Chair in Molecular Design. Between 2014 and 2016, he joined King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) as a Distinguished Professor and served as Director of the KAUST Solar & Photovoltaics Engineering Research Center. He returned to Georgia Tech in 2017 before moving back to the University of Arizona in 2020 where he is currently Regents Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. Jean-Luc Brédas is an elected Member of the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science, the Royal Academy of Belgium, and the European Academy of Sciences. Recent honors include the 2013 American Physical Society David Adler Lectureship Award in the Field of Materials Physics, the 2016 American Chemical Society Award in the Chemistry of Materials, the 2019 Alexander von Humboldt Research Award, the 2020 Materials Research Society Materials Theory Award, and the 2021 Centenary Prize of the RSC. He is an Honorary Professor of the Institute of Chemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and holds an Adjunct Professorship at the Georgia Institute of Technology. His Focus Article “Mind the Gap” is the first article that appeared in the very first issue of Materials Horizons.

Read our interview with Jean-Luc below.

1. What attracted you to pursue a career in materials science and how did you get to where you are now?

It was initially a love for chemistry, which grew into a passion for computational chemistry and organic chemistry. With organic materials becoming increasingly appealing because of their opto-electronic properties and broad range of applications, I gradually evolved into a computational materials scientist.

2. Why did you choose to specialize in your specific research field?

Because of a major scientific event that took place as I was starting my Ph.D.: The then-surprising discovery by Alan Heeger, Alan McDiarmid, and Hideki Shirakawa in late 1976 that organic polymers can be made highly electrically conducting, which led to the 2000 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. That discovery is what decided where I wanted to do my post-doc and everything else followed from there.

3. What do you see as the most important scientific achievement of the last decade?

Given the pandemic context, the development of m-RNA based vaccines springs to mind. In my field, the emergence of bio-organic electronics is very exciting as well as that of organic-inorganic hybrid perovskites.

4. What excites you most about your area of research and what has been the most exciting moment of your career so far?

The fact that the area of organic electronics and photonics combines the need for understanding of fundamental scientific processes with real-world applications: OLED displays are so cool!

5. Which of your Materials Horizons publications are you most proud of and why?

It turns out that I signed the very first article published by the journal in early 2014: “Mind the Gap”. It was a Focus Article, which many told me has been very useful to get clear ideas of the distinctions among band gap, optical gap, transport gap, etc.

6. Why do you feel that researchers should choose to publish their work in Materials Horizons?

Because of the journal’s high standards; because their work is initially assessed by scientific editors who are fellow active researchers; and because the journal highlights the new conceptual advances that the authors’ quality work brings forward.

7. What attracted you to join the Editorial Board of Materials Horizons?

I was a member of the original Editorial Advisory Board of the journal. I was seduced by the vision that the then Chair of the Editorial Board, Seth Marder, brought to what has become the flagship materials journal of the RSC. I am happy now to be in a position to contribute more directly.

8. The Materials Horizons team is delighted to welcome you to the Editorial Board. What are you most looking forward to when acting as a Scientific Editor for the journal?

What I hope to contribute is to a healthy growth of the journal where we strive to keep increasing its high standards, to make sure all members of the materials community are actively involved in its evolution, and to promote respect, diversity, and inclusion in everything we do for the journal.

9. What impact do you feel that your area of research can make over the next 10 years?

The application of organic optoelectronics on the bio side and its contributions to personalized medicine as well as to healthcare in developing countries. The appearance of organic solar cells out in the real world. The discovery of exotic quantum phases in purely organic π-conjugated materials.

10. What is your favourite reaction or material, and why?

I’ll have to say trans-polyacetylene, even though it is not a polymer that will have big-time applications given its instability. However, this is the material that arguably started the interest in the optoelectronic properties of organics. Also, the wealth of physics behind its deceivingly simple chemical structure is amazing!

11. Why should young people study chemistry or related subjects?

The events of the past two years as well as the dark issues facing our planet, make it more important than ever that the young generations embark on scientific studies, combined with the right political activism.

12. What is your biggest passion outside of science?

My family and soccer. It is a blast that both our daughters now live in Tucson and we can see them very often. Soccer-wise, it is nice to realize that the US are increasingly embracing the “beautiful game”; it’s comforting as well that “I’ll never walk alone”.

Submit to Materials Horizons now! Check out our author guidelines for information on our article types or find out more about the advantages of publishing in a Royal Society of Chemistry journal.

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Introducing Yi Long as a new Scientific Editor on Materials Horizons

01 Jun 2022

Materials Horizons are delighted to welcome Dr Yi Long from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore as a Scientific Editor.

Yi Long received her PhD in Materials Science (2005) at Cambridge University with the full scholarship of Overseas Research Scholarship (ORS), United Kingdom Cambridge Trust and Graduate Scholarship of Selwyn College. She started as a Teaching Fellow in Nanyang Technology University Singapore in 2005 with focus on Lab-to-Fab technology transfer for industries. She successfully delivered three technologies include one coating process to Seagate Technology, the leading hard-disk company in the world. From 2011, she changed her title as lecturer and started her academic research center on smart materials and devices.

Her group currently focuses on two main topics; the integration of organic and inorganic smart materials with (1) energy saving applications, and (2) novel advanced functional devices. She has received several awards including the TechConnect Innovation Washington (2016), National Research Foundation Proof of Concept grant (2015), Minister of Education Tier 2 (2021), GreenAwards Top 3 London (2022). She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Read our interview with Yi below.

1. What attracted you to pursue a career in materials science and how did you get to where you are now?

My first degree is mechanical design with some courses covering materials fabrication, property, and utilization. When I was offered a scholarship in Singapore, I specialized in electronic materials. I enjoyed the process of making a new piece of material as it felt like creation. After my masters training, I worked as a lithography engineer in a top semiconductor company with good job potential, but a full overseas research scholarship by Cambridge University attracted me. Without much hesitation, I quitted my industrial job and my long journey of research embarked. My PhD training was using self-made ultra-high vacuum system to fabricate superlattice structure and studying its strengthening mechanism. It was tough. I remembered my daily lab work, spending two days carrying 10 KG flange to deposit one single sample and many hours in the dark TEM room to fathom why. My supervisor Dr. Bill Clegg was passionate about research. He sat next door and greeted us every morning cheerfully “Anything new?”. The PhD training did lay a solid foundation. What made it more unforgettable was pubbing, garden party and formal halls.

2. Why did you choose to specialize in your specific research field?

I have a unique career. Different from many researchers, after I graduated from Cambridge, I did not attend postdoc training. I was offered a job in Singapore as a teaching fellow to reunion with my husband-to-be. For the first six years of my career in Singapore, I focused on transferring technologies to local industries. I am happy that I have succeeded a few including one solution coating process to Seagate Technologies, the leading hard disk company in the world. After four years of hard work, a production line was set up. Although such work gave zero publications, it was rewarding. Industry and academic speak different languages. I am lucky that I am bilingual.

In 2011, I changed my title to Lecturer and was awarded one research program by National Research Foundation Singapore to specialize in thermochromic smart window. It was a humble beginning, with only one part time PhD student funded for the first three years. Like all the other colleagues in the world, the beginning is always most gruelling.

3. What do you see as the most important scientific achievement of the last decade?

This is a big question. I could only say, in my own research field, radiative cooling could be considered as one of the important as it spontaneously radiate long-wave infrared to the cold outer space. This could be one of the important solutions to global warming. There are many pioneer workers there, Profs. Fan Shangkui, Yin Xiaobo, Hu Liang Bing, Yang Ronggui and many more. The research community never stops exploration. “Don’t be afraid of boundless truth, there always exists joy in any step taken.” (Dr Hu Shih, Public Intellectual)

4. What excites you most about your area of research and what has been the most exciting moment of your career so far?

Buildings consume about 40% of global energy and window, one of the least energy-efficient parts, accounts for as high as 60% of energy loss in the buildings. In the United States, the window-associated energy consumption in buildings was estimated at 4% of nation’s total primary energy usage. The potential that I may contribute to this grand challenge excites me.

We started our research with radiative cooling regulated window in 2019. At the initial proof of concept stage, we designed outdoor experiment to convince that we were in the right track. Singapore is a tropical country. The data for summer season were readily accessible and predictably good. We need find a place to simulate the winter scenario. Singapore has a Snow City with the indoor temperature below -5 ^oC. We asked the special permission to do the experiment before the opening hour. My students Dr. Wang ShanCheng and Zhou Yang had to finish everything within 3 hours. When we saw the “room temperature” was higher than the commercial product, the three of us were thrilled. The day after we finished the experiment, the Snow City was sadly closed due to Covid lockdown.

5. What is your favourite reaction or material, and why?

Vanadium dioxide and hydrogel. Both have profound science behind and great potential to be commercialized. I have spent one decade, trying hard to understand them more. Both materials are smart as they could give fascinating response with external stimulus automatically. I worked with heat stimulus most of the time. Such passive response of these two materials simply the device design and cut down the cost. Less is more.

6. Which of your Materials Horizons publications are you most proud of and why?

Materials Horizons 8 (6), 1700-1710, 2021. Vanadium dioxide (VO₂) is a unique active plasmonic material due to its intrinsic metal–insulator transition, Dr Ke Yujie, my PhD student, experimented a new method to tailor the VO₂ surface plasmon by manipulating its atomic defects. With the excellent collaboration with Prof. Sun Zhimei, this paper developed a quantitative understanding based on different representative defective VO₂ systems. We further demonstrated the unconventional plasmonic applications including energy-saving smart windows, wearable camouflage devices, and encryption inks.

7. What attracted you to join the Editorial Board of Materials Horizons?

My submissions to Materials Horizons were not all smooth. I remembered one of them had one negative comment and the paper was rejected initially. I appealed and the editorial DID listen. The editorial team is professional and open minded. I admire profoundly.

8. What is your biggest passion outside of science?

Reading and Movies. When I was young, there were not much entertainment, reading and watching movies were my hobbies. Science is more about logical and rational reasoning. Humanities is about empathic understanding. I need balance my academic life with other horizons. We human can “see” the black holes, navigate the deepest sea, transmit data in light speed and even transform ourselves into immortal cyborg. How about humanity?

9. Why should young people study chemistry or related subjects?

Creation. We synthesis, characterize and analyse. Materials shape the evolution of human civilization from Stone, Bronze, Iron to Silicon. What is next? It’s open to generations of materials scientists.

10. What impact do you feel that your area of research can make over the next 10 years?

Paris treaty aims to hold the increase in the global average temperature to “well below” 2°C above pre-industrial levels. It is our scientist moral obligation and social responsivity to take actions. My research is focused on smart materials and device, but majority work is with smart window. There is not much technological advancement of commercial windows for many years. I do hope more breakthroughs could happen to bring the new window in the household with more functionality and much less carbon footprint.

Submit to Materials Horizons now! Check out our author guidelines for information on our article types or find out more about the advantages of publishing in a Royal Society of Chemistry journal.

Keep up to date with our latest articles, reviews, collections & more by following us on Twitter, Facebook or by signing up to our E-Alerts.

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Editorial Board Chair Seth Marder awarded Humboldt Research Award

31 Jul 2018

Congratulations to Professor Seth Marder, Georgia Institute of Technology and Materials Horizons founding Editorial Board Chair. He has been elected as the recipient of a Humboldt Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.

The award is granted in recognition of a researcher’s entire achievements to date to academics whose fundamental discoveries, new theories, or insights have had a significant impact on their own discipline and who are expected to continue producing cutting-edge achievements in the future. Seth is internationally recognized for his leadership in developing structure-property relationships for organic and metallo-organic materials for optical and electronic applications.

Award winners are invited to spend a period of up to one year cooperating on a long-term research project with specialist colleagues at a research institution in Germany. As part of his award, Seth will be hosted as a visiting researcher by Professor Norbert Koch at IRIS Adlershof and the Department of Physics of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.

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Introducing the Materials Horizons Community Board

09 Oct 2015

Materials Horizons is thrilled to announce that the first researchers have joined our Materials Horizons Community Board. This board is unique in that it is made up of early career researchers, such as PhD students and postdocs, that are fundamental in the future development of the materials field.

This board will help build relationships with the young researcher community, providing the editorial office with not only essential feedback and advice on the perception of the journal in their community but also education-focused initiatives that will benefit the materials community as a whole.

These engaged and enthusiastic researchers have been nominated by the Materials Horizons and Journal of Materials Chemistry A, B & C Editorial and Advisory Board. We received several excellent nominations and the successful candidates are:

Sarit Agasti – Jawarhal Nehru Center for Advanced Scientific Research, India
Athina Anastasaki – Warwick University, UK
Robert Chapman – Imperial College London, UK
Chaohua Cui – Soochow University, China
Rebecca Gieseking – Northwestern University, USA
Peter Korevaar – Harvard University, USA
John Labram – University of California, Santa Barbara, USA
Tian-Yi Ma – University of Adelaide, Australia
Jaime Martín Pérez – Imperial College London, UK
Troy Townsend – St Mary’s College of Maryland, USA
Daiki Umeyama – Stanford University, USA
Mengye Wang – Xiamen University, China

Please join us in congratulating the new members of the Materials Horizons Community Board.

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Bruno Chaudret is our new Scientific Editor

10 Aug 2015

Materials Horizons would like to welcome Bruno Chaudret as our newest Scientific Editor.

Bruno has a wealth of experience having co-authored over 400 publications and being the recipient of several prizes including the Gay-Lussac – Humboldt Prize and the Wilkinson Prize of the RSC. He graduated from École Nationale Supérieure de Chimie de Paris in 1975 and then went on to receive his Ph.D. from Imperial College London in 1977 with Sir Geoffrey Wilkinson. He was awarded the degree of a “Docteur ès Sciences” at the University of Toulouse in 1979.

He is now “Director of Research CNRS”, Director of the “Laboratoire de Physique et Chimie des Nano-Objets” in Toulouse and a member of the French Academy of Science since 2005.

His interests have been in the chemistry of hydride and dihydrogen organometallic complexes, and in the early 90s, he developed an organometallic method for the synthesis of metal or metal oxide nanoparticles.

We very much look forward to working with him!

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Our new Editorial Board Member Anna Balazs

20 May 2015

Materials Horizons is delighted to welcome Anna Balazs as our new Editorial Board Member.

Anna is the Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering and the Robert von der Luft Professor at the University of Pittsburgh. She received her B.A. in physics at Bryn Mawr College and her Ph.D. in Materials Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After postdoctoral work in the Polymer Science Department at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, she joined the faculty at the University of Pittsburgh in 1987. Her research involves developing theoretical and computational models to capture the behavior of polymeric materials, nanocomposites and multi-component fluids in confined geometries. Balazs served as the Chair of the Division of Polymer Physics of the APS (2000-2001), Co-Chair of the Spring MRS meeting (2000) and served on the APS Public Policy Committee. In addition, she is a Fellow of the APS.

Before joining Materials Horizons, Anna was a member of the Advisory Board for Soft Matter.

Her recent papers include:

Self-assembly of microcapsules regulated via the repressilator signaling network
Henry Shum, Victor V. Yashin and Anna C. Balazs
Soft Matter, 2015, 11, 3542-3549

Forming self-rotating pinwheels from assemblies of oscillating polymer gels
Debabrata Deb, Olga Kuksenok, Pratyush Dayal and Anna C. Balazs
Mater. Horiz, 2014, 1, 125-132

Chemo-responsive, self-oscillating gels that undergo biomimetic communication
Olga Kuksenok, Pratyush Dayal, Amitabh Bhattacharya, Victor V. Yashin, Debabrata Deb, Irene C. Chen, Krystyn J. Van Vliet and Anna C. Balazs
Chem. Soc. Rev., 2013, 42, 7257-7277

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Our new Scientific Editor Martina Stenzel

29 Aug 2014

Materials Horizons is delighted to welcome Martina Stenzel as our new Scientific Editor.

Martina studied chemistry at the University of Bayreuth, Germany, before completing her PhD in 1999 at the Institute of Applied Macromolecular Chemistry, University of Stuttgart, Germany. She currently holds the position of full professor at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney, Australia where she originally started working as a DAAD Postdoctoral Fellow. Her research interests encompass the synthesis of functional polymers with complex architectures such as glycopolymers and other polymers for biomedical applications, especially polymers with in-build metal complexes for the delivery of metal-based anti-cancer drugs.

She has also published more than 200 peer reviewed papers and 8 book chapters and has attracted more than 9000 citations so far. To find out more about Martina, please do have a read of her interview in our sister publication, Chemical Communications below:

Interview with Martina Stenzel
Chem. Commun., 2014, 50, 8626-8627
DOI: 10.1039/C4CC90201G

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Introducing Materials Horizons Scientific Editor Thuc Quyen Nguyen

15 Jan 2014

Thuc-Quyen Nguyen is a professor in the Center for Polymers and Organic Solids and Chemistry & Biochemistry Department at University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). She received her Ph.D. degree in physical chemistry from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2001 under the supervision of Professor Benjamin Schwartz. Her thesis focused on photophysics of conducting polymers using ultrafast spectroscopy.

From 2001 to 2004, she was a research associate in the Department of Chemistry and the Nanocenter at Columbia University working with Professors Louis Brus and Colin Nuckolls on molecular self-assembly, nanoscale characterization, and molecular electronics. She also spent time at IBM Research Center at T. J. Watson working with Richard Martel and Phaedon Avouris. In 2004, she started an assistant professorship at UCSB and was promoted to full professor in 2011.

Her current research interests are structure-function-property relationships in organic semiconductors, electronic properties of conjugated polyelectrolytes, interfaces in optoelectronic devices, charge transport in organic semiconductors and across membranes, device physics, and nanoscale characterization of organic solar cells. Her group has published over 120 peer reviewed papers. Recognition for her research includes the 2005 Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award, the 2006 National Science Foundation CAREER Award, the 2007 Harold Plous Award (one of the UCSB’s two most prestigious faculty honors), the 2008 Camille Dreyfus Teacher Scholar Award, the 2009 Alfred Sloan Research Fellows, and the 2010 National Science Foundation American Competitiveness and Innovation Fellows.

Her recent papers include:

A structure–property–performance investigation of perylenediimides as electron accepting materials in organic solar cells
Michele Guide, Sara Pla, Alexander Sharenko, Peter Zalar, Fernando Fernández-Lázaro, Ángela Sastre-Santos and Thuc-Quyen Nguyen
Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys, 2013, 15, 18894-18899

Towards environmentally friendly processing of molecular semiconductors
Zachary B. Henson, Peter Zalar, Xiaofen Chen, Gregory C. Welch, Thuc-Quyen Nguyen and Guillermo C. Bazan
J. Mater. Chem. A, 2013, 1, 11117-11120

Regioregular pyridyl[2,1,3]thiadiazole-co-indacenodithiophene conjugated polymers
Wen Wen, Lei Ying, Ben B. Y. Hsu, Yuan Zhang, Thuc-quyen Nguyen and Guillermo C. Bazan
Chem. Commun., 2013, 49, 7192-7194

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Professor Rao – Bharat Ratna 2014

02 Dec 2013

Professor C. N. R. Rao, one of India’s highly regarded scientists, has been conferred the honour of the Bharat Ratna for 2014. This is India’s highest civilian award and is seldom awarded. Professor Rao is the third scientist and first chemist ever to receive the honour.

At an age when other people have relaxed into retirement, Professor Rao still spends several hours a day in his laboratory and has been in the running for a Nobel Prize for many years, showing his dedication and passion for his work. He also co-authors books with his wife with the aim of making chemistry more accessible for children. When asked in an interview with New Delhi Television what is required to succeed as a scientist in India, Professor Rao responded “stamina, tenacity, doggedness and perseverance. Also a little intelligence is useful!”

The Materials Horizons Editorial Office would like to extend our personal congratulations to Professor Rao on his outstanding achievement and take the opportunity to thank him for the work he does as an Editorial Board member for the journal.

For more information on Professor Rao, please read his author profile here.

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Introducing Materials Horizons Editorial Board member Jun Chen

15 Nov 2013

Jun Chen is the Chair Professor of energy materials chemistry at Nankai University, the Director of Key Laboratory of Advanced Energy Materials Chemistry (Ministry of Education), a Chief Scientist of the National Nano Key Science Research, and the Vice Chairman of the Chinese Society of Electrochemistry. He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees from Nankai University in 1989 and 1992 respectively, and his Ph.D. from the University of Wollongong (Australia) in 1999. He held the NEDO fellowship at the National Institute of AIST Kansai Center (Japan) from 1999 to 2002. His research activity focuses on nanomaterials, electrochemistry, batteries, fuel cells and solar cells with efficient energy storage & conversion. He has published over 150 journal papers and has strong links with industry. He is the recipient of a number of awards including the Eward Wicke Award (International Metal Hydride Committee, 2002), the Outstanding Young Scientist Award (NSFC, 2003), the Cheung Kong Scholar Professor (MOE, 2005), the National Natural Science Award (2nd prize, 2011), and the Australia China Alumni Award for Research and Innovation (ACAA, 2012).

Professor Chen’s recent papers include:

Magnesium–air batteries: from principle to application
Tianran Zhang, Zhanliang Tao and Jun Chen
Mater. Horiz., 2014, Advance Article DOI: 10.1039/C3MH00059A

Arylamine organic dyes for dye-sensitized solar cells
Mao Liang and Jun Chen
Chem. Soc. Rev., 2013, 42, 3453-3488 DOI: 10.1039/C3CS35372A

Efficient hydrogen storage with the combination of lightweight Mg/MgH2 and nanostructures
Fangyi Cheng, Zhanliang Tao, Jing Liang and Jun Chen
Chem. Commun., 2012, 48, 7334-7343 DOI: 10.1039/C2CC30740E

Metal–air batteries: from oxygen reduction electrochemistry to cathode catalysts
Fangyi Cheng and Jun Chen
Chem. Soc. Rev., 2012, 41, 2172-2192 DOI: 10.1039/C1CS15228A

Find profiles of all the Materials Horizons Editorial Board members in our recent Editorial.

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