Materials Horizons Blog

Soft wearable sensors

Open call for papers

We are pleased to announce an open call for papers to a themed collection across Nanoscale Horizons and Materials Horizons, published by the Royal Society of Chemistry. 

This collection is being guest edited by Professors John Rogers (Northwestern University, USA), Wenlong Cheng (University of Sydney, Australia), Alina Rwei (TU Delft, Netherlands), Dae-Hyeong Kim (Seoul National University, South Korea) and Nanshu Lu (University of Texas at Austin, USA).

Next-generation soft wearable sensors hold significant promise for revolutionizing healthcare and human-computer interaction by providing seamless integration between the human body and electronic devices. These advanced systems, characterized by their flexibility, stretchability, and biocompatibility, enable continuous monitoring of physical parameters such as body motion, physiological parameters like heart rate, and biochemical markers like electrolytes and cortisol levels in sweat in real-time. This real-time data collection can lead to more personalized and timely medical interventions, enabling a shift from hospital-centred healthcare to patient-centred healthcare.

Beyond healthcare, next-generation soft wearable sensors have applications in fitness, sports, and augmented reality (AR)/virtual reality (VR), paving the way for innovative approaches to human performance enhancement and interactive technologies. They offer significant advancements in human-machine interaction, enhancing experiences in the metaverse and beyond. This special issue aims to highlight the latest research, developments, and innovative applications in soft wearable sensors from a materials and nanotechnology perspective, and we believe your work would make a valuable contribution to this discussion.

This special-themed collection aims to provide a platform to showcase the recent progress and challenges in the field of soft wearable sensors addressing the exciting current challenges in biosensors, bioelectronics, medicine, healthcare, AR/VR and soft robotics. The scope of the collection is broad, including but are not limited to:

• Soft wearable materials and design
• Innovative fabrication methods of soft wearable sensors
• Materials and technologies for enhanced sensor performance
• Integration of sensors with wearable systems
• Significance of machine learning and artificial intelligence for remote diagnostics and automatic decision making
• Applications in health monitoring, rehabilitation, AR/VR and sports
• Challenges and future directions in the development of soft wearable sensors

Open for submissions until 14 March 2025

How to submit

Submissions should fit within the scope of either Nanoscale Horizons or Materials Horizons. Please visit the journal webpages for more information on their scope, standards, article types and author guidelines. We invite authors to select the journal that best suits their submission. Please note that primary research is accepted in the form of Communications for both journals and require a ‘New Concepts statement’ to help ascertain the significance of the research. General guidance and examples can be found here.

For Nanoscale Horizons, we welcome exceptionally high-quality studies across all fields of nanoscience and nanotechnology in the form of Communications and Review-type articles (Reviews and Focus articles).

For Materials Horizons, we welcome exceptionally high-quality materials science in the form of Communications and Review-type articles (Reviews, Opinions and Focus articles).

We strongly encourage you to submit an original research article. If you are interested in submitting a review-type article, please contact the Editorial Office at materialshorizons-rsc@rsc.org in the first instance with a proposed title and abstract, as initial approval is required before submission to avoid topic overlap and ensure that we cover topics in need to review.

When ready please submit your manuscript directly to the submissions platform for Nanoscale Horizons or Materials Horizons where our Editors will assess as per the scope and standards of the journal. Please add a note in the ‘Comments to the Editor’ and ‘Themed issues’ sections of the submission that this is a submission to the ‘Soft wearable sensors’ themed collection in response to the Open Call. Please note that all submissions will be subject to our standard rigorous peer review process, including initial editorial assessment as to suitability for the journal and maintain before peer review, if found appropriate. If accepted, your article would be published in a usual issue of the journal and added to the online collection for extra visibility.

We sincerely hope that you will be able to accept our invitation to contribute to this exciting collection on such an important topic.

Memristors and Neuromorphic Systems

Submit your latest work to Nanoscale Horizons and Materials Horizons now!

We are delighted to announce an open call for submissions to our cross-journal themed collection on ‘Memristors and Neuromorphic Systems’ to be published across Nanoscale Horizons and Materials Horizons

This collection is being Guest Edited by:

Prof. Xiaodong Chen (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore)

Prof. Cheol Seong Hwang (Seoul National University, Korea)

Prof. Francesca Santoro (Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany)

Prof. Yoeri Van de Burgt (Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands)

In late 2022, ChatGPT was launched with global impact across many different fields and society. However, similar to other artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms it has a substantional downside: consuming a lot of energy. ChatGPT requires almost ten times more energy cost than a conventional search algorithm, such as Google, as the large language model used in this new algorithm is built on a massive neural network, where the number of parameters to be optimized is overwhelming (several hundreds of billions). These models fundamentally belong to machine learning algorithms, where backpropagation-based deep learning produces remarkable performances. However, these methods are entirely disparate from human brain operation, which operates in a massively parallel and spike-based fashion and vastly outperforms computing algorithms in some classification tasks at much lower energy cost.

The research field dedicated to mimicking the brain is called neuromorphic engineering, and covers a wide range of disciplines, including electrical engineering, computing, materials science, chemistry, physics, and even psychology. Yet, conventional CMOS-based hardwares are based on the von-Neumann architecture which operates sequentially (instead of in parallel) suffling data back and forth between processing and memory, and thus barely fulfil the low-energy requirements for neuromorphic engineering. Memristors, which can be synaptic, neural, or even a combination of both, offer a potential solution and as such have been the focus of enhanced research efforts. In addition to their low-energy cost requirements, new materials properties employed by memristors may lead to new algorithms or help solve conventionally challenging tasks, such as NP-hard problems.

This themed collection in Materials Horizons and Nanoscale Horizons aims to report the latest developments in memristive materials. Exploring their fabrication, characterization, circuit design, and performance for applications in the future of neuromorphics. Collaborative work between diverse fields is especially encouraged.

Submissions Deadline: 30^th November 2023

Submissions should fit within the scope of either Nanoscale Horizons or Materials Horizons. Please click on the journal link for more information on the journal’s scope, standards, article types and author guidelines. We invite authors to select the journal that best suits their submission.

This open call is open for primary research submissions only and review content will be invite-only. Please note that primary research is accepted in the form of Communications for both journals and requires a ‘New Concepts statement’ to help ascertain the significance of the research. General guidance and examples can be found here.

For Nanoscale Horizons, we welcome high-quality studies across all fields of device/design and nanoscale materials and for Materials Horizons, we welcome exceptionally high-quality, innovative materials science research focusing on new materials and their applications.

If you wish to contribute, please submit your manuscript directly to the submissions platform for either Nanoscale Horizons or Materials Horizons and add a note in the ‘Comments to the Editor’ and the ‘Themed issues’ sections of the submissions page to say that this is an open call submission to the themed collection on Memristors and Neuromorphic Systems. If accepted and if suitable for the collection, your article will be added to the ongoing online collection after publication and published in a regular issue of the journal for enhanced visibility. The collection will be promoted around Spring 2024 and beyond.

All submissions will undergo a rigorous peer review process, including an initial Editorial assessment as to suitability for the journal before potential peer review.

If you have any questions, please contact the Editorial Office at materialshorizons-rsc@rsc.org.