Materials Horizons Blog

Shrinking hydrogel reinforces fabric for soft yet strong material

03 Sep 2015

Written for Chemistry World by Carolyn Devlin

A hydrogel–fabric composite that can support a load almost three times greater than the fabric alone has been made by scientists in Japan and the US.

For many applications, an ongoing challenge is to develop materials with seemingly contradictory properties. For example, the biomedical field wants materials that are tough, yet soft, wet, flexible and biocompatible – quite a tall order. Many researchers have spotted the potential of hydrogels, which are known for being soft and biocompatible, but limited by their lack of strength.

Interested? The full story can be read in Chemistry World.

The original article can be read below:

Extremely tough composites from fabric reinforced polyampholyte hydrogels
Alfred J. Crosby and Jian Ping Gong et al.
Mater. Horiz., 2015, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C5MH00127G

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Bruno Chaudret is our new Scientific Editor

10 Aug 2015

By Aliya Anwar.

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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Poster prize winners at FPi-12

07 Aug 2015

By Aliya Anwar.

Big congratulations to the poster prize winners at the 12^thInternational Symposium on Functional π-Electron Systems (Fπ-12) which took place in Washington, USA from the 19^th– 24^thJuly.

Matthias Stolte (Universitat Wurzburg, Germany) and Amir Mazaheripour (UC Irvine) were awarded first place poster prizes sponsored by Materials Horizons and Journal of Materials Chemistry A, whilst the runner up prizes were sponsored by Materials Horizons, Journal of Materials Chemistry B and Journal of Materials Chemistry C. These were presented to: Sahika Inal (CMP-EMSE, France), Nathan Kirchhofer (UCSB), Ana Fokina (Johannes Gutenberg-Universitat Mainz) and Suhyun Jung (Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology). Titles of their winning posters can be found here.

The symposium regularly attracts world-wide participants who meet to discuss their new achievements in research fields. Another symposium, scheduled for 2017 will take place in Hong Kong and will be titled Fπ-13. Further information about the symposium including the program and speakers from this year can be found by clicking here.

Poster prize winners at FPi-12 standing with Christine Luscombe (far right) who is the Associate Editor for Journal of Materials Chemistry A

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Nano-accordions stretch the boundaries for flexible electronics

01 Jul 2015

By Aliya Anwar.

Written by Suzanne Howson for Chemistry World

Scientists in the US have unveiled a conductive and transparent material that also stretches, thanks to its corrugated design. The material’s nano-accordion arrangement demonstrates how microstructure can significantly affect macroproperties, and could find use in flexible electronics, stretchable displays and wearable technologies.

Flexible products are becoming more desirable as smart technologies improve and develop. Many previously discovered conductive materials are opaque and cannot be stretched due to their planar structures. Finding materials that are conductive, stretchable and transparent is therefore of utmost importance to allow these technologies to advance.

Interested? Read the full story at Chemistry World.

Aluminium-doped zinc oxide is conductive, transparent and bendy when it has a corrugated structure

The original article can be read below:

Multifunctional nano-accordion structures for stretchable transparent conductors
Abhijeet Bagal, Erinn C. Dandley, Junjie Zhao, Xu A. Zhang, Christopher J. Oldham, Gregory N. Parsons and Chih-Hao Chang
Mater. Horiz., 2015, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C5MH00070J

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Materials Horizons First Immediacy Index

19 Jun 2015

By Fiona McKenzie, Executive Editor.

Materials Horizons, the new home for rapid reports of exceptional significance on innovative materials, has received its first immediacy index from Thomson Reuters’ Journal Citation Reports® (JCR).

Immediacy Index – 3.324

This puts Materials Horizons straight into the top 5 immediacy-indexed journals publishing primary research in the Materials Science, Multidisciplinary JCR category.

We are delighted that our authors’ work is being received and cited so well by the community and would like to thank all of our authors, referees and Board members for their support of this new journal.

Submit your next high impact paper to Materials Horizons and enjoy all of the benefits of being a Royal Society of Chemistry author!

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Poster prize winner at the US-Japan Workshop on Advances in Organic/Inorganic Hybrid Materials 2015

04 Jun 2015

By Aliya Anwar.

Prof. Kensuke Naka (Kyoto Institute of Technology / workshop committee co-chair), Mr. Yasuyuki Irie (Kyoto Institute of Technology) & Hiromitsu Urakami

From left: Professor Kensuke Naka (Kyoto Institute of Technology / workshop committee co-chair), Mr. Yasuyuki Irie (Kyoto Institute of Technology) & Hiromitsu Urakami (Royal Society of Chemistry)

Materials Horizons would like to give a hearty congratulations to PhD student Mr. Yasuyuki Irie for his poster titled: ‘Single component self-standing films based on carbazole terminated polyhedral octasilicate-core dendrimers’ which was awarded a prize at the US-Japan Workshop on Advances in Organic/Inorganic Hybrid Materials 2015 which took place in Himeji, Japan from the 18^th– 22^ndMay 2015.

The purpose of the workshop was to showcase new research and application directions in the area of organic/inorganic hybrids, inorganic polymers, and nanocomposite materials and provide an interdisciplinary forum for the presentation of new and unpublished results in the area as well as providing a special opportunity to exchange ideas and information between leading US and Japanese researchers in the field.

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Our new Editorial Board Member Anna Balazs

20 May 2015

By Sarah Thirkell, Development Editor.

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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Congratulations Professor Marder

08 Apr 2015

By Sarah Thirkell, Development Editor.

Recipient of the 2015 MRS Mid-Career Researcher Award

On behalf of the Materials Horizons Editorial Office I would like to congratulate Professor Seth Marder, Chair of Materials Horizons, on his receipt of the MRS Mid-Career Researcher Award.

The Mid-Career Researcher Award is awarded for exceptional achievements and notable leadership in the materials field. Seth Marder was awarded this honour for:

“For establishing fundamental relationships between the chemical structure of organic molecules and their optical and electronic properties, thereby profoundly impacting how the scientific community designs optimized molecular structures for use in nonlinear optical applications”

Seth Marder is Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology with over 400 peer reviewed publications, the recipient of the ACS Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award and is a fellow of multiple scientific communities, including the Royal Society of Chemistry.

More information about this award can be found here.

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Materials Horizons poster prize winners

26 Mar 2015

By Aliya Anwar.

Materials Horizons would like to congratulate the following poster prize winners at the recent MCARE 2015 (Materials Challenges in Alternative & Renewable Energy) conference which took place in Jeju, Korea on the 24^th– 27^thFebruary.

Bit Na Choi receiving her first place prize certificate

First place poster prize was presented to Bit Na Choi, (Sungkyunkwan University) for her poster titled: ‘Metal-conducting polymer hybrid electrode for an electrochemical pseudo-capacitor’ and Runner up prizes were awarded to Yongwoo Kwon, (KAIST) and HongJoon Yoon, (Sungkyunkwan University) for their posters titled: ‘Shape effect and metal oxide coating of Cu₂O particles on stability in water and photocatalytic water splitting’ and ‘Highly effective piezoelectric nanogenrator and self-powered pressure sensor using micro-structured film’.

The conference is hosted by the Korean Institute of Chemical Engineers and aims to bring together global experts from academia, industry and government agencies, allowing for a unique opportunity for discussion and collaboration essential to propelling multi-disciplinary, innovative and sustainable solutions in the field of alternative and renewable energy. Further information about the conference can be found on the website.

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Our new Scientific Editor Martina Stenzel

29 Aug 2014

By Aliya Anwar.

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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Materials Horizons Blog

Shrinking hydrogel reinforces fabric for soft yet strong material

Bruno Chaudret is our new Scientific Editor

Poster prize winners at FPi-12

Nano-accordions stretch the boundaries for flexible electronics

Materials Horizons First Immediacy Index

Poster prize winner at the US-Japan Workshop on Advances in Organic/Inorganic Hybrid Materials 2015

Our new Editorial Board Member Anna Balazs

Congratulations Professor Marder

Materials Horizons poster prize winners

Our new Scientific Editor Martina Stenzel

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