The case for a polymer-focused journal rests on the sheer ubiquity of these materials. Few classes of matter have permeated society so thoroughly. The packaging that preserves food, the textiles that clothe billions of people, the medical devices that sustain life in hospitals, and the membranes, coatings, and components that enable renewable energy technologies all depend on polymers. What makes them so adaptable is their macromolecular nature: long chains of repeating units whose chemistry, architecture, and organization can be tuned across an enormous range of structures and properties. That tunability is precisely why polymeric materials remain, as the editors emphasize, exceptionally fertile ground for discovery and innovation, a point echoed in landmark perspective articles by Hillmyer, by Abd-El-Aziz and Antonietti, and by Jayaraman and Klok that charted the grand challenges of the field.

What has changed, according to the editorial, is the precision with which polymers can now be made and understood. Recent advances in synthesis allow chemists to control chain sequence, topology, and molecular weight distributions with a fidelity that was unthinkable only a few years ago. Characterization techniques now resolve structure from the Angstrom scale of individual bonds to the mesoscale of crystals, lamellae, and networks. Computation and simulation, increasingly augmented by machine learning, let researchers predict properties and screen candidate materials before a single experiment is run. Together, these tools mean that polymeric materials are no longer discovered so much as designed, engineered to specification for target functions ranging from drug delivery to structural composites to ion transport in batteries.

Yet the editors are explicit that technical capability alone no longer defines success in polymer science. There is, they write, a growing recognition that the game has changed: polymers must be conceived and used with sustainability in mind. Renewability, recyclability, and reduced environmental impact have become design objectives in their own right, complementary rather than subordinate to the traditional goals of function and performance. This reframing is significant because it moves environmental considerations from the end of the development pipeline, where they were often treated as regulatory constraints, to the beginning, where molecular structure and processing routes are first chosen. A polymer conceived for circularity from the outset faces very different synthetic and design trade-offs than one retrofitted for recyclability after the fact.

The new journal is not appearing in a vacuum. It has its roots in the Journal of Materials Science, a title with a long-standing record of excellence across the materials community, and it inherits the same standards of peer review, publication ethics, and reproduction quality. What it adds is a dedicated space for the opportunities and challenges that are unique to polymers, sitting at the convergence of performance and environmental responsibility. The stated scope is deliberately broad, spanning molecular design and self-assembly at one end and advanced manufacturing and end-of-life strategies at the other, a range that mirrors the life cycle thinking now demanded of the field as a whole.

Among the topics the editors single out are macromolecules that are precisely engineered, networks that can heal or adapt in response to external stimuli, and coatings that bring new functionality to surfaces. Self-healing polymer networks, for instance, embed reversible bonds or dynamic crosslinks that allow a material to repair microdamage autonomously, extending service life and reducing waste. Stimuli-responsive systems change shape, stiffness, or permeability in response to heat, light, pH, or electric fields, opening doors to soft robotics, smart packaging, and adaptive medical implants. The journal also explicitly welcomes polymer-enabled systems designed for energy, health, and environmental applications, as well as innovative contributions on circularity and the environmental impact of polymers, from chemical recycling routes that depolymerize chains back to monomers to biodegradable architectures that break down safely after use.

The publication model is as much a part of the vision as the science. The journal launches as a Gold Open Access title, meaning all articles are immediately and freely readable worldwide, a choice the editors tie directly to objectives of accessibility, transparency, and inclusivity in scientific communication. For a field whose supply chains, waste streams, and policy debates are inherently global, unrestricted access to research findings carries practical weight: a materials scientist in one country can build directly on the latest results from another without subscription barriers, and policymakers weighing plastics regulation can consult the primary literature itself. The first article, published on 20 November 2025 as Volume 1, article number 1 for the 2026 volume, is the editorial itself, available under a Creative Commons license.

Just as striking is the editorial team’s framing of community. Jimenez and Rutledge argue that a defining strength of polymers is their appeal across disciplines, from chemistry and physics to data science, engineering, and industrial processing, and they commit to building a journal that bridges those fields and communicates across national boundaries. That breadth is not cosmetic. Solving the plastics sustainability problem, for example, requires chemists to invent degradable backbones, process engineers to make those materials at scale, computational scientists to predict degradation pathways, and industrial partners to build collection and reprocessing infrastructure. A forum where those perspectives meet, rather than publishing past one another in siloed venues, is arguably the kind of infrastructure the field needs as much as any single laboratory breakthrough.

The editors close with a direct invitation to scientists and engineers in academia and industry to submit their best work, noting that contributions will shape what the journal becomes. For researchers, the launch adds a venue where scientific originality is explicitly weighed alongside awareness of the broader context in which polymers are developed and applied, a criterion that signals how far the field’s values have shifted. For everyone else, the significance is quieter but real: the materials that wrap our food, carry our data, and mend our bodies are entering an era in which their next generation will be judged not only by what they can do, but by what happens to them afterward. A journal built around that dual standard is a bet that polymer science can deliver both, and the community now has a new place to prove it.

Subject of Research: Launch of a new open-access journal dedicated to polymer science and sustainable polymeric materials

Article Title: Editorial: Welcome to the Journal of Materials Science: Polymers

Article References: Jimenez, M., & Rutledge, G. C. (2025). Editorial: Welcome to the Journal of Materials Science: Polymers. Journal of Materials Science: Polymers, 1(1), Article 1. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44493-025-00001-2

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44493-025-00001-2

Keywords: polymers, materials science, Springer Nature, open access, sustainability, recyclability, macromolecules, polymer synthesis, self-healing materials, circular economy, scientific publishing, polymer science

The launch of the Journal of Materials Science: Metallurgy, a sister title to the long-established Journal of Materials Science, marks a deliberate return of focus to metals after decades in which the broader field of materials science absorbed and expanded upon metallurgical principles. The inaugural editorial, written by Sophie Primig of UNSW Sydney and Megumi Kawasaki of Oregon State University and published in November 2025 as the first article of the journal’s first volume, sets out why the editors believe metallurgy is once again at the frontier of science rather than a mature discipline resting on its laurels. Their argument rests on simultaneous breakthroughs in four areas: alloy design, processing, characterisation, and performance in extreme environments.

To understand why this moment matters, it helps to trace the intellectual lineage of the field. Metallurgy is often described as one of the oldest sciences, with origins stretching back more than 6,500 years, yet its modern scientific form crystallised in the twentieth century. By the mid-1900s, researchers had begun applying metallurgical principles, particularly those governing phase transformations, thermodynamics and the structure of crystalline solids, to ceramics, polymers and semiconductors. That expansion gave birth to materials science and engineering as an inherently interdisciplinary field, one that integrates physics, chemistry and engineering within a unifying framework known as the processing-structure-property-performance relationship, frequently visualised as the materials science tetrahedron. Each corner of that tetrahedron constrains and enables the others: change how a material is processed and you alter its internal structure, which in turn dictates its properties and ultimately its real-world performance.

The Journal of Materials Science itself was founded in 1966 by Robert W. Cahn, a distinguished physical metallurgist celebrated for his work on the thermodynamics and kinetics of phase transformations in solids. Under his influence the journal quickly became a leading platform for the rapidly growing materials community, and like metallurgy itself it has continued to thrive while broadening its scope to encompass every class of material. The new sister journal reverses that expansion, narrowing the aperture deliberately to metals and alloys at precisely the moment when the field’s rate of discovery is accelerating. The editors describe their aim as capturing a new era of discoveries in one of humanity’s most foundational and continually evolving sciences.

The first engine of that new era is a revolution in alloy design. For most of history, metallurgists worked with alloys built around a single dominant element, with smaller additions of other elements tuned to refine properties: iron with carbon and chromium to make stainless steel, aluminium with copper or lithium to make aerospace alloys, nickel with cobalt and refractory metals to make superalloys. That paradigm is now being challenged by multiple principal element alloys, often called high-entropy alloys, in which four, five or more elements are mixed in near-equal proportions. Because these compositions occupy vast, previously unexplored regions of chemical space, they access property combinations that conventional alloys cannot reach, from exceptional strength at cryogenic temperatures to remarkable resistance to softening at high temperature. Alongside them sit metallic glasses, amorphous metals whose disordered atomic structure confers extraordinary elasticity and corrosion resistance, and, most strikingly, alloy compositions generated by artificial intelligence algorithms that no human designer would have proposed.

The second engine is a rethinking of processing itself. Traditional thermomechanical routes, the carefully choreographed sequences of heating, deformation and heat treatment that metallurgists have refined over generations, are being joined by radically new techniques, most prominently additive manufacturing. When a metal component is built layer by layer from a melt pool measured in fractions of a millimetre, the solidification behaviour, the welding metallurgy and the non-equilibrium solid-state phase transformations all depart from textbook expectations, forcing researchers to reassess fundamental assumptions about how microstructures form. At the same time, sustainable metallurgy is emerging as a design philosophy rather than an afterthought: circular processing routes that recycle alloys with lower environmental footprints, and more ethical stewardship of limited natural resources, are becoming central criteria for how new materials and processes are judged.

The third engine lies in how scientists see and measure metals. Advanced multiscale characterisation now spans from in-situ methods that watch components deform or transform under realistic loads at the laboratory scale, down to atomic-resolution imaging and diffraction that reveal individual dislocations, solute clusters and grain-boundary chemistry. Crucially, this experimental knowledge is increasingly coupled with multiscale modelling and simulation, allowing researchers to connect what happens at the scale of a nano-sized precipitate to the behaviour of an entire turbine disc. The prediction of processing-microstructure-property relationships using machine learning, validated against targeted experiments, is described in the editorial as an emerging and rapidly growing field, one that promises to compress development cycles that once took decades into years or even months.

The fourth engine is the relentless push into extreme environments. Alloys are now engineered to combine superior high-temperature strength with ductility, a combination that has historically involved difficult trade-offs because the microstructural features that resist deformation at high temperature often embrittle the material. Add exceptional corrosion and degradation resistance, and the resulting materials are redefining what the editors call extreme materials can achieve in demanding applications, from hypersonic flight and next-generation nuclear reactors to hydrogen infrastructure and deep-earth energy extraction. Each of these applications demands metals that survive conditions, temperatures, stresses and chemistries, that would destroy conventional alloys within hours.

Against this backdrop, the new journal positions itself as a dedicated platform for high-quality, original research that advances fundamental understanding of metals and alloys. The editors state a particular preference for interdisciplinary studies that integrate modelling, novel experimental approaches and advanced analytical techniques, and they explicitly welcome both work that extends current fundamental understanding and breakthroughs arising from collaboration between industry and academia. That dual emphasis reflects a practical reality of modern metallurgy: the distance between a laboratory discovery and an engineered product remains long, and closing it requires simultaneous progress in theory, experiment and manufacturing practice.

What emerges from the editorial is a portrait of a discipline that is neither nostalgic about its ancient roots nor complacent about its achievements. The materials science tetrahedron that unified the field in the twentieth century still holds, but every corner of it is being redrawn at once. Compositions once dismissed as thermodynamic curiosities are being screened by algorithms and confirmed in the laboratory; components are being solidified under conditions that classical theories never anticipated; microscopes and simulations are converging on the same atoms from opposite directions; and the alloys that result are expected to work where no metal has reliably worked before. For a science older than the pyramids, metallurgy appears to be entering its most dynamic chapter yet, and the research community now has a venue built specifically to document it.

Subject of Research: The launch of a new metallurgy journal and the advances in alloy design, processing, characterisation and extreme-environment performance driving a new era in metallurgical science

Article Title: Editorial: Journal of Materials Science: Metallurgy

Article References: Primig, S., & Kawasaki, M. (2025). Editorial: Journal of Materials Science: Metallurgy. Journal of Materials Science: Metallurgy, 1(1), Article 1. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44492-025-00001-x

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44492-025-00001-x

Keywords: metallurgy, materials science, high-entropy alloys, alloy design, additive manufacturing, machine learning, sustainable metallurgy, microstructure, phase transformations, extreme environments, metallic glasses, Journal of Materials Science

The synthetic route is deliberately straightforward. Either m-aminophenol or m-chloroaniline, or both together at ratios ranging from 9:1 down to 1:9, is dissolved in 1 M hydrochloric acid and polymerised at 0–5 °C by the dropwise addition of ammonium persulfate, a strong oxidising agent. After five hours of stirring and an overnight rest, a dark green precipitate of the conducting salt form is recovered, washed, dried, and ground into powder. Yields for the homopolymers and copolymers all exceeded 70 percent, indicating that the oxidative polymerisation procedure is efficient and reproducible. The colour changes that accompany the reaction tell their own story: the initially colourless monomer solution turns blue as oligomeric species form and then deepens to dark green as the emeraldine salt of the conductive polymer accumulates. This autocatalytic behaviour, the study notes, is shaped by the choice of oxidant and the concentrations of both dopant and reactants.

Structural confirmation came primarily from Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. In the homopolymers, characteristic O–H and N–H stretching peaks appear near 3230 and 3348–3315 cm⁻¹ respectively, while in the copolymers these vibrations merge into a broad band between 3196 and 3244 cm⁻¹, a signature the author attributes to weak hydrogen bonding between the hydroxyl group and nitrogen atoms along the chain. The asymmetric stretching modes of the quinoid and benzenoid rings, found at 1598 and 1495 cm⁻¹ in the homopolymers, shift to 1564 and 1477 cm⁻¹ in the copolymers, confirming the formation of a genuinely conjugated backbone in which both monomer units are incorporated. The C–Cl stretching band, located at 775 cm⁻¹ in homopolychloroaniline, shifts to 779 cm⁻¹ in the copolymers and, crucially, grows in intensity as the chloroaniline fraction of the feed increases, providing direct visual evidence that monomer composition is faithfully transferred into copolymer composition.

Ultraviolet–visible spectroscopy reinforced this picture of a tunable conjugated system. The first absorption band, arising from the π–π* transition of the benzenoid ring, appears at 283 nm for poly(m-aminophenol) and 281 nm for poly(m-chloroaniline), while the copolymers show values that shift with composition, reaching 305 nm at the highest chloroaniline loading. A second broadband near 377 nm corresponds to an n–π* transition, essentially a charge transfer from the benzenoid ring to the quinoid ring, and broad polaron bands in this region indicate significant doping, protonation, and hydrogen bonding within the polymer chain. As the chloroaniline content rises, the absorption maximum red-shifts and the vibronic fine structure sharpens, both hallmarks of an extended π-conjugated system whose electronic structure is being systematically reshaped by the electron-withdrawing chlorine substituent at the meta position.

Perhaps the most striking quantitative result concerns electrical conductivity, measured in solution at 250 ppm in dimethyl sulfoxide. Homopoly(m-aminophenol) conducts at 441.4 μS cm⁻¹, while homopoly(m-chloroaniline) manages only 341 μS cm⁻¹, the latter hampered by the meta-positioned chlorine atom, which produces a non-planar conformation, increases disorder in the backbone, and restricts electron mobility. The copolymers, however, chart a clear upward trajectory as chloroaniline content increases: from 436 μS cm⁻¹ at the 10 percent loading to 989 μS cm⁻¹ at 70 percent, and a maximum of 1277 μS cm⁻¹ at 90 percent. The explanation lies in a productive electronic partnership: electron-rich aminophenol rings sit adjacent to electron-deficient chloroaniline units, generating enhanced electron resonance and charge carriers, while the hydroxyl group promotes conjugation, hydrogen bonding, and electron delocalisation that collectively outweigh the inductive damping effect of chlorine.

Beyond qualitative band assignment, the study exploits FTIR as a genuine quantitative analytical tool. Using the C–N–C absorption near 1280 cm⁻¹ as an internal standard because it appears regardless of composition, and the 779 cm⁻¹ C–Cl band as the composition-sensitive peak, the author applied the Beer–Lambert law with a tangent baseline to calculate absorbance ratios. The ratio of the C–Cl to C–N–C intensities scales linearly with the chloroaniline fraction in the feed, passing through the origin, and the data show high accuracy and reproducibility. This quantitative approach, the paper notes, has broad practical relevance, from monitoring copolymer composition and detecting additives to tracking plastic waste recycling and microplastic pollution, and it demonstrates that infrared spectroscopy can serve as a rapid, solvent-free quality-control method for these conductive materials.

Thermal stability was assessed by thermogravimetric analysis under nitrogen at a heating rate of 10 °C per minute up to 900 °C. All samples showed a characteristic four-stage degradation profile. Initial weight loss between 22 and 100 °C, about 9.3 percent for homopolymers and 6.1 percent for copolymers, reflects the removal of trapped water and physically adsorbed molecules. A second stage between 100 and 200 °C, roughly 16.5 percent, corresponds to the loss of dopant species such as water and hydrochloric acid. The third stage, spanning 200 to 350 °C with a 20–31.5 percent loss, involves the elimination of oligomers and low-molecular-weight fractions, and the final stage from 350 to 550 °C, with a dramatic 76–80 percent decline, represents the chemical breakdown of the backbone itself, leaving a carbon-rich residue of about 20–22 percent. Encouragingly, all homopolymers and copolymers remain thermally stable up to approximately 500 °C, placing them comfortably within the operating window of most electronic and sensing applications.

Scanning electron microscopy revealed how composition sculpts surface morphology. Poly(m-aminophenol) alone displays a rough surface studded with randomly distributed spherical structures on microscopic particles. As the chloroaniline fraction increases, the morphology progressively evolves toward that of poly(m-chloroaniline), and porosity rises in step with composition. This is far from a cosmetic detail: greater porosity means more surface area and more active binding sites, which makes the copolymers attractive candidates for dye adsorption and gas sensing. Related polyaniline derivatives are already proven performers in water purification, with poly-m-chloroaniline removing anionic dyes such as indigo carmine and eosin Y at rates of 98 and 99 percent within 25 minutes, driven by hydrogen bonding, π interactions, and electrostatic attraction between the dye molecules and the amine, imine, and chlorine functional groups on the polymer surface.

The biological findings add an unexpected dimension. Tested by agar diffusion against Gram-negative E. coli and Gram-positive Staphylococcus sp., the polymers showed clear antibacterial activity that tracked with composition. Poly(m-aminophenol) proved most effective against E. coli, while poly(m-chloroaniline) was the weakest, and increasing the chloroaniline content in the copolymers reduced their activity against that organism. The mechanism, as the study and prior literature describe it, rests on the polymers’ ability to form hydrogen bonds with phosphorus- and sulfur-rich components of bacterial cells, including proteins and DNA, and on the positively charged, protonated state of polyaniline-type backbones, which bind to the negatively charged lipopolysaccharide membranes of Gram-negative bacteria. Hydrophobic phenyl segments then disrupt the membrane core, causing leakage of cellular contents, loss of membrane potential, and ultimately cell lysis, while the polymers can also promote the release of hydrogen peroxide and hydroxyl radicals that oxidise bacterial biomolecules.

Taken together, the study shows that chemical oxidative copolymerisation offers a simple yet remarkably effective lever for tailoring conductive polyaniline derivatives. By varying only the monomer feed ratio, the author produced a family of materials whose solubility, conjugation length, conductivity, porosity, and antibacterial potency all shift in predictable, composition-dependent ways. The 1:9 aminophenol-to-chloroaniline copolymer emerged as the best conductor of the series, a result that points toward applications in antistatic materials, chemical sensors, and other electrically active polymer systems where processing ease and tunable conductivity matter. The author cautions that this work focused primarily on synthesis, spectroscopic characterisation, and conductivity, and that future studies should probe how oxidant concentration, acid strength, temperature, and polymerisation time influence molecular weight, morphology, and performance. Even so, the central message is clear: mixing a hydrophilic, electron-donating monomer with a hydrophobic, electron-withdrawing one yields conductive polymers that are more soluble, more processable, and in some cases more biologically active than either parent homopolymer alone.

Subject of Research: Chemical synthesis, spectral characterisation, stability, conductivity, and antibacterial activity of poly(m-aminophenol-co-m-chloroaniline) copolymers

Article Title: Chemical synthesis, quantitative and qualitative spectral characterisation, stability, and biological activity study of some electrically conductive co -polyaniline derivatives

Article References: Ibrahim, K. (2026). Chemical synthesis, quantitative and qualitative spectral characterisation, stability, and biological activity study of some electrically conductive co-polyaniline derivatives. Results in Chemistry, 30, Article 103872. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rechem.2026.103872

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1016/j.rechem.2026.103872

Keywords: polyaniline, conducting polymers, m-aminophenol, m-chloroaniline, oxidative polymerisation, FTIR spectroscopy, UV-Vis spectroscopy, electrical conductivity, thermal stability, antibacterial activity, copolymerisation, materials science

The technique, known as shear assisted processing and extrusion, or ShAPE, belongs to a family of solid-phase processing methods in which metal is deformed plastically at elevated temperature without ever melting. A rotating, non-consumable die is plunged into solid feedstock at ambient starting temperature. Frictional and adiabatic heating soften the alloy locally, and scrolls machined into the die face draw the plasticized material into the die orifice and around a mandrel, where it emerges as a tube. The process operates at roughly half to nine-tenths of the melting point, and because the material never liquefies, the operator retains unusually direct control over the final microstructure through temperature regulation alone. Aluminum and magnesium alloy tubes have been made this way before, but zirconium alloys posed an open question.

That question matters because Zircaloy-4 is metallurgically awkward. Its hexagonal close-packed crystal structure offers few slip systems, so conventional thermomechanical routes impose a strong crystallographic texture on the finished tube. Certain grain orientations allow hydrides, which form when the metal picks up hydrogen in service, to align circumferentially or radially, and those hydride alignments are notoriously damaging to mechanical properties. Producers therefore invest in elaborate processing sequences to steer grain orientations toward safer configurations. A single-step process that instead produces a nearly random texture would sidestep much of that complexity, cutting cost, time, and energy while potentially improving performance.

In the new study, published in the Journal of Materials Science: Metallurgy, the researchers began with the simpler of two experiments: shear assisted processing without extrusion. A die without an orifice was plunged into Zircaloy-4 billets roughly 10 millimeters tall and 31.75 millimeters in diameter, deforming the material in place. By varying the die rotational speed between 100 and 300 revolutions per minute while holding the plunge rate constant, the team reached four distinct processing temperatures, measured with a thermocouple attached to the tool. Those temperatures, 710, 802, 904, and 1002 degrees Celsius, deliberately sampled three different phase fields of the alloy: the low-temperature alpha phase, the two-phase alpha-plus-beta region, and the high-temperature beta phase, whose boundaries sit near 810 and 977 degrees Celsius respectively.

The microstructural payoff was striking. Billets processed at the two highest temperatures, which crossed into the beta phase field, developed lath-type structures: needle-shaped alpha grains roughly 1.4 to 1.6 micrometers thick, evidence that the material had been quenched from the beta phase as the tool withdrew. Notably, such fine laths appeared even though the billets were not deliberately quenched and cooled far more slowly than the water quench rates used in reference studies, which the authors attribute to the extreme shear deformation generating dense dislocations that multiply nucleation sites for new alpha grains. Billets processed at 710 and 802 degrees Celsius, below the beta transus, instead showed equiaxed grains. Grain sizes ranged from about 1.2 micrometers at the lowest temperature to roughly 5.1 micrometers at the highest, giving the team a direct dial connecting die temperature to grain morphology.

Secondary phase particles told a complementary story. Scanning electron microscopy with energy-dispersive spectroscopy revealed iron- and chromium-rich precipitates, consistent with Zr(Fe,Cr)2 particles, distributed along phase boundaries, prior grain boundaries, and grain interiors in all processed conditions. Because the billets cooled without controlled quenching, the sizes of these particles were not regulated, but the authors point out that controlled cooling can readily be incorporated into future experiments to tailor secondary phase dimensions and, with them, specific properties. The temperature mapping exercise also carried a caveat: the thermocouple sat about 3 millimeters from the deformation zone, so the true processing temperature likely exceeded the recorded die temperature, a discrepancy that sacrificial thermocouples or smoothed-particle hydrodynamics modeling could resolve in future work.

Armed with that temperature-microstructure map, the team attempted the headline achievement: extruding actual Zircaloy-4 tubes from solid billets in a single ShAPE step. The billets, about 10 millimeters tall with a 31.75 millimeter outer diameter and a 10 millimeter inner hole, were processed with a tungsten-lanthana die and an IN718 nickel-alloy mandrel, targeting a tube with 1 millimeter wall thickness, 10 millimeter inner diameter, and 12 millimeter outer diameter. After tuning rotation speed and plunge rate across several trials, the best tube emerged from a run at 200 revolutions per minute and a 7.62 millimeters-per-minute plunge rate. Die temperatures during steady-state extrusion climbed from about 850 degrees Celsius near the start of the tube to about 920 degrees Celsius near the end, and the finished walls measured 1.1 and 1.13 millimeters thick at those two locations, close to the design target.

Microscopy of the tube revealed a gradient that mirrors the temperature map established in the first experiments. Near the start of the tube, where the die was cooler, the microstructure was fully recrystallized with fine equiaxed alpha grains averaging roughly 3.6 to 4.5 micrometers across longitudinal, transverse, and planar sections. Near the end, where temperatures approached the beta transus, the grains coarsened dramatically, reaching 16.7 to 24.1 micrometers, and adopted a lath-shaped morphology with an average alpha lath size of about 5.4 micrometers. Precipitate distributions shifted along the tube as well, from predominantly intragranular particles near the start to inter-lath particles near the end, and limited X-ray diffraction detected small peaks of zirconium hydrides. Oxidation along the tube’s inner surface near the exit, a consequence of processing without inert atmosphere protection, accounted for some unindexed regions in the electron backscatter diffraction data.

Perhaps the most consequential result came from texture analysis. Using Kearns parameters, which quantify the fraction of basal crystal planes aligned with a given direction, the team found values between 0.28 and 0.44 near the tube start and 0.29 to 0.37 near the end, close to the 0.33 value that indicates a fully random texture. By contrast, conventionally recrystallized Zircaloy-4 typically shows Kearns values spanning 0.10 to 0.58, signaling preferred orientation. A randomly textured tube, produced without any of the intermediate annealing steps that conventional pilgering demands, would be expected to resist the anisotropic hydride alignment that degrades cladding performance over a reactor’s life.

As a final proof of concept, the researchers co-extruded Zircaloy-4 with pure nickel, sandwiching the zirconium alloy between inner and outer nickel layers, half the billet cross-section being nickel and half Zircaloy-4. The resulting cladded tube emerged in a single step, with a pure nickel inner diameter, a zirconium middle layer, and an outer region containing mixed nickel-zirconium plus a pure nickel skin. The mixed zone reflects an initial, untuned parameter set rather than a fundamental limitation, and the demonstration establishes that ShAPE can fabricate multi-material zirconium tubing that would otherwise require separate cladding operations. Funded through the National Nuclear Security Administration’s tritium modernization program, the work suggests a future in which reactor cladding, tritium-producing rod components, and cladded tubes are extruded directly from solid feedstock, with grain size, morphology, and texture controlled not by exhaustive post-processing but by the temperature of a spinning die.

Subject of Research: Solid-state shear assisted processing and extrusion of Zircaloy-4 for nuclear-grade tube fabrication

Article Title: Shear assisted processing of Zircaloy-4

Article References: Komarasamy, M., Canfield, N., Darsell, J., Garcia, D., Zhang, D., Guzman, A., Casella, A., & Senor, D. (2026). Shear assisted processing of Zircaloy-4. Journal of Materials Science: Metallurgy, 1(1), Article 3. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44492-025-00003-9

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44492-025-00003-9

Keywords: Zircaloy-4, shear assisted processing and extrusion, solid phase processing, zirconium alloys, nuclear fuel cladding, microstructure, texture, co-extrusion, advanced manufacturing, grain refinement, hydrides, materials science

At first glance, the pairing looks natural. Metal-organic frameworks are crystalline lattices in which metal ions or clusters are stitched together by organic linker molecules into three-dimensional networks riddled with pores of near-atomic precision. They offer enormous internal surface area, ordered channels, and coordination chemistry that can be tuned almost at will—properties that make them superb at adsorbing gases, sensing trace molecules, and releasing cargo on demand. Polymers, by contrast, are the workhorses of the food industry: cheap, flexible, film-forming, mechanically robust, and environmentally forgiving. What polymers lack is order. What MOFs lack is processability. A hybrid that combines controlled porosity and well-defined active sites with film-forming ability, mechanical flexibility, and scalable manufacturing would, on paper, satisfy almost every requirement that modern agriculture and food systems place on a functional material.

On paper, however, is the operative phrase. The review is unusually candid about why so many MOF/polymer composites underperform in practice. The two components often suffer from enthalpic mismatch—literally a thermodynamic unwillingness to adhere to one another—which drives MOF crystals to agglomerate into dense islands rather than dispersing evenly through a polymer matrix. Worse, where crystals and polymer chains meet, non-selective interfacial voids can open up: accidental gaps that are neither the ordered pores of the MOF nor the dense matrix of the polymer. Under the humid, aqueous, and wildly variable-pH conditions that characterize real agricultural and food settings, these defects compromise pore accessibility and disrupt mass transport, turning a designer material into an unpredictable one. The authors frame their entire analysis around this problem, proposing an interface-centered framework as the organizing principle for the field.

That framework sorts MOF/polymer hybrids into four principal architectures and, crucially, links each architecture to the multiscale bonding mechanisms that hold it together. The review examines how controlled dispersion strategies keep crystals separated during formulation, how in situ growth techniques grow MOF crystals directly inside or on top of a polymer phase so that the two phases form together rather than being forced to coexist later, and how coordinative anchoring, covalent coupling, and polymer-ligand integration bind the interface at the molecular level. The goal of all of these tactics is the same: suppress non-selective voids, regulate the interfacial free volume—the small pocket of disordered space at the boundary—and preserve the accessible channels that give MOFs their value in the first place. In the authors’ formulation, the interface is not a passive join between two materials; it is the functional heart of the hybrid.

The payoff for this level of control is most dramatic in gas separation. Conventional membrane materials face a stubborn trade-off, famously mapped on plots known as Robeson upper bounds: polymers that pass gas quickly do so indiscriminately, while polymers that discriminate between gas molecules are slow. The review reports that well-engineered MOF/polymer gas-separation membranes have surpassed these conventional upper bounds, reconciling permeability and selectivity in a way neither pure component can. The mechanism is precisely the interfacial engineering described above: when MOF channels remain open and the polymer-crystal boundary is sealed against leaks, gases must pass through the ordered pores, and the pores decide what gets through. For a food system increasingly interested in modified-atmosphere packaging, ethylene scavenging, and controlled ripening, that achievement is not an abstract benchmark but a direct template.

The authors explicitly position their framework as a mechanistic reference for designing agri-food membranes and packaging that must balance selective transport, barrier performance, mechanical integrity, and scalable processing all at once. This is the review’s distinctive move. Rather than treating gas-separation research, food packaging, and agricultural chemistry as separate literatures, it imports the quantitative design rules developed in membrane science—where permeability and selectivity are measured with rigorous precision—into domains where performance has often been reported qualitatively. A packaging film that lets oxygen out but keeps water vapor in, or a coating that admits preservative molecules while blocking microbes, is solving a version of the same transport problem that gas-separation chemists have been optimizing for decades.

The applications survey that follows is correspondingly broad. In environmental remediation, MOF/polymer hybrids are examined as materials for capturing contaminants from agricultural water and soil. In food-safety sensing, the frameworks’ tunable coordination sites enable detection of trace hazards, with the polymer providing a stable, flexible substrate that survives handling and storage. In controlled agrochemical delivery, the ordered pores act as reservoirs whose loading and release can be regulated, promising fertilizers and pesticides that act when and where they are needed instead of washing away. Membrane-based food processing—separations that sort food components without heat or solvent—emerges as another arena where selective transport at a defended interface matters. Finally, active packaging rounds out the list: films that do not merely contain food but interact with it, scavenging oxygen, releasing antimicrobials, or signaling spoilage.

What elevates the review above a simple catalog is its willingness to confront safety head-on. Any material intended for contact with food, crops, or agricultural environments must answer for the possibility of metal-ion leaching, ligand leaching, and the release of particles, as well as broader questions of biocompatibility and biodegradability. MOFs are built from metals—some benign, some less so—and organic linkers whose fate in a compost heap or a digestive tract is not always known. The review treats these hazards not as disqualifying caveats but as design parameters to be engineered alongside performance: choosing safer metal nodes and linkers, strengthening the polymer matrix against particle shedding, and building in degradation pathways that leave harmless residues. It also looks outward, identifying interfacial engineering, artificial-intelligence-assisted materials discovery, and regulatory readiness as the fronts on which the field will advance or stall.

The framing as a review, published open access with support from China’s National Key Research and Development Program under projects 2024YFD2100301 and 2024YFD1600804, suggests a field attempting to standardize itself before commercial products arrive at scale. That may prove timely. Food systems worldwide are under simultaneous pressure from cold-chain costs, spoilage losses, pesticide overuse, and packaging waste, and the tools being proposed here—a crystal that sorts molecules and a plastic that survives the real world, joined so well that neither betrays the other—address several of those pressures at once. The review’s bet is that the deciding variable is not the discovery of new MOFs or new polymers, both of which are arriving in profusion, but the chemistry of the seam between them.

For readers outside materials science, the takeaway is that the next wave of food-technology innovation may not look like food at all. It may look like an invisible coating on a seed packet, a membrane in a dairy plant, a sensor strip in a shipping container, or a wrap that knows when the meat inside has begun to spoil. Each of those products will depend on the same quiet triumph the review documents: convincing a crystalline framework and a tangled polymer to share an interface without opening the accidental channels that ruin everything. If the field can make that joining as routine as it is now rigorous, the farm-to-table chain may gain a new class of materials that is porous where it should be, sealed where it must be, and safe from soil to shelf.

Subject of Research: Interface engineering of MOF/polymer hybrid materials for agricultural and food applications

Article Title: MOF/polymer synergistic hybrid materials transforming the farm-to-table chain: chemical construction, performance regulation, and applications

Article References: Lei, H., Liu, R., Jia, X., Fan, B., Wei, C.-I., Wang, F., Li, B., Ma, D., & Ma, P. (2026). MOF/polymer synergistic hybrid materials transforming the farm-to-table chain: chemical construction, performance regulation, and applications. Advanced Composites and Hybrid Materials. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42114-026-02043-8

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s42114-026-02043-8

Keywords: MOF/polymer hybrids, metal-organic frameworks, interfacial engineering, active food packaging, controlled-release agrochemicals, food-safety sensing, gas separation membranes, environmental remediation, farm-to-table chain, biocompatibility, mass transport, materials science

The intellectual foundation of the editorial rests on a sweeping historical argument. Industrial activity, the authors note, began with relatively simple trades such as farming and blacksmithing and has since evolved into a vast industrial ecosystem touching nearly every dimension of human life, from the food people consume and the clothes they wear to medicines, transportation, communication, and the internet itself. At the core of this transformation lie research, development, and engineering, with a substantial share of industrial resources devoted to improving existing processes and creating entirely new technologies. The journal’s founding team argues that this long arc of industrial development now demands a publishing venue designed specifically for the interdisciplinary field where chemistry meets materials engineering.

Among the many industrial sectors, the editorial identifies chemical and materials-based industries as both foundational and continually evolving, with applications ranging from food and pharmaceuticals to automotive and electronic components, and extending into defence and energy technologies. One of the most striking technical claims in the editorial concerns the current frontier of research: the chemistry and design of semiconductors, superconductors, and quantum materials used in technological devices have emerged as some of the most active and strategically important areas of research and development, driving what the authors describe as unprecedented advancement. This places the new journal at the intersection of fundamental discovery and the technological supply chains that underpin modern electronics and computing.

Crucially, the editorial ties technological ambition to environmental responsibility. The authors argue that innovation in industrial chemistry and materials should be aligned with green chemistry principles and sustainable practices, enabling safer and more resource-efficient processes while addressing growing environmental expectations and opening new markets for sustainable technologies. This framing reflects a broader shift in industrial research culture, where concepts such as benign-by-design chemistry, the circular carbon economy, and material upcycling are treated not as peripheral concerns but as central drivers of competitive innovation. The journal’s stated topic list explicitly includes green chemistry, circular carbon economy, energy and biomass, and material upcycling alongside traditional domains.

The scope of the journal is deliberately broad, reflecting the interdisciplinary character of modern industrial materials research. Welcomed topics include the automotive industry, biotechnology, computational science of materials, energy materials and technology, the food industry, fuel and energy technologies, functional materials, macromolecules and polymers, material engineering, molecular technology, organic and inorganic chemistry, packaging technology, pharmacy and pharmacology, and synthesis and catalysis. The editorial also lists emerging thematic areas such as meta chemistry and separation, automation and upscaling, signalling an intent to capture methodological innovations in how industrial research itself is conducted and scaled from laboratory bench to production plant.

Beyond subject matter, the journal signals openness to a wide diversity of research formats. Submissions may encompass experimental synthesis and characterization, theoretical interpretation and advancement, computational modelling, calculation and simulation, applications, data science studies on generated or repository data, meta-analyses or surveys, and experimental techniques and instrumentation. This methodological breadth is significant for industrial researchers, because much of the value in industrial chemistry now derives from computational screening of candidate materials, machine-learning analysis of process data, and simulation-driven scale-up, approaches that do not always fit the conventions of purely experimental journals. The journal accepts full-length research articles, brief communications, reviews, perspectives, comments, case studies, registered reports, and data notes, as well as guest-edited topical collections.

The editorial makes an explicit case for why a new journal is needed at all. Research and development departments in chemistry and materials industries require sustained access to both historical and contemporary scientific literature, as well as mechanisms to preserve and build upon their own research through patents and publications. Publishing houses and scientific societies have long filled this role, but the authors argue that as the frontiers of science expand across all regions of the world, there is an increasing and urgent call for greater inclusivity in capturing the growing body of global knowledge. The Discover series, of which the new journal is a part, is positioned as a platform dedicated to embracing rigorous and ethically conducted scientific endeavours from researchers worldwide.

On governance, the editorial describes an editorial board composed of experts from various relevant domains within the expansive field, ensuring comprehensive oversight of manuscripts drawn from institutions across multiple continents, including SRM University AP in India, the Institut National de Recherches et d’Analyses Physico-Chimiques in Tunisia, the University of Calabar in Nigeria, the Instituto Politécnico de Tomar in Portugal, the Universidade de São Paulo in Brazil, and King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi in Thailand. The board’s responsibilities extend beyond manuscript handling to acting as a liaison between the journal and the scientific community, offering perspectives on ongoing and upcoming scientific pursuits, upholding the integrity of published content, and educating the wider community about editorial procedures. Distinguished researchers will be designated as section editors, spearheading the journal’s development within specific areas, and recruitment of additional editorial board members is ongoing to create a self-sustaining structure.

The launch carries practical significance for working scientists and engineers. As an open-access publication, the journal removes paywall barriers between industrial research and its potential users, a meaningful consideration for research teams in developing economies and for small and medium-sized enterprises that cannot afford expensive subscription packages. For academic researchers, the acceptance of registered reports and data notes offers routes to publish confirmatory studies and valuable datasets that conventional journals often reject. The inclusion of computational modelling and data science as first-class submission categories acknowledges that artificial intelligence and simulation are now inseparable from materials discovery pipelines, from predicting polymer properties to optimizing catalytic reactors.

Whether Discover Industrial Chemistry and Materials achieves its inclusive ambitions will depend on the submissions it attracts and the credibility its editorial board builds in a crowded publishing landscape. But the inaugural editorial makes a clear technical and cultural bet: that the next generation of industrial breakthroughs, in quantum materials, sustainable polymers, circular carbon technologies, and green synthesis, will emerge from a globally distributed research community that deserves a dedicated, accessible, and rigorous venue. For a field that quietly underpins nearly every product of modern life, that bet is one worth watching closely.

Subject of Research: Launch and editorial scope of the open-access journal Discover Industrial Chemistry and Materials

Article Title: Inaugural editorial of Discover Industrial Chemistry and Materials

Article References: Mondal, U., Upadhyay, N., Phitsuwan, P., Costa, J. M., Mateus, D. M. R., Ekpenyong, M. G., Hassen, J., & Kundu, D. (2026). Inaugural editorial of Discover Industrial Chemistry and Materials. Discover Industrial Chemistry and Materials, 1(1), Article 1. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44508-026-00002-1

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44508-026-00002-1

Keywords: industrial chemistry, materials science, open access, green chemistry, quantum materials, semiconductors, circular carbon economy, material upcycling, polymers, catalysis, Springer Nature, scientific publishing

The core insight of the new study is deceptively simple. Different anions interact with surrounding materials in markedly different ways, and one of the most important determinants of that behaviour is how tightly each atom within the anion holds on to its electrons. An anion that readily shares electron density with a neighbouring electrode material will behave very differently in a battery than one that clings stubbornly to its charge. Until now, quantifying this so-called electron-donating tendency for a wide range of anions has required laborious, expensive laboratory experiments, one chemical at a time, which has slowed the pace of materials discovery considerably.

The University of East London team, working alongside their co-authors, attacked the problem with a two-pronged strategy combining experiment and computation. On the experimental side, they turned to X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, or XPS, a technique that works by firing X-rays at a material and carefully measuring the energies of the electrons that are knocked loose in the process. Because each element and each chemical bonding environment produces a characteristic signature, XPS allows researchers to identify precisely which atoms are present in a sample and, crucially, how those atoms are bonded to their neighbours. By examining the photoelectron spectra of anions interacting with battery-relevant surfaces, the team could read off directly how strongly specific atoms within each anion were gripping their electrons.

That measurement alone would have been a useful incremental advance, but the researchers went a step further. They then built computer models capable of recreating those spectroscopic measurements virtually, calibrating the simulations against the experimental XPS data until the two agreed. Once the computational framework was validated, it could be used to predict the electron-donating behaviour of anions that had never been measured in the laboratory, effectively generating a fast, inexpensive screening tool. In practical terms, this means chemists could evaluate thousands of candidate anions on a computer and shortlist only the most promising ones for physical synthesis and testing, dramatically reducing the time and cost that typically separate a good idea from a working material.

The team describes the resulting quantities as element-specific donor numbers for anions, a metric that captures, atom by atom, the willingness of a negatively charged species to share electron density with its environment. Donor numbers have a long history in chemistry as a way of ranking how strongly solvents and other species bind to central atoms, but extending the concept to individual atoms within anions, and grounding it in hard spectroscopic data rather than indirect inference, is what distinguishes the new work. The approach gives researchers a common, quantitative language for comparing anions that previously had to be assessed through scattered, experiment-specific observations.

The immediate application is battery chemistry, where the choice of anion in an electrolyte influences everything from ionic conductivity to the stability of the electrode-electrolyte interface and, ultimately, how many charge and discharge cycles a cell can survive before degrading. Fluorinated anions, for example, are prized in lithium-ion and next-generation lithium metal batteries precisely because of the way their electron-withdrawing behaviour shapes protective interphases on electrode surfaces. With a validated predictive model in hand, researchers designing such electrolytes can now reason about candidate anions in terms of measured and modelled electron-donation properties rather than relying on trial-and-error, focusing their efforts on the materials that show the most promise.

Dr Richard Matthews, Senior Lecturer of Physical and Computational Chemistry at the University of East London and co-author of the study, emphasised the wider significance of the advance. We now have a much clearer picture of how anions interact with other materials, and that opens up some exciting possibilities, he said. By being able to predict these interactions, we can focus our efforts on the materials that show the most promise for better batteries and beyond. His framing captures the essential economic argument behind the work: in a field where every new candidate material must traditionally pass through synthesis, characterisation and testing, any method that filters out dead ends on a computer can save months of effort and substantial research funding.

The implications, however, stretch well beyond the electrochemistry laboratory. The researchers note that the measurement-and-modelling workflow could eventually be scaled up into a comprehensive database spanning many different elements and bonding environments. Such a dataset would be a valuable raw material for machine learning and artificial intelligence systems, which thrive on large volumes of high-quality, consistently defined measurements. Trainable models fed with element-specific donor numbers could surface unexpected patterns in chemical behaviour, propose novel anion structures for synthesis, and generally compress the discovery cycle for a wide range of chemical processes, not only those relevant to energy storage but also catalysis, corrosion science and medicinal chemistry, where anion interactions play equally decisive roles.

The study also illustrates a broader trend in modern materials research, in which the boundary between measurement and prediction is becoming increasingly porous. Spectroscopy provides the ground truth that anchors computational models to reality, while the models extend the reach of a limited number of experiments to a vast space of unmeasured chemistry. This virtuous loop, in which each new experimental data point improves the accuracy of predictions across an entire chemical family, is quickly becoming the standard playbook for labs hoping to compete in the race toward improved batteries, including the solid-state systems and sodium-based chemistries that many companies and national programmes are pursuing as alternatives to today’s lithium-ion technology.

For now, the University of East London team and their collaborators have laid the foundation, publishing a peer-reviewed method that others can adopt, replicate and extend. The paper, titled Element-Specific Donor Numbers for Anions, appeared in the Journal of the American Chemical Society under the DOI 10.1021/jacs.6c06567. If the framework spreads as widely as its authors hope, the humble anion, long treated as an afterthought in popular discussions of battery technology, may finally receive the systematic, quantitative attention it deserves, and consumers could one day reap the benefits in devices that hold their charge longer, degrade more slowly and cost less to develop.

Subject of Research: Element-specific donor numbers for anions as a predictive tool for battery material discovery

Article Title: Scientists discover method that could lead to longer-lasting batteries

Article References: Scientists discover method that could lead to longer-lasting batteries. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: batteries, anions, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, University of East London, electrolytes, computational chemistry, machine learning, energy storage, materials science, donor numbers, chemical discovery, electrochemistry

The five recipients are Dr. Waseem Abbas, assistant professor of systems engineering; Dr. Sourav Dutta, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering; Dr. Kirill Lazebnik, assistant professor of mathematical sciences; Dr. Kyle McCall, assistant professor of materials science and engineering; and Dr. Xinda Wang, assistant professor of computer science. Four of the five, Abbas, Dutta, McCall and Wang, are members of the university’s Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science, while Lazebnik belongs to the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics. The portfolio of funded work illustrates how the CAREER mechanism can seed progress across the full stack of modern technology, from the atoms inside a transistor to the mathematical abstractions that describe dynamical behavior and the code that keeps the world’s software infrastructure safe.

University research leadership framed the awards as evidence of the institution’s growing strength in areas that will define the coming decades of technology. “From resilient networks and advanced semiconductors to artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and fundamental mathematics, these researchers are tackling complex challenges with the potential to shape the technologies and systems of the future,” said Dr. Joseph Pancrazio, vice president for research and innovation and professor of bioengineering. He emphasized that the awards also recognize the recipients’ commitment to integrating research and education, giving students the chance to learn through hands-on discovery and helping cultivate the next generation of researchers and innovators. That educational component is not incidental to the CAREER program; it is a core evaluation criterion, and each of the five UT Dallas projects embeds training, outreach or curriculum development alongside the technical work.

Dr. Waseem Abbas received a five-year award of $514,916 to confront one of the most consequential questions in networked engineering: what happens when a system designed to absorb disruption is hit by something worse. Robot teams, infrastructure networks and distributed computing systems, in which tasks are shared across many devices, are typically engineered with a certain tolerance for failure built in. If an attack, fault or environmental disturbance stays within that expected envelope, the system degrades gracefully. But when the disruption exceeds the threshold, performance can deteriorate rapidly and unpredictably, sometimes collapsing in ways that cascade through the entire network. Abbas aims to develop networked systems that adapt as conditions worsen, so that performance declines smoothly rather than failing catastrophically. A second strand of his research seeks to identify the most critical connections and components within a network, the nodes and links whose protection yields the greatest resilience. By concentrating defenses on those essential elements, operators could maintain core functions without paying for costly, blanket redundancy across every part of the system. The work has obvious implications for autonomous vehicle coordination, industrial automation and the distributed computing fabric that increasingly underpins everyday services.

Dr. Sourav Dutta’s award, totaling $501,234, targets the physical bottleneck that threatens to slow the artificial intelligence revolution: the semiconductor itself. As AI models and autonomous systems generate staggering volumes of data, conventional computer chips struggle to move information efficiently between the separate regions where data is stored, processed and transmitted. Every transfer across those internal distances costs energy and time, and at the scale of modern workloads the cost becomes prohibitive. Dutta will investigate ultrathin oxide semiconductor transistors with a property that could prove transformative: they can be manufactured at low temperatures and stacked vertically on top of conventional silicon electronics. Vertical stacking would shorten the distance data must travel, directly reducing energy consumption and potentially enabling faster, more efficient chips. Because the low-temperature fabrication process is compatible with existing silicon technology, the approach could be integrated with current manufacturing rather than requiring an entirely new industrial base. Dutta also plans to apply artificial intelligence and computational modeling to predict how candidate transistors will perform before they are built, accelerating design cycles and shrinking the optimization process that normally stretches across years of laboratory iteration.

On the software side of the engineering school, Dr. Xinda Wang received $617,397 to build AI tools that can help open-source software communities catch security vulnerabilities earlier, at the moment developers are making changes to code. Open-source software, assembled from publicly available code that anyone can inspect, contribute to or reuse, has become the invisible backbone of the digital world. It powers commercial products, government systems and critical infrastructure alike. That ubiquity carries a hidden risk: when a vulnerability exists in a widely used open-source component, it silently propagates into every downstream system that incorporates the original code, multiplying the potential blast radius of a single flaw. Wang’s team will train machine-learning systems to recognize patterns in how code changes are made and how those changes ripple through other parts of a software project, flagging suspicious modifications before they are merged and deployed. Just as importantly, the researchers will develop AI models capable of explaining why a particular change may pose a security risk. That explanatory capability matters because security teams and volunteer maintainers often operate with limited time and resources; a tool that simply raises an alarm without context is easily ignored, while one that articulates its reasoning can be trusted and acted upon.

The fourth engineering awardee, Dr. Kyle McCall, received the largest of the five grants, $796,646, to probe a question that sits at the frontier of materials science: how the local atomic structure of emerging semiconductor materials determines their properties and their potential in electronics and energy technologies. Many of the most promising new materials exhibit unusual behavior that arises from deviations of atoms away from their ideal, expected positions within the crystal lattice. These local structural distortions can dramatically alter how a material conducts, absorbs light or responds to electric fields, yet scientists do not fully understand how the deviations can be controlled through the composition and arrangement of the constituent atoms. Compounding the challenge, the distortions are invisible to conventional characterization techniques, which average over large regions and therefore miss the local disorder that matters most. McCall and his team will use total X-ray scattering, a technique sensitive to how atoms are locally bonded within a material, to map the relationship between chemical composition, atomic deviations and resulting properties. The ultimate goal is a set of design principles that researchers can use to create new semiconductor materials with desirable properties on demand. The project also carries an educational mission, providing undergraduates with hands-on research experience and developing educational resources for teachers and students across the Dallas-Fort Worth region.

The lone recipient in the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, Dr. Kirill Lazebnik, secured a $450,000 CAREER grant for work in pure mathematics with unusually broad applied reach. His research concerns rational functions, the mathematical objects formed as ratios of polynomials, which serve as fundamental tools for mathematicians, scientists and engineers who model and analyze complex systems. Rational functions appear throughout signal processing, dynamical systems and scientific computing, making advances in their theory potentially consequential far beyond mathematics departments. Lazebnik’s project aims to deepen understanding of the structure of the space of rational functions and to explore how these functions might be applied in additional areas of analysis and dynamics. Questions that sound abstract, such as how the space of such functions is organized and connected, often translate into practical insight for engineers studying stability, control and signal behavior. Like his colleagues, Lazebnik has built education into the heart of the grant, with undergraduate research opportunities and community outreach programs designed to train future mathematicians and widen access to the discipline.

Taken together, the five awards reveal a coherent picture of where foundational research investment is flowing and why. The problems the CAREER recipients have chosen sit precisely at the pressure points of contemporary technology: networks that must survive deliberate attack and random failure, chips that must move data without drowning in their own energy consumption, software supply chains that must be defended at the moment of change, materials whose properties are hidden in atomic-scale disorder, and mathematical structures that underpin our ability to model all of the above. Each project also treats education as an engineering problem in its own right, designing pipelines of trained students, teacher resources and community engagement that extend the impact of the research well beyond the laboratory. For UT Dallas, the sweep of the awards across two schools signals institutional momentum in fields where competition for federal support is fierce. For the researchers themselves, five years of stable funding at the start of an academic career is a rare luxury, the freedom to pursue ambitious, long-horizon questions, and to bring students along for the entire journey from first hypothesis to published result.

Subject of Research: 2026 NSF CAREER awards to five UT Dallas faculty supporting research on network resilience, oxide semiconductor transistors, open-source software security, atomic structure of semiconductor materials and rational functions.

Article Title: Technologies, math research get lift from CAREER awards

Article References: Technologies, math research get lift from CAREER awards. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: NSF CAREER awards, University of Texas at Dallas, network resilience, oxide semiconductor transistors, open-source software security, artificial intelligence, semiconductor materials, total X-ray scattering, rational functions, systems engineering, materials science, mathematical sciences

The conventional way of making MXenes reads like a chain of laboratory chores. It begins with a precursor called a MAX phase, a layered ceramic powder that must itself be synthesized. That powder is then combined with a liquid etchant, most commonly hydrofluoric acid, agitated repeatedly, washed, and spun in a centrifuge multiple times to strip away the reaction byproducts. What emerges is MXene material in a form that still demands further processing into an ink, a coating, or a film before it can be put to work. Each of these stages adds cost and time, and the wet chemical etching generates toxic waste while potentially leaving flaws on the surfaces of the delicate flakes. Although the process has been tuned to yield a wide range of chemical compositions and scaled to kilograms per day, its dependence on a separately synthesized precursor has remained a fundamental constraint.

Yury Gogotsi, distinguished university and Bach chair professor in Drexel’s Nick Howley College of Engineering and Computing and one of the discoverers of MXenes, led the new study, published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Being able to combine a solid metal source with abundant and inexpensive gaseous reactants to form MXenes directly, he explained, opens a fundamentally different manufacturing pathway. The approach builds on a vapor-phase deposition process pioneered by researchers at the University of Chicago, who reported the first chemical vapor deposition synthesis of MXene, but it introduces markedly cheaper starting materials: titanium tetrachloride, an industrial commodity already produced in enormous quantities to make titania, the white pigment found in paint and sunblock, and methane, the principal component of natural gas.

The experimental recipe is disarmingly simple compared with its wet-chemical rival. The researchers placed titanium powder in a quartz carrier tube, introduced methane, and heated the mixture in a conventional tube furnace to trigger the reaction. As the hot gaseous mixture cooled, a layer of crystalline MXene, specifically the compound Ti2CCl2, formed on the quartz substrate. No MAX phase synthesis preceded the reaction, and no acid etching followed it. Hyunho Kim, a research professor at Sungkyunkwan University in South Korea and first author of the paper, who conducted the research as a postdoctoral assistant in Gogotsi’s laboratory, emphasized that growing crystalline MXene directly from abundant precursors, without first making and etching extra precursor materials, represents a significant development. MXene inks made by selective etching, he noted, remain valuable for coatings and printed devices, while vapor-phase synthesis offers a complementary route to crystals with extremely low defect density for future electronics, optics, and quantum technologies.

Beyond simplifying the supply chain, the team discovered that they could exert meaningful control over the material by manipulating the geometry of the reaction itself. By increasing the exposed surface area of the titanium and confining the reaction within a narrow carrier tube, they found that MXene formed on the quartz substrate without ever making direct contact with the solid titanium source. Under these confined conditions, the material self-organized into rounded structures known as spherulites, which together formed a porous nanocrystal network. The confined space, the researchers concluded, drives saturation of titanium chloride vapor to the level required for two-dimensional crystal growth, a key chemical mechanism that explains why the process works and how it might be tuned.

Time proved to be another powerful dial. As the synthesis proceeded for longer periods, the researchers observed continuous lateral growth into larger flakes. Individual spherulites expanded outward and merged with their neighbors, producing swirl-like crystalline domains containing individual flakes tens of micrometers across. This behavior demonstrates that crystalline two-dimensional MXene can be synthesized directly through a gas-to-solid growth process, and the sustained lateral expansion hints at something even more ambitious: the feasibility of producing large-area, and eventually wafer-scale, MXene crystals using equipment and principles familiar to the semiconductor industry.

The industrial logic of the process may prove to be its most compelling feature. Gogotsi pointed out that the new method shares important similarities with the chloride route used for industrial titania production. Both rely on titanium tetrachloride as a high-temperature vapor precursor; conceptually, methane supplies the carbon in the MXene process just as oxygen is used to form titania. Because titanium chloride is already handled at a very large industrial scale to produce millions of tons of titania each year, the same engineering principles could ultimately be adapted to produce inexpensive MXene powder in ton-scale quantities. For a material whose commercial adoption has been throttled by manufacturing complexity, that parallel to one of chemistry’s largest commodity processes is a striking endorsement of scalability.

Cost reduction extended to the metal source as well. Whereas the original University of Chicago study used high-purity titanium foil as its starting material, the Drexel-led group sourced its precursor from titanium sponge, an abundant industrial product that is substantially less expensive than high-purity titanium. Combined with the elimination of the MAX phase synthesis and the acid-etching steps, along with their associated toxic waste streams, the economics of MXene production begin to look radically different. Fewer steps mean fewer opportunities for contamination and defects, and gaseous precursors lend themselves to the kind of continuous, controlled manufacturing that has made electronic-grade materials affordable at scale.

The implications reach well beyond cheaper powders. According to the researchers, continued control over nucleation and lateral growth could eventually enable large-area, low-defect MXene crystals and even wafer-scale conducting films suitable for electronics, optical communication, and quantum computing. Crystalline films grown directly from the vapor phase, with their extremely low defect densities, are precisely the form factor demanded by next-generation devices, where flake boundaries and surface imperfections degrade performance. A route that grows such crystals directly on a substrate, from commodity chemicals, in a conventional tube furnace, positions MXenes to compete with established two-dimensional materials on the manufacturing terms that matter most.

Challenges remain before MXenes move from the quartz tube to the factory floor. The next phase of the research will focus on refining the process to ensure structural uniformity, increasing flake size, and achieving precise control over the surface chemistry of the resulting materials, which governs how MXenes conduct charge and interact with their environment. The team also intends to adapt the process to produce MXenes with other chemical compositions, broadening the palette of properties available to device designers. Still, the demonstration that a material born in an acid flask can now be grown as a crystalline film from natural gas and a paint pigment precursor marks a turning point. The discovery of a key chemical mechanism for scalable vapor-phase growth suggests that the barriers that have kept MXenes in the laboratory for a decade and a half may finally be dissolving, one wafer at a time.

Subject of Research: Vapor-phase chemical synthesis of two-dimensional Ti2CCl2 MXene crystals for scalable industrial production

Article Title: New process for making MXenes via vapor-phase synthesis could expand technological applications

Article References: New process for making MXenes via vapor-phase synthesis could expand technological applications. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: MXenes, two-dimensional materials, chemical vapor deposition, titanium tetrachloride, nanomaterials, Drexel University, energy storage, quantum computing, materials science, Ti2CCl2, thin films, industrial manufacturing

The new material belongs to a family of compounds known as two-dimensional hybrid organic-inorganic perovskites. These are layered semiconductors in which alternating sheets of organic and inorganic components stack into a highly ordered crystalline structure. The inorganic layers provide mechanical rigidity and structural definition, while the organic layers act as spacers whose chemical composition can be tuned almost at will. That tunability is the key to the new result. In their earlier work, the NC State team had already observed unusual combinations of stiffness and thermal behavior in this class of materials, but the new study represents a deliberate, targeted effort at molecular engineering rather than an incidental discovery.

The specific strategy involved modifying the carbon-carbon chains within the organic layers. By replacing a portion of those chains with a carefully tailored combination of benzene rings, the researchers gained precise control over how the material conducts heat and how rigid it is. Benzene rings are bulky, planar molecular units that disrupt the efficient pathways along which vibrational energy, and therefore heat, normally travels through a solid. Incorporating them in a controlled way scatters the lattice vibrations, known as phonons, that would otherwise carry thermal energy across the layers, while the overall layered architecture preserves the crystalline order that gives the film its stiffness.

The material the team produced is an azobenzene ethyl ammonium lead iodide thin film. When tested at room temperature, it exhibited a thermal conductivity of approximately 0.04 watts per meter-kelvin. To appreciate how remarkable that figure is, consider silicone, a soft polymer widely used to insulate against heat in everyday products such as oven mitts. Silicone has a thermal conductivity of about 0.2 watts per meter-kelvin, five times higher than the new perovskite film. Yet the engineered film is not a squishy insulating gel; it is a rigid semiconductor with mechanical stiffness exceeding that of silicone by a factor of roughly 700 to 10,000, depending on how the comparison is made. Combining those two figures underscores the scale of the achievement: a dense, load-bearing material that insulates better than the soft foams and elastomers engineers usually reach for when heat control matters.

Dali Sun, co-corresponding author of the study and a professor of physics at NC State, emphasizes why this combination is so valuable. Stiff materials that are good thermal insulators would have substantial utility across a wide range of applications, from cookware to electronic devices to space travel, he notes. The problem, he explains, is that in general stiff materials conduct heat well, and materials that insulate well are not stiff. The new compound is very stiff and extremely good at insulating against heat, outperforming any material one would find in nature. That framing is not marketing hyperbole but a statement about the material’s position relative to the entire known landscape of dense solids.

Jun Liu, co-corresponding author and an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at NC State, describes the work as a demonstration of what advanced molecular engineering can achieve when properties are designed intentionally rather than accepted as given. The team had previously demonstrated unusual behavior related to the combination of stiffness and thermal conductivity in a specific class of materials, she says, and for this study they engaged in more advanced molecular engineering to deliberately create an extreme combination of those properties. The result approaches the theoretical floor for thermal conductivity in a non-porous solid, meaning there is very little room left for any conventional material to do better without introducing porosity, which would sacrifice stiffness and structural integrity.

Equally important for practical adoption is the fact that the production method scales. Liu notes that the technique used to create the film can be scaled up fairly easily, allowing the material to be produced at fairly large scales, applied as a coating, and integrated into existing manufacturing workflows. This is a critical distinction from many laboratory-record thermal insulators, such as exotic aerogels or nanostructured ceramics, which achieve impressive numbers only through porous architectures that are difficult to produce uniformly over large areas and which lack the mechanical strength needed for demanding applications. A printable thin film that is both stiff and ultrainsulating opens the door to conformal thermal barriers on electronic components, protective layers in high-temperature environments, and insulation systems for aerospace structures where every gram and every millimeter counts.

The study, titled Extremely Low Thermal Conductivity in Rigid Layered Hybrid Perovskites, was published on September 18, 2026, in Science Advances. Co-lead authors are Ziqi Wang and Ankit Negi, Ph.D. graduates of NC State, along with Liang Yan of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Qingxuan Wang of Nanjing Normal University. The co-corresponding authors are Jun Liu and Dali Sun of NC State, Wei You of UNC Chapel Hill, and Jun Zhou of Nanjing Normal University. The broader author team includes contributors from NC State, UNC Chapel Hill, Texas A&M University, Yale University, Shanghai Polytechnic University, and Wenzhou University, reflecting the collaborative experimental and computational effort required to synthesize, characterize, and model the material’s behavior.

The research was supported by the National Science Foundation under multiple grants, by the U.S. Department of Energy, by the Office of Naval Research, and by the Goodnight Innovation Distinguished Professor Endowment. Beyond the specific compound, the authors point to the broader significance of the work: it highlights the potential of molecular engineering to fine-tune hybrid layered materials for applications that require novel combinations of stiffness and thermal insulation. If the same benzene-ring design principle can be extended across other members of the hybrid perovskite family and into related layered systems, the coming years could see a new generation of structural materials in which heat management is designed into the molecular architecture itself rather than bolted on afterwards. For engineers designing everything from smartphone processors to spacecraft heat shields, that prospect transforms thermal insulation from a compromise into a design variable.

Subject of Research: Development of a rigid two-dimensional hybrid organic-inorganic perovskite thin film with extremely low thermal conductivity achieved through molecular engineering of organic layers.

Article Title: New thermal insulator outperforms any material found in nature

Article References: New thermal insulator outperforms any material found in nature. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: thermal insulation, hybrid perovskites, molecular engineering, thin films, thermal conductivity, materials science, NC State University, Science Advances, stiffness, phonon scattering, benzene rings, thermal barriers