New applications

Welcome to the latest issue of the Materials Today journal.

To begin this issue, Thomas Ihn and colleagues look to the future opportunities offered by van-der-Waals stacked nanodevices in their review, Graphene nano-heterostructures for quantum devices. Sticking with nanomaterial application, Jia Zhang and Shu-Hong Yu look at an emerging alternative to classical metal-based semiconductor quantum dots: carbon dots, in Carbon dots: large-scale synthesis, sensing and bioimaging. Next, Peihua Yang, Peng Sun and Wenjie Mai describe devices with the smart function of changing color using electrochromic materials, in Electrochromic energy storage devices. And in our final review of the issue, Bin Ding and co-workers review recent progress in the design and fabrication of electrospun nanofibrous materials with tunable surface wettability for oil/water separation applications, in Electrospun nanofibrous materials: A versatile medium for effective oil/water separations.

The cover of this issue features Metallic Ag microsphere in a ceramic matrix, and M. Madre explain the science behind this image in this issue's Uncovered article. Online, we’ve got some exciting new webinars coming up, including Coherent X-ray beams: Benchtop light sources for nanoscience – just visit www.materialstoday.com/webinars to register for free and access the recordings of previous webinars.

Very shortly, possibly by the time this Editorial has gone to press, we’ll be making some exciting announcements regarding some new additions to the Materials Today family, so keep an eye on www.materialstoday.com and sign up for the newsletter for more information shortly.

And so, until next time, we hope you enjoy this issue of Materials Today.