If this is the first time you’ve read Materials Today, or if you’re reading this issue's editorial in HTML form, then you may be a little confused by the title and introduction above. But I’ve no doubt that the majority of you will have already noticed that the journal seems to look a bit different. Those of you with one eye on the calendar may have also noticed that our first issue of 2013 has also come out a little later than usual. As you might have guessed, the two phenomena are connected…
I’m very happy to say that as of now, Materials Today is being produced by Elsevier's journal production team. And so while we’ve made a few changes to the design of the journal on entering a new production system, rest assured that the content remains the same; just as a rose by any other name smells as sweet. It's taken a little time for us to put everything in place, hence the aforementioned delay, but now things are up and running, it's full steam ahead.
Handing over production to the journal team will now mean that the editorial team is free to focus on providing you with more content than ever before: we have already started to roll out a packed 2013 webinar program, and our next Virtual Conference will be taking place shortly, with our second Frontiers of Microscopy Virtual Conference, where we’ll be introducing some new features to the poster hall. Remember to keep an eye on www.materialstoday.com for more information on these events, as well as much more.
This year we’ll also be moving away from the themed issues we’ve put together in the past, so that articles can be published as soon as they are accepted. Of course, for those readers that wish to group content together, it remains possible to search and filter articles on the website.
Despite the formal lack of a theme, it's a happy coincidence that this issue's review articles relate to the applications of nanomaterials. To begin, Carole Grätzel and Shaik Zakeeruddin look at recent trends in mesoscopic solar cells based on molecular and nanopigment light harvesters. Next up, Chang Liu and Hui-Ming Cheng consider the production and applications of carbon nanotubes, with a focus on the controlled synthesis of SWCNTs by chemical vapor deposition. Hua Zhang and colleagues then continue the discussion of the synthesis and application of nanomaterials, but this time in reference to graphene-templated noble metal materials. Finally, and on a different note, Simon Pauly, Jürgen Eckert, et al. report on the processing of metallic glasses using selective laser melting, demonstrating a new approach to synthesizing metallic alloy materials and parts without limitations in size and intricacy.
Until next time, we hope you enjoy this issue of Materials Today.