Over the past half century, rapid progress has been made in laser-based medical diagnosis and treatment as well as in laser-based medical device fabrication. Lasers have unique capabilities for coating, machining, melting, polymerizing, sintering, and welding materials that are used in implantable and transdermal medical devices. In this review, academic and industrial developments involving laser processing of materials for dental, orthopedic, neural, ophthalmic, cardiovascular, and transdermal applications are described. In addition, laser processing of nanoscale materials for medical applications is discussed. Finally, challenges associated with commercialization of laser biomaterials are considered. Due to the unique capabilities provided by laser-based processes, it is anticipated that the use of laser biomaterials in implantable and transdermal medical devices will markedly increase over the coming years.

Photovoltaics are expected to play an important role in the future energy infrastructure. However, achieving simultaneously high efficiency in both light absorption and carrier collection remains a challenging tradeoff. Photon management, which refers to the engineering of materials and device structures to control the spatial distribution of optical energy, offers a number of promising routes to optimizing this tradeoff. Progress in fabrication of nanostructured materials combined with advances in the understanding of nanophotonic devices has enabled new strategies for photon management in a range of photovoltaic devices. Prominent among these are structures with pronounced surface topography or graded refractive-index profiles that reduce surface reflectivity; materials processing that increases optical absorption in materials such as silicon; incorporation of semiconductor nanostructures that enables simultaneous improvements in optical absorption and photogenerated carrier collection; and coherent light trapping in optical waveguide modes via plasmonic or optical scattering effects. The articles in this issue review some of these emerging directions.

Climate change, diminishing reserves of fossil fuels, energy security, and consumer demand all depend on alternatives to our current course of energy usage and consumption. A broad consensus concurs that implementing energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies are necessities now rather than luxuries to be deferred to some distant future. Neither effort can effect serious change in our energy patterns without marked improvements in electrical energy storage, with electrochemical energy storage in batteries and electrochemical capacitors serving as key components of any plausible scenario.1,2 Consumer expectations of convenience and long-lived portable power further drive the need to push these old devices onto a new performance curve. This issue of MRS Bulletin addresses the significant advances occurring in research laboratories around the world as old electrode materials and designs are re-envisioned, and abandoned materials of the past are reinvigorated by arranging matter and function on the nanoscale to bring batteries and electrochemical capacitors into the 21st century.

In this article, we review current research activities in contact material development for electronic and nanoelectronic devices. A fundamental issue in contact materials research is to understand and control interfacial reactions and phenomena that modify the expected device performance. These reactions have become more challenging and more difficult to control as new materials have been introduced and as device sizes have entered the deep nanoscale. To provide an overview of this field of inquiry, this issue of MRS Bulletin includes articles on gate and contact materials for Si-based devices, junction contact materials for Si-based devices, and contact materials for alternate channel substrates (Ge and III–V), nanodevices.

Although photovoltaic cells have great potential for supplying carbon-free energy, they suffer from the lack of an efficient and cost-effective energy storage process that can supply energy for transportation and nighttime use. A direct way to convert solar energy into chemical fuels would solve this problem. Of several possible schemes, the photon-driven electrolysis of water to produce hydrogen and oxygen has been studied most. Photoelectrolysis of water can be achieved with either self-supported catalysts or with photoelectrochemical cells. This article will introduce the basic principles of solar water splitting and highlight recent developments with semiconductor light absorbers and co-catalysts. The role of combinatorial approaches in identifying new metal oxide visible light-absorbing semiconductors will be briefly described, and the potential of using nanomaterials for more efficient devices will be discussed. Separate articles in this special issue will focus on recent developments in water-splitting concepts.

A significant change is occurring in the global polymer industries. Development of a new generation of bio-based polymers, polymers derived from renewable resources, is progressing rapidly. Complementing historical biopolymers such as natural rubber and cellulosics, these new bioplastics include a growing number of commercial successes, including polylactides and polyhydroxyalkanoates. Many more bioplastics are on the near horizon, made possible by rapid advances in biotechnology. The molecular specificity of biochemical transformations is ideally suited for producing high purity monomers needed for making high molecular weight polymer molecules. Some of the newest developments involve the creation of well-established polymers (polyethylene, polybutlylene, poly(ethylene terephthalate)) via new biochemical pathways that start with renewable, rather than fossil, resources. This article highlights some recent advances in bio-based polymers. Specifically, this review includes topics ranging from novel biopolymer synthesis, new bio-based nanocomposites, novel processing, and holistic assessments of sustainability through quantitative life-cycle analysis. It is demonstrated that greener plastic materials can be produced through ecologically responsible conversion of renewable resources using industrial biotechnology and enhanced by nanotechnology. This emerging approach represents a triple technological convergence that promises to significantly alter the value chains of the global plastics industries.

Typically, materials with high electrical conductivity such as metals are opaque, and materials with high optical transparency such as glass are insulating. Finding materials that are both transparent to visible light and electrically conductive has proven to be a challenge. The need for such materials continues to grow, as many of today’s popular devices such as liquid-crystal displays and organic light-emitting diodes in televisions, touch screens in phones or tablet computers, electrophoretic displays in e-readers, or solar cells on a roof require one or more layers to transmit visible light, while simultaneously applying a voltage or conducting a current. Today, the industry’s need for such a material is serviced by various metal oxides, of which indium tin oxide (ITO) is by far the most common. The opto-electronic properties of ITO satisfy industry need for most devices; however, ITO has several drawbacks (e.g., brittle, expensive, and typically applied via costly sputtering techniques). To address these issues, recent advances in solution-processed nanomaterials have enabled several printable alternatives to sputtered ITO. These nanomaterials include conducting polymers, metallic nanostructures, ITO nanostructures, carbon nanotubes, and graphene. The ability to apply nanomaterials from the liquid phase opens the possibility to print these electronic materials roll-to-roll, greatly reducing cost and increasing yield and throughput, while the nanomaterial topology enables truly flexible devices.

Basic scientific questions and tantalizingly revolutionary applications have been intertwined throughout the 100-year history of superconductivity. Within two years of his discovery of superconductivity in 1911, H. Kamerlingh Onnes imagined high-field applications for superconducting wires, only to have his hopes dashed by limitations of upper critical field and critical current density. Over the next 98 years, a scientific tango would play out repeatedly between (1) discovering and understanding new superconductors, often with higher transition temperature values and (2) improving these materials’ upper critical field and critical current values while keeping manufacturing costs down. In this article, we take stock of where the field currently stands, with mature, developing, and recently discovered superconductors, and try to give a sense of where it may be going.

This article reviews and assesses recent progress in atomic layer deposition (ALD) and highlights how the field of ALD is expanding into new applications and inspiring new vapor-based chemical reaction methods. ALD is a unique chemical process that yields ultra-thin film coatings with exceptional conformality on highly non-uniform and non-planar surfaces, often with subnanometer scale control of the coating thickness. While industry uses ALD for high-κ dielectrics in the manufacturing of electronic devices, there is growing interest in low-temperature ALD and ALD-inspired processes for newer and more wide-ranging applications, including integration with biological and synthetic polymer structures. Moreover, the conformality and nanoscale control of ALD film thickness makes ALD ideal for encapsulation and nano-architectural engineering. Articles in this issue of MRS Bulletin present details of several growing interest areas, including the extension of ALD to new regions of the periodic table, and molecular layer deposition and vapor infiltration for synthesis of organic-based thin films. Articles also discuss ALD for nanostructure engineering and ALD for energy applications. A final article shows how the challenge of scaling ALD for high rate nanomanufacturing will push advances in plasma, roll-to-roll, and atmospheric pressure ALD.

The development of new materials typically requires an iterative sequence of synthesis and characterization, but high-performance computing (HPC) adds another dimension to the process: materials can be synthesized and/or characterized virtually as well, and it is often an overlapping quilt of data from these four aspects of design that is used to develop a new material. This is made possible, in large measure, by the algorithms and hardware collectively referred to as HPC. Prominent within this developing approach to materials design is the increasingly important role that quantum mechanical analysis techniques have come to play. These techniques are reviewed with an emphasis on their application to materials design. This issue of MRS Bulletin highlights specific examples of how such HPC tools are used to advance energy science research in the areas of nuclear fission, electrochemical batteries, photovoltaic energy conversion, hydrocarbon catalysis, hydrogen storage, clathrate hydrates, and nuclear fusion.

Bacterial biofilms are integrated, multi-species communities of cells that adhere to almost any surface and are fundamental to the ecology and biology of bacteria. Not only do biofilms contribute to human health and disease, they also play important roles in the context of energy and the environment. The formation of biofilms requires interactions between bacteria and the surfaces they colonize, and both microbe and surface can impact the structure, function, and composition of these communities. Bacteria in biofilms exhibit surprisingly sophisticated social behavior, both cooperative and competitive, made possible by their cell biology. However, they are also hierarchically organized systems governed by complex physical and chemical interactions. Because of this, the study of bacterial biofilms has recently attracted the attention of materials scientists, physicists, chemists, and nanotechnology experts who import not only new tools, but also new concepts and perspectives. This issue reviews recent progress in multidisciplinary studies of biofilms.

Researchers worldwide recognize the importance of inspiring the next generation of scientists through outreach activities. U.S. researchers have additional motivation in that many funding agencies are now requiring kindergarten through twelfth grade (K–12) outreach as part of fundable research plans. Unfortunately, many of these same researchers know little about the precollege educational community or about the educational system that supports that community. This special issue acts as a reference and provides pointers to the many opportunities available for materials education outreach, along with suggestions and advice on how both the novice and experienced researcher may contribute.