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Impact factor: 13.266*
Publishing frequency: 12 issues per year
Editorial Board Chair: Seth Marder
Submission to first decision: 29 days**

Expect to be impressed

Horizons research pushes the boundaries of materials science – think new unexpected observations, new directions and new levels of insight.

Put your trust in our team

Our editorial processes are transparent, rigorous, fair and rapid, with an editorial board of leading scientists, guided by a society publisher – we get great work into the world, fast.

Learn something new

Focus articles clarify often misunderstood topic areas, and original research comes with a New Concepts statement which explains the work and its wider significance.

Journal Scope

Materials Horizons is a leading journal for the publication of exceptionally high quality, innovative materials science.The journal places an emphasis on original research that demonstrates a new concept or a new way of thinking (a conceptual advance), rather than primarily reporting technological improvements. However, outstanding articles featuring truly breakthrough developments such as record performance of materials alone may also be published in the journal. For work to be published it must be of significant general interest to our community-spanning readership. 

 

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Editorial board

Martina Stenzel

Editorial Board Chair:University of New South Wales, Australia

Bruno Chaudret

Scientific editor: University of Toulouse, France

Lei Jiang

Editorial board member: Beihang University, China

Kisuk Kang

Scientific editor: Seoul National University, South Korea

Norbert Koch

Scientific editor: Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany

Thuc-Quyen Nguyen

Scientific editor: University of California, Santa Barbara, USA

Roisin Owens

Scientific editor:University of Cambridge, UK

Mark Thompson

Editorial board member: University of Southern California, USA

Xun Wang

Scientific editor: Tsinghua University, China

Shu Yang

Scientific editor: University of Pennsylvania, USA

Markus Antonietti, Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces, Germany

David Beljonne, University of Mons, Belgium

Chris Bettinger, Carnegie Mellon University, USA

Kanishika Biswas, Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, India

Paul Blom, Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research, Germany

Mischa Bonn, Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research, Germany

Jean-Luc Brédas, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA

Markus Buehler, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA

Jillian Buriak, University of Alberta, Canada

Moyuan Cao, Tianjin University, China

Yong Cao, South China University of Technology, China

Rachel Caruso, University of Melbourne, Austrailia

Anthony Cheetham, University of Cambridge, UK

Hong Chen, Soochow University, China

Brandi Cossairt, University of Washington, USA

Dibyendu Das, IISER Kolkata, India

Luisa De Cola, University of Strasbourg, France

Ulrike  Diebold, Vienna University of Technology, Austria

Mircea Dinca, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA

Gitti Frey, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, Israel

Richard Friend, University of Cambridge, UK

Jian Ping Gong, Hokkaido University, Japan

Grace Gu, University of California, Berkeley, USA

Subi George, Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, India

David Haddleton, University of Warwick, UK

Elizabeth von Hauff, VU Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Martin Heeney, Imperial College London, UK

Jurriaan Huskens, University of Twente, Netherlands

Hiroshi Imahori, Kyoto University, Japan

Antoine Kahn, Princeton University, USA

Richard Kaner, University of California, Los Angeles, USA

Anna Koehler, University of Bayreuth, Germany

Susumu Kitagawa, Kyoto University, Japan

Frederik Krebs, Elite Science, Denmark

Katharina Landfester, Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research, Germany

Guglielmo Lanzani, Italian Institute of Technology, Italy

Neng Li, Wuhan University of Technology, China

Yan Li, Peking University, China

Darren Lipomi, University of California, San Diego, USA

Bin Liu, National University of Singapore, Singapore

Maria Antonietta Loi, University of Groningen, Netherlands

Lynn Yueh Lin Loo, Princeton University, USA

Bettina Lotsch, Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research, Germany

HongYee Low, Singapore University of Technology and Design, Singapore

Eva Malmström Jonsson, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden

Uttam Manna, Indian Institute of Technology-Guwahati, India

Richard Martel, University of Montreal, Canada

Hedi Mattoussi, Florida State University, USA

David Mecerreyes, University of the Basque Country, Spain

Phillip Messersmith, University of California, Berkeley, USA

Catherine Murphy, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, USA

K S Narayan, Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, India

Markus Niederberger, ETH Zürich, Switzerland

Teri Odom, Northwestern University, USA

Wee-Jun Ong, Xiamen University, Malaysia

Moon Jeong Park, Pohang University of Science and Technoloy (POSTECH), Korea

Marie-Paule Pileni, Pierre and Marie Curie University, France

Vivek Polshettiwar, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), India

C N R Rao, Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, Bangalore, India

Erin Ratcliff, University of Arizona, USA

Vince Rotello, University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA

Christine Schmidt, University of Florida, USA

Gregory D Scholes, Princeton University, USA

Rachel Segalman, University of California Santa Barbara, USA

Peter Skabara, University of Glasgow, UK

Henry Snaith, University of Oxford, UK

Takao Someya, University of Tokyo, Japan

Kazuo Takimaya, RIKEN, Japan

Luisa Torsi, University of Bari, Italy

Aleks Vojvodic, University of Pennsylvania, USA

Shu Wang, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China

Tanja Weil, Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research, Germany

Emily Weiss, Northwestern University, USA

David Weitz, Harvard University, USA

Chris Wolverton, Northwestern University, USA

Yi Xie, University of Science and Technology of China, China

Vivian Wing-Wah Yam, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Shannon Yee, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA

Jihong Yu, Jilin University, China

Shu-Hong Yu, University of Science and Technology of China, China

Aldo J. G. Zarbin, Universidade Federal do Paraná, Brazil

Xiaowei Zhan, Peking University, China

Dongyuan Zhao, Fudan University, China

Our Community Board is an early career advisory board made up of researchers with expertise across all areas of the journal’s scope. The board members provide feedback and advice regarding journal activities, as well as acting as advocates for the journal.

Chibueze Amanchukwu, The University of Chicago, USA

Athina Anastasaki, ETH Zurich, Switzerland

Maria C. Arno, University of Birmingham, UK

Rowena Brugge, Imperial College London, UK

Mingtao Chen, University of Pennsylvania, USA

Pei Cheng, Sichuan University, China

Huijuan Cui, Nankai University, China

Xiaoguang Duan, The University of Adelaide, Australia

Azhar Fakharuddin, University of Konstanz, Germany

Rebecca Gieseking, Brandeis University, USA

Masayuki Gon, Kyoto University, Japan

Xia Guo, Soochow University, China

Ritu Gupta, Indian Institute of Technology Jodhpur, India

Chen Jiang, University of Cambridge, UK

Yanyan Jiang, Shandong University, China

Seong-Min Jo, Max-Planck institute for Polymer Research, Germany

Vipin Kumar, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), India

Aneeya Kumar Samantara, National Institute of Science Education and Research, India

Audrey Laventure, Université de Montréal, Canada

Collins Taehun Lee, Yonsei University, Korea

Quan Li, Hubei University, China

Tian-yi Li, University of Southern California, USA

Penggao Liu, Central South University, China

David Lunn, OxSyBio Ltd, UK

Katerina G. Malollari, University of California, Berkeley, USA

Ignacio Martin-Fabiani, Loughborough University, UK

Gift Mehlana, Midlands State University, Zimbabwe

Wee-Jun Ong, Xiamen University, Malaysia

Robert Pankow, University of Southern California, USA

Christopher Proctor, University of Cambridge, UK

Yun Qian, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China

Li Na Quan, Virginia Tech, USA

Alexandra Ramadan, Oxford Univeristy, UK

Vincent Blay Roger, University of California, San Francisco , USA

Bernd Schmidt, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Germany

Hao Shao, Deakin University, Australia

Elayne Thomas, University of Massachussetts Amherst, USA

Maria-Helene Tremblay, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA

Daiki Umeyama, NIMS, Japan

Mengye Wang, Sun Yat-Sen University, China

Meng Zhang, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA

Nan Zhang, Hunan University, China

Jiadong Zhou, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Ye Zhou, Shenzhen University, China

Michaela Mühlberg, Executive Editor ORCID 0000-0002-3468-280X

Lynn Murphy, Deputy Editor ORCID 0000-0003-4893-1536

Jonathon Watson, Editorial Production Manager

Sarah Whitbread, Senior Publishing Editor

Matthew Blow, Publishing Editor

Eleanor Clifford, Publishing Editor

Tamara Kosikova, Publishing Editor

Carole Martin, Publishing Editor

Lily Newton, Publishing Editor

Rebecca Plant, Publishing Editor

Jane Chan, Editorial Assistant

Jane Paterson, Publishing Assistant

Sam Keltie, Publisher

Materials Horizons Outstanding Paper Award

In order to recognize some of the outstanding work published in the journal, as well as the authors behind those articles, we annually award an Outstanding Paper Award. The prizes recognise the contributions of all authors and celebrates these exceptional publications.

Each year, we put together a shortlist of articles published during the previous calendar year based on a variety of metrics including article downloads, Altmetrics, and citations. The shortlist is reviewed by the journal's Editorial and Advisory Board members based on the science presented and potential future impact. Based on this, and on the high quality of content we published throughout the year, an Outstanding Paper is chosen, as well as a runner-up and an Outstanding Review.

2020 winners:

Materials Horizons Outstanding Article 2020:

An ambient-stable and stretchable ionic skin with multimodal sensation

Binbin Ying, Qiyang Wu, Jianyu Li and Xinyu Liu

Materials Horizons Outstanding Article runner-up 2020:

Stretchable, self-healing and tissue-adhesive zwitterionic hydrogels as strain sensors for wireless monitoring of organ motions

Xinjie Pei, Hua Zhang, Yang Zhou, Linjie Zhou and Jun Fu

Materials Horizons Outstanding Review 2020:

Evolution of self-healing elastomers, from extrinsic to combined intrinsic mechanisms: a review

Saul Utrera-Barrios, Raquel Verdejo, Miguel A. López-Manchado and Marianella Hernández Santana

Article Types

Materials Horizons publishes:

  • Communications
  • Reviews
  • Minireviews
  • Focus articles
  • Comments

Communications

All original research published in the journal is in the form of Communication articles. These are exceptionally high quality and innovative reports that are of significant broad appeal to the materials science community at large. The research presented should provide new insight into the topic and demonstrate a new concept or a new way of thinking (a conceptual advance), rather than primarily reporting technological improvements. However, outstanding articles featuring truly breakthrough developments such as record performance of materials alone may also be published in the journal.  

Materials Horizons Communications must include a separate ‘new concepts’ statement. This statement should be a paragraph of no more than 200 words and should address the following questions:

  • What new concept has been demonstrated?
  • What differentiates this concept from existing research?
  • What additional insight does your work and the underlying concept bring to the materials science?

This statement will be seen by editors and reviewers and will help ascertain the significance of the research. The statement should not be a summary of the work reported, as in the article abstract. If the paper is accepted, this statement will also be published. Please note that papers cannot be peer-reviewed without this statement.

Although there is no page limit for a Communication, the recommended length is three printed journal pages. Authors are encouraged to provide a succinct and relevant introduction to the research and to consider the use of the electronic supplementary information for additional material. Please see below for some examples of exemplar 'new concepts' statements.

See examples

Rationally designed meta-implants: a combination of auxetic and conventional meta-biomaterials

New Concepts

In this manuscript, the concept of hybrid meta-biomaterials has been demonstrated to improve implant–bone contact in off-axially loaded ‘meta-implants’ (hip stems). A combination of negative and positive Poisson's ratio structures has been shown to create compression on either side of the meta-implant, decreasing the chance of bone–implant interface failure (Hoffman's criterion), minimizing the chance of wear particles entering the enclosed space and improving implant fixation by mechanically stimulating bone growth. While mechanical meta-materials have been studied for a while now, especially auxetic mechanical metamaterials, special combinations of metamaterials are rarely explored. This study highlights the effectiveness of creating hybrid meta-biomaterials, which can be designed to exhibit specific mechanical properties (such as a hybrid Poisson's ratio). Furthermore, this study covers the complete research trajectory from mechanical-biomaterials to their final hybrid application in ‘meta-implants’. It therefore demonstrates a proof-of-concept of applying rational design and meta-biomaterials to improve implant longevity. The significance of combining specific mechanical metamaterials has been proven, and with the recent advances in additive manufacturing this opens up an interesting field of research.

Bioinspired hierarchical composite design using machine learning: simulation, additive manufacturing, and experiment

New Concepts

We demonstrate a new machine learning-based design approach for hierarchical materials. The new designs created by our machine learning model, which is trained with a database of hundreds of thousands of geometries from finite element analysis, are validated using additive manufacturing and experimentation. Whereas most of the previous work applying machine learning in materials science is solely focused on predicting material properties, we aim to go beyond property prediction to optimize specific properties. This is achieved by further augmenting a convolutional neural network model with our self-learning algorithm; the goal being to learn patterns from sampled top-performing geometries to create even better designs, phasing out inferior designs for superior candidates. The result is a suite of new designs that outperform the training set. Additionally, for the first time in literature, we show that machine learning can be used as an alternative method for coarse-graining – analyzing and designing materials without the use of full microstructural data. The coarse-graining is realized by condensing a collection of building blocks into a single unit cell – significantly reducing the number of parameters needed in our machine learning model. Thus, this new approach accelerates the search for high-performing hierarchical materials by orders of magnitude and is widely applicable to other material systems to optimize a variety of properties.

Unexpected surface interactions between fluorocarbons and hybrid organic inorganic perovskites evidenced by PM-IRRAS and their application towards tuning the surface potential

New Concepts

We pioneer the use of a surface-specific IR spectroscopy technique to probe how molecules deposit on the surface of hybrid organic–inorganic perovskites. With over 20% power conversion efficiencies, the latter have emerged as one of the most promising next-generation photovoltaic materials. Although surface passivation can considerably improve their performance, there is as yet little understanding on how molecules interact with the ionic crystal due to the lack of suitable experimental techniques. We show that PM-IRRAS can be adapted to work on perovskites to provide information on the density and orientation of molecules on the surface as well as the chemical nature of the molecules, in much the same way as IR spectroscopy can be used to identify molecules in solution or in the solid state. Thanks to this technique, we were able to evidence the spontaneous formation of ordered monolayers of even simple fluorocarbons onto the perovskite surface. This surprising result evidences the existence of interactions between fluorine atoms and the hydrophilic surface. We further show that it is possible to harness these interactions to tune the surface potential of the material over a 150 mV range through the formation of a single monolayer.

Reviews

Reviews are typically commissioned by the Materials Horizons editorial board and editorial office, although suggestions from readers for topics and authors of reviews are very welcome and should be directed to the editor. Materials Horizons Reviews must be very high quality, authoritative, state-of-the-art accounts of the selected research field.

Reviews should be timely and provide insights based on existing literature as well as being of general interest to the journal's wide readership. All Reviews undergo a rigorous and full peer review procedure, in the same way as regular research papers.

Authors are encouraged to identify areas in the field where further developments are imminent or of urgent need, and any areas that may be of significance to the community in general. Reviews are typically six to eight printed journal pages in length.

Minireviews

Minireviews are highlights or summaries of research in an emerging area of materials science (typically from the last two to three years). They are not intended to be comprehensive overviews, but rather should highlight recent and important developments and provide insights into the emerging area on which they are focused. Minireviews should set the topic in the context of the relevant literature and may include perspectives of the future development of the field.

Perspectives of the future development of the field are appropriate. The recommended length of a Materials Horizons Minireview is three printed journal pages.

Focus articles

Materials Horizons Focus articles are educational articles that can take the form of either an editorial or review article. They are designed to address topic areas which are often misunderstood or require greater explanation.

Focus articles are invited by the Materials Horizons editorial board and editorial office. Suggestions from readers for topics and authors of Focus articles are welcome and should be directed to the editor.

Comments

Comments and Replies are a medium for the discussion and exchange of scientific opinions between authors and readers concerning material published in Materials Horizons.

For publication, a Comment should present an alternative analysis of and/or new insight into the previously published material. Any Reply should further the discussion presented in the original article and the Comment. Comments and Replies that contain any form of personal attack are not suitable for publication. 

Comments that are acceptable for publication will be forwarded to the authors of the work being discussed, and these authors will be given the opportunity to submit a Reply. The Comment and Reply will both be subject to rigorous peer review in consultation with the journal’s Editorial Board where appropriate. The Comment and Reply will be published together.

Submission and assessment process

On submission to the journal, all manuscripts are initially assessed by a team of professional Publishing Editors who have a wide range of scientific backgrounds. They make an assessment of whether the manuscript may be suitable for the journal, based on the scope and very high significance and broad general interest criteria required for publication. Publishing Editors are supported in this decision making by our academic Scientific Editors who are members of our Editorial Board. Only manuscripts that are successful during these initial assessments will be sent for full peer review. Full details of the initial assessment process can be found with our processes and policies.

The journal follows a single-blind peer review process and articles are typically sent to at least two independent reviewers for evaluation. Professional Publishing Editors are responsible for peer review and associated editorial decisions. The team are guided by our Editorial Board who set the scientific standards and guidelines for the journal. Our Editorial Board are all leading scientists who together have expertise across the breadth of materials science.

Journal specific guidelines

 

The following guidelines are journal specific. For general guidance on preparing an article please visit our Prepare your article and Resources for authors pages, the content of which is relevant to all of our journals.

We provide some general considerations on suitability for publication of original research in the journal:

  • Articles that challenge current thinking, present new unexpected observations, create new directions in materials science or introduce a new understanding of a topic. For example, new mechanisms, new synthetic procedures or simplifying the current challenging or lengthy synthetic method, new molecular design guidelines, novel properties that have not been observed before, novel applications
  • Articles with no new concept, but truly exceptional (top 5% in field) and surprising results are welcome
  • We consider that a new (nano)material can be equated with a new concept if potentially surprising performance/properties are reported
  • Demonstration of use of a (nano)material in an application is not a requirement, but could provide further evidence for the impact of work
  • Reports on known (nano)materials are acceptable if (i) the article reports unexpected combinations with other materials or (ii) the article reports a new unexpected application, new observations or physical properties, etc., that provide insight into molecular design rules/guidelines
  • Authors should ensure that there is sufficient information on (nano)material synthesis and characterisation in the article or ESI for the work to be repeatable. If it is not present then the editors will return the article to the authors
  • Articles that contain some or wholly theoretical/computational studies are welcome. They should contain a discussion that compares the study to experimental data, if this exists in the literature. Authors must provide sufficient information to enable readers to reproduce any computational results. The computational methods used in the study should be included in either the article or the supplementary information. If software was used for calculations and is generally available, it must be properly cited in the notes and references. References to the methods upon which the software is based must also be provided. Computational results obtained using methods, parameters, or input data that are not adequately described in the manuscript or in the referenced literature are not acceptable for publication
  • Articles that do not put into context the importance of the study are not suitable for peer review in the journal. Articles with no comparison to state of the art (if available) are not suitable for peer review in the journal
  • Articles that simply report a combination of already known things with no surprising results are not suitable for peer review in the journal

Readership information

Materials Horizons is a core journal for academic, government and industrial scientists involved in all aspects of materials research.

Subscription information

Online only 2021: ISSN 2051-6355, £2,356 / $4,031

**average time from receipt to first decision in 2019

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Materials Horizons

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