Materials Horizons journal

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Materials Horizons is a Transformative Journal and Plan S compliant

Impact factor: 15.717*

Time to first decision (all decisions): 12.0 days**

Time to first decision (peer-reviewed only): 38.0 days***

Editorial Board Chair: Martina Stenzel

Indexed in MEDLINE

Open access publishing options available

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Meet the team

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.

All articles published in Materials Horizons from 2021 onwards will be indexed in MEDLINE©

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 a Materials Horizons Outstanding Paper Award. The prize recognises the contributions of all authors and celebrates these exceptional publications.

Find out more

Meet the team

Find out who is on the editorial and advisory boards for the Materials Horizons journal.

Martina Stenzel

Editorial Board Chair:
University of New South Wales, Australia

Jean-Luc Bredas

Scientific editor:
University of Arizona, USA

Bruno Chaudret

Scientific editor:
University of Toulouse, France

Guoping Chen

Scientific editor:
National Institute for Materials Science, Japan

Yong Cui

Scientific editor:
Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China

Simone Fabiano

Scientific editor:
Linköping University, Sweden

Zhongyi Jiang

Scientific editor:
Tianjin University, China

Kisuk Kang

Scientific editor: Seoul National University, South Korea

Norbert Koch

Scientific editor: Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany

Yi Long

Scientific editor:
Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China

Roisin Owens

Scientific editor:
University of Cambridge, UK

Kelsey B. Hatzell

Editorial board member:
Princeton University, USA

Mark Thompson

Editorial board member:
University of Southern California, USA

Shu Yang

Editorial board member:
University of Pennsylvania, USA

Athina Anastasaki, ETH Zurich, Switzerland

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

David Beljonne, University of Mons, Belgium

Chris Bettinger, Carnegie Mellon University, USA

Kanishka 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

Markus Buehler, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA

Jillian Buriak, University of Alberta, Canada

Moyuan Cao, Nankai University, China

Yong Cao, South China University of Technology, China

Rachel Caruso, University of Melbourne, Australia

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

Rebecca Gieseking, Brandeis University, USA

Jian Ping Gong, Hokkaido University, Japan

Grace Gu, University of California, Berkeley, USA

Ritu Gupta, Indian Institute of Technology Jodhpur, India

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

David Haddleton, University of Warwick, UK

Ramanathan Vaidhyanathan, IISER Pune, India

Aleks Vojvodic, University of Pennsylvania, USA

Elizabeth von Hauff, VU Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Martin Heeney, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Saudi Arabia

Jurriaan Huskens, University of Twente, Netherlands

Hiroshi Imahori, Kyoto University, Japan

Lei Jiang, Beihang University, China

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

Seth Marder, University of Colorado Boulder, USA

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

Thuc-Quyen Nguyen, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA

Markus Niederberger, ETH Zürich, Switzerland

Teri Odom, Northwestern University, USA

Wee-Jun Ong, Xiamen University, Malaysia

Moon Jeong Park, Pohang University of Science and Technology (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

David Scanlon, University College London, UK

Bernd M. Schmidt, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Germany

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

Kazuo Takimaya, RIKEN, Japan

Luisa Torsi, University of Bari, Italy

Aleks Vojvodic, University of Pennsylvania, USA

Aron Walsh, Imperial College London, UK

Mengye Wang, Sun Yat-Sen University, China

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

Xun Wang, Tsinghua University, 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

Nan Zhang, Hunan University, China

Dongyuan Zhao, Fudan University, China

Ye Zhou, Shenzhen 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.

Maria C. Arno, University of Birmingham, UK

Rowena Brugge, University of Cambridge, UK

Mingtao Chen, University of Pennsylvania, USA

Pei Cheng, Sichuan University, China

Huijuan Cui, Tianjin Institute of Industrial Biotechnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China

Xia Guo, Soochow University, China

Yanyan Jiang, Shandong University, China

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

Audrey Laventure, Université de Montréal, Canada

Quan Li, Hubei University, China

Tian-yi Li, University of Science and Technology Beijing, China

Penggao Liu, Central South University, China

Weilai Yu, Stanford University, USA

Robert Pankow, Northwestern University, USA

Yun Qian, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China

Li Na Quan, Virginia Tech, USA

Alexandra Ramadan, Oxford Univeristy, UK

Vincent Blay Roger, University of California, Santa Cruz, USA

Hao Shao, Deakin University, Australia

Meng Zhang, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA

Jiadong Zhou, Beijing Institute of Technology, China

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

Geraldine Hay, Deputy Editor

Jonathon Watson, Editorial Production Manager

Rose Wedgbury, Development Editor

Natalie Cotterell, Development Editor

Ashley Mitchinson, Development Editor

Alex Metherell, Senior Publishing Editor ORCID 0000-0003-0672-7940

Matthew Blow, Publishing Editor

Robin Brabham, Publishing Editor

Chris Dias, Publishing Editor

Ash Hyde, Publishing Editor

Evie Karkera, Publishing Editor

Tamara Kosikova, Publishing Editor

Carole Martin, Publishing Editor

Kirsty McRoberts, Publishing Editor

Cat Schofield, Publishing Editor

Ella White, Publishing Editor

Tom Williams, Publishing Editor

Daniel Smith, Editorial Assistant

Jane Paterson, Publishing Assistant

Sam Keltie, Publisher

Article types

Materials Horizons publishes:

Communications
Reviews
Opinion articles
Focus articles
Comments

See more information for these article types

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 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 here

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, Opinion articles and Focus articles

These are normally invited by the Editorial Board and editorial office, although suggestions from readers for topics and authors of reviews are welcome.

Reviews, Opinion articles and Focus articles must be high-quality, authoritative, state-of-the-art accounts of the selected research field. They should be timely and add to the existing literature, rather than duplicate existing articles, and should be of general interest to the journal's wide readership.

All Reviews, Opinion articles and Focus articles undergo rigorous peer review, in the same way as regular research papers.

Reviews should report a balanced current account of key developments within a particular facet of materials science research, with critical insight into the topic area covered. Simple literature surveys are not suitable for publication. Authors are encouraged to identify areas in which 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.

Materials Horizons Reviews must include a separate ‘wider impact’ statement. This statement will be published with accepted articles and should be a paragraph of no more than 200 words that addresses the following questions:

What key developments in the area of study have been discussed?
What makes the area of study of significant wider interest?
What will the future of this field hold, and how will the insight in your review help shape materials science?

Opinion articles are short, readable accounts of a current area of interest in materials science which provides a platform for authors to give their personal or speculative viewpoint on a given subject and its future development. Opinion articles should bring significant and valuable insights to the field and stimulate discussion and counter-opinion. By their nature they will not be comprehensive reviews of a field of materials science, instead, the focus should be on the perspective of the author.

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

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 a 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;
- the article reports unexpected combinations with other materials or
- 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 the 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

Open access publishing options

Materials Horizons is a hybrid (transformative) journal and gives authors the choice of publishing their research either via the traditional subscription-based model or instead by choosing our gold open access option. Find out more about our Transformative Journals. which are Plan S compliant.

Gold open access

For authors who want to publish their article gold open access, Materials Horizons charges an article processing charge (APC) of £2,500 (+ any applicable tax). Our APC is all-inclusive and makes your article freely available online immediately, permanently, and includes your choice of Creative Commons licence (CC BY or CC BY-NC) at no extra cost. It is not a submission charge, so you only pay if your article is accepted for publication.

Learn more about publishing open access.

Read & Publish

If your institution has a Read & Publish agreement in place with the Royal Society of Chemistry, APCs for gold open access publishing in Materials Horizons may already be covered.

Check if your institution is already part of our Read & Publish community.

Please use your official institutional email address to submit your manuscript; this helps us to identify if you are eligible for Read & Publish or other APC discounts.

Traditional subscription model

Authors can also publish in Materials Horizons via the traditional subscription model without needing to pay an APC. Articles published via this route are available to institutions and individuals who subscribe to the journal. Our standard licence allows you to make the accepted manuscript of your article freely available after a 12-month embargo period. This is known as the green route to open access.

Learn more about green open access.

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 2023: ISSN 2051-6355, £2,697 / $4,615

*2021 Journal Citation Reports (Clarivate Analytics, 2022)

**The median time from submission to first decision including manuscripts rejected without peer review from the previous calendar year

***The median time from submission to first decision for peer-reviewed manuscripts rejected from the previous calendar year