Defect engineering

Defects can fundamentally alter the physiochemical, optical, thermal, mechanical, and electronic properties and their coupling in functional materials. Numerous possibilities exist for defect engineering in functional materials to tune their properties - at not only the ground state but also at excited states under external fields and stimuli - especially in a controllable manner. Harnessing functional defects in materials presents a timely opportunity for materials scientists and engineers to address some of the most critical scientific and technological challenges in the energy, food, water, security nexus. Advanced theoretical, simulation and experimental tools are urgently required to characterize, visualize, understand, predict, and control formation and evolution of defects and their interactions.

This themed collection in Materials Advances aims to bring the most recent developments, applications, and breakthroughs in harnessing defects in a wide range of functional materials via bridging expertise on theoretical modeling/simulation, materials synthesis and processing, and advanced characterization.

Manuscripts should be submitted via our online submission service. Please add a “note to the editor” in the submission form when you submit your manuscript to say that this is a submission for this themed collection.  

The Editorial Office and Guest Editors reserve the right to check the suitability of submissions in relation to the scope of the collection and inclusion of accepted articles in the collection is not guaranteed. All manuscripts will be subject to the journal's usual peer review process. Accepted manuscripts will be added to the online collection as soon as they are online, and they will be published in a regular issue of Materials Advances.  

If you have any questions about this open call, please contact our editorial office.