Material development has played a crucial role in modern civilization and IT. The importance of high-density and high-performance memory in modern computer systems and IT is ever increasing. This trend will be more obvious as computational architectures shift from being processing-centric to memory- (or data-) centric. The need for emerging and new memory technologies with nonvolatility and low power-consuming performance is rapidly increasing, while improvements in current dynamic random-access memory and NAND flash are being pursued. In both new and current memories, material innovation is of central importance. In this issue of MRS Bulletin, recent improvements in these two critical fields are reviewed with a focus on emerging and novel materials for the disruptive memory concept. Recent progress in scanning probe-based memory devices is also described.

The rapid increase and dependency on mobile electronic devices and burgeoning importance of sensor network systems and Internet of Things (IoT) to sustain an aging society indicates the strong need to develop battery-less and mobile power sources. Materials for energy harvesting from environmental sources, including mechanical vibrations, magnetic field, heat, and light have become highly relevant for implementation of the IoT vision that requires self-powered wireless sensor networks for sustainable deployment. The articles in this issue cover piezoelectric materials, magnetoelectrics, and thermoelectrics and provide a summary of state-of-the-art energy-harvesting approaches, various material design strategies being targeted by the community, and fundamental challenges in finding an optimum solution and future roadmap. Flexibility of energy harvesters is also emphasized, given the huge potential for wearables. Photovoltaics are briefly covered with respect to wearables and textiles.

Dealloying, the selective dissolution of less noble elements from an alloy, enables the preparation of monolithic macroscale bodies, which at the nanostructure level exhibit a network of “ligaments” with a well-defined characteristic size that can be tuned to between a few nanometers and several microns. These porous solids can be made with macroscale dimensions, and, prior to dealloying, can be shaped to form engineered components. Their surface-to-volume ratio is extremely large and their bicontinuous structure provides transport pathways to tune the surface state under control of an electric or chemical potential. These materials present new opportunities for exploring the impact of surfaces on material behaviors and for exploiting surface effects in novel materials design strategies. New experimental approaches unraveling surface effects involving small-scale plasticity and elasticity have been demonstrated. Approaches to new functional materials include electrochemical potential switching of strength, stiffness, fracture resistance, fluid sorption, actuation, and quasi-piezoelectric strain sensing.

The advent of short-pulse electron and x-ray sources has enabled pump-probe approaches for elucidating ultrafast materials dynamics. From such studies, a comprehensive picture of the time-dependent evolution of the initial steps of energy deposition, propagation, relaxation, and conversion in a wide range of materials can be generated. In this article, we provide an overview of the capabilities of femtosecond electron and x-ray scattering for resolving structural dynamics of materials. With such approaches, time resolutions are ultimately limited by the durations of the electron and x-ray pulses, and dynamics can be studied at length scales spanning atomic to mesoscale dimensions. The articles in this issue represent a cross section of the vigorous activity occurring in the study of light-induced ultrafast materials dynamics as it relates to charge carriers, surfaces and interfaces, lattice-coupling mechanisms, coherent structural motions, and next-generation instrument development. The approaches highlighted here are leading to new physical insights, new possibilities for engineering the properties of matter, and ultimately, a new understanding of materials functionality on ultrasmall and ultrashort spatiotemporal scales.

Solid-state batteries are considered the holy grail of next-generation battery technology, meeting the ever-increasing demand for energy storage that is affordable and safe, with high energy density and long cycle life. Materials and interfaces play a critical role for their eventual success and mass commercialization. This issue of MRS Bulletin focuses on the current state of the art of solid-state electrolytes and device architectures and provides a perspective into the various materials and interfacial challenges that limit its performance and stability.

With the development of high-speed computers, networks, and huge storage, researchers can utilize a large volume and wide variety of materials data generated by experimental facilities and computations. The emergence of these big data and advanced analytical techniques has opened unprecedented opportunities for materials research. The discovery of many kinds of materials, such as energy-harvesting materials, structural materials, catalysts, optoelectronic materials, and magnetic materials, have been greatly accelerated through high-throughput screening. The utility of data-centric science for materials research is likely to grow significantly in the future. Unraveling the complexities inherent in big data could lead to novel design rules as well as new materials and functionalities.

The fundamentals and applications of ferroic materials—ferromagnetic, ferroelectric, and ferroelastic—are common subjects discussed in just about every graduate course related to functional materials. Looking beyond today’s traditional uses, such as in permanent magnets, capacitors, and shape-memory alloys, there are worthwhile and interesting questions common to the caloric properties of these ferroic materials. Can ferroic materials be used in a cooling cycle? Why are these materials susceptible to external fields? Which combination of properties is required to make some of them suitable for efficient cooling and heat pumping? We address these questions in this introduction to ferroic cooling, which comprises magnetocaloric, electrocaloric, elastocaloric and barocaloric approaches and combinations thereof (i.e., multicalorics). These are addressed in greater detail in the articles in this issue.

The field of lead-free piezoceramics, which aims to replace lead zirconate titanate (PZT) and related perovskite materials, has been vibrant for almost 15 years. Once the science in this field attained a certain stage of maturity, materials with properties better than PZT have appeared, and the first products are about to reach the marketplace. This article describes the three most promising lead-free piezoceramics currently under discussion to replace PZT. Each has a pronounced property profile geared for specific applications. Guidelines for directions for fundamental future research on as well as technology transfer to industry of lead-free piezoceramics are provided.

When uniform strain is applied to noncentrosymmetric semiconductor crystals, which are piezoelectric, static polarization charges are induced at the surface. If the applied strain is not uniform, these charges can even be created inside the crystal. The applied strain affects electronic transport and also photonic processes, and thus can be used to tune the material properties statically or dynamically. As a result, two new fields have emerged, namely piezotronics and piezo-phototronics. This article reviews the history of the two fields and gives a perspective on their applications. The articles in this issue of MRS Bulletin highlight progress in these two fields, and this article places this progress into perspective.

There is currently a need for an efficient approach to control magnetism at small scales (<1 mm). Work on these magnetoelectric concepts dates back to the 19th century, when researchers believed that a material could convert electrical to magnetic energy, similar to Oersted’s discovery, made by passing a current through a wire. Today, there are significant magnetoelectric research opportunities in both materials discovery and theoretical modeling efforts to advance this important area of magnetic control. Applications for these strain-mediated magnetoelectric materials range from replacing existing inefficient magnetic memory approaches to spearheading new discoveries, such as micrometer-size electromagnetic motors enabling robotic manipulation. This article and the other articles in this issue provide the motivation, background information, research opportunities, and novel applications for studying strain-mediated magnetoelectric materials. The issue is designed to encourage additional research on magnetoelectrics due to its potential impact on society through the efficient control of magnetism at the micro- and nanoscale.

Increasing the density of data storage is crucial to the future of inexpensive digital technology. The large majority of storage in the “Cloud” consists of magnetic hard-disk drives. The continued evolution of this USD$30 billion industry depends on the commercial introduction of heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR). This technology uses heat from a laser beam confined well below the diffraction limit, <50-nm wide, to write to media near 450°C with high magnetic anisotropy that would normally be unwriteable under available magnetic fields. This high anisotropy guarantees thermal stability even for grain sizes around 5-nm diameter, which are necessary for major increases in storage density. In this article and in the articles in this issue, we introduce HAMR requirements and discuss its numerous interdisciplinary materials challenges, including high-temperature/efficient plasmonic materials, low-loss optical materials, highly ordered/thermally anisotropic nanoscale magnetic grains, block copolymers for directed assembly below 10 nm, high-temperature nanometer-thick coatings/lubricants, materials/interfaces to control heat flow at nanometer length scales, and advanced spintronic materials.

Reciprocity is a fundamental physical principle that applies to a variety of technological fields such as mechanics, acoustics, electronics, and photonics. For photonic systems especially, breaking reciprocity using nonreciprocal materials is a fundamental challenge and opportunity, which is both of scientific interest and of technological importance. This not only allows for the development of key photonic components such as optical isolators and circulators on chip, but also provides novel ways to transport and process data in photonic systems. Over the past several decades, developing integrated nonreciprocal photonic materials has been one of the most challenging and actively studied topics within the photonics research community. In this issue of MRS Bulletin, several representative research directions toward realizing integrated nonreciprocal photonic materials and devices are summarized. The six articles in this issue showcase cutting-edge progress in this field and exciting opportunities for the future.

Piezotronic and piezo-phototronic devices exhibit high performance and have potential applications especially in next-generation self-powered, flexible electronics and wearable systems. In these devices, a strain-induced piezoelectric field at a junction, contact, or interface can significantly modulate the carrier generation, recombination, and transport properties. This mechanism has been studied based on the theory of piezotronics and piezo-phototronics. Simulation-driven materials design and device improvements have been greatly propelled by the finite element method, density functional theory, and molecular dynamics for achieving high-performance devices. Dynamical piezoelectric fields can also control new quantum states in quantum materials, such as in topological insulators, which pave a new path for enhancing performance and for investigating the fundamental physics of quantum piezotronics and piezo-phototronics.

Manipulating the thermal conductivity of solids is important for practical applications. Due to the fact that phonons in thermoelectric materials have longer mean free paths (MFPs) than electrons, strengthening phonon scattering to reduce lattice thermal conductivity (κlat) becomes the most straightforward and effective approach to enhance the thermoelectric figure of merit, ZT, which determines the maximum device efficiency. Phonons have a wide range of MFPs in semiconductors, and different dimensions of lattice defects can be targeted to scatter particular phonons with distinct relaxation times. Designing hierarchical nano-microstructures, spanning from point defects to volume defects, would be beneficial to achieve low κlat via a full spectrum of phonon scattering. Herein, we review the formation and underlying mechanisms for lattice defects and highlight the role of all-scale hierarchical nano-microstructure on phonon engineering. Existing challenges in simulations are also discussed.

The search for lead-free alternatives to Pb(Zr,Ti)O3 (PZT) piezoelectric ceramics has become a major topic in functional materials research due to legislation in many countries that restricts the use of lead alloys and compounds in commercial products. This article examines both the necessity for regulation and the impacts those regulations have created in the context of piezoelectric materials. It reviews the toxicity of lead, describes current legislation to control the spread of lead in the environment, and attempts to define the risks associated with the manufacture, use, and disposal of lead-based piezoelectric materials. The consequences of current legislation, both intended and unintended, are examined.

Magnetoelectric (ME) materials exhibit cross-coupling effects between magnetization and polarization, by which one can manipulate the magnetization (or polarization) with an electric (or magnetic) field. To better understand the responses of ME materials and the coupling mechanisms involved, various simulation methods at different scales, ranging from electronic and atomic scale to the mesoscale, have been developed in the past decades. In this article, we summarize recent progress in modeling and predicting responses of ME materials, and present our perspectives on key issues that require further study, including multiscale simulation methods and approaches dealing with dynamic processes. The simulation methods have the potential to illuminate the dynamic processes in ME materials and device response to external fields and eventually be used for guidance for the data-driven computational design of new ME materials and devices.

Improvements in computational resources over the last decade are enabling a new era of computational prediction and design of novel materials. The resulting resources are databases such as the Materials Project (www.materialsproject.org), which is harnessing the power of supercomputing together with state-of-the-art quantum mechanical theory to compute the properties of all known inorganic materials, to design novel materials, and to make the data available for free to the community, together with online analysis and design algorithms. The current release contains data derived from quantum mechanical calculations for more than 70,000 materials and millions of associated materials properties. The software infrastructure carries out thousands of calculations per week, enabling screening and predictions for both novel solids as well as molecular species with targeted properties. As the rapid growth of accessible computed materials properties continues, the next frontier is harnessing that information for automated learning and accelerated discovery. In this article, we highlight some of the emerging and exciting efforts, and successes, as well as current challenges using descriptor-based and machine-learning methods for data-accelerated materials design.

The structural characterization of dealloyed nanoporous metals is a fundamental and active area of research, needed for the optimization of these structures for catalytic, electrosensing, biomedical, and mechanical functions. The prediction of properties requires identifying and quantifying salient structural characteristics, while insights into the relevant mechanisms of dealloying and coarsening can be achieved through in situ observations of structural evolution. Three-dimensional structural characterization techniques have advanced such that nanoscale quantification of topology, morphology, and crystallographic parameters are achievable, yet the field is new enough that the assessment and comparison of such parameters of different nanoporous metals are just beginning. Here, we explore the state of the art in structural characterization, focusing on nanoporous gold to exemplify the challenges, the achievements, and the potential associated with establishing an appropriate set of structural parameters for this unique class of materials.

Heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) is being developed as the next-generation magnetic recording technology. High anisotropy granular media such as FePt-C have been demonstrated as HAMR media for ∼2 Tbpsi (terabits per in2) recording density. In order for this technology to reach its full potential of 4–5 Tbpsi, more progress and innovations are needed for the key requirements for HAMR media, including microstructure, design, magnetic distribution, and thermal design. Beyond granular media, heated-dot magnetic recording (HDMR) is planned to extend areal density toward 10 Tbpsi. HDMR combines similar advanced recording layer materials with advanced patterning techniques to fabricate <10-nm rectangular dot media.

Optical isolators, devices that only allow unidirectional light propagation, constitute an essential building block for photonic integrated circuits. For near-infrared communications wavelengths, most current isolator designs rely on the incorporation of magneto-optical (MO) materials to break time-reversal symmetry, such as iron garnets or magnetically substituted semiconductors. MO garnets form the backbone of traditional bulk isolators, but suffer from large lattice and thermal mismatch with common semiconductor substrates, which has significantly impeded their integration into on-chip optical isolators. Materials innovations over the past few years have overcome these barriers and enabled monolithic deposition of MO oxide thin films on silicon using techniques such as pulsed laser deposition and magnetron sputtering. On-chip optical isolator devices with polarization diversity in the telecommunication band have been demonstrated based on these materials. This article reviews the latest technological breakthroughs in MO oxide material growth as well as device design and integration strategies toward practical implementation of on-chip optical isolation.