Editorial pubs.acs.org/cm
Preface to the Special Issue on Methods and Protocols in Materials Chemistry
O
ne of the greatest compliments anyone can give your published work is to reproduce it and build upon it.1 The clamor regarding irreproducibility within science is getting louder, with some using the term “crisis.”2,3 Within materials chemistry, the growing interdisciplinarity of research is now leading us to incorporate and build upon research areas that are increasingly distant from those of our core areas of training (i.e., that which you considered to be your area of expertise in graduate school, for instance). Group supervisors now routinely ask their associates, many of whom are young graduate students, to reproduce methods described in an article that lie outside the typical domain of the lab or group. Procedures and methods, as written in a scientific publication, are expected to be reproducible by those “skilled in the art”, but it is the subtleties, the minor unexplained details, that may trip up attempts to reproduce the experiment, thus leading to frustration.4,5 As described earlier, those most greatly affected tend to be younger scientists, and the inability to redo an experiment due to lack of a critical detail robs this person of their most valuable resourcetheir timeand, in the worst case, could lead to their disillusionment and abandonment of a career in science.1 In this special issue of Chemistry of Materials, issue 1 of 2017, the research groups contributing these 33 papers looked to ensure that their key research protocols could be reproduced efficiently and without confusion. These lead research groups in diverse areas of chemistry of materials described their methods and protocols in great detail; accompanied by photographs and videos, they indicate pitfalls and misconceptions, and provide details on benchmarking and comparison, all to help guide new researchers and raise the overall standards of the area. We specifically requested that those working at the bench, or running the simulations, be involved in the writing of these papers since these people have the key insights that only those working in a hands-on manner could reveal. It was our goal that this issue would build upon an earlier virtual issue from 2016 that outlined best practices in the area of materials and device characterization and reporting.6 The special issue can be loosely divided into the following areas: Methods in Solar Energy Conversion: Solar Cells Beard, Luther Group: Quantum Dot Solar Cell Fabrication Protocols Huang Group: Toward Solution-Processed High-Performance Polymer Solar Cells: from Material Design to Device Engineering Lipomi Group: Efficient Characterization of Bulk Heterojunction Films by Mapping Gradients by Reversible Contact with Liquid Metal Top Electrodes Nakano, Takimaya Groups: Sodium Sulfide-Promoted Thiophene-Annulations: Powerful Tools for Elaborating Organic Semiconducting Materials © 2017 American Chemical Society
Snaith Group: Reproducible Planar Heterojunction Solar Cells Based on One-Step Solution-Processed Methylammonium Lead Halide Perovskites Methods in Solar Energy Conversion: Solar Fuels Boettcher Group: Measurement Techniques for the Study of Thin Film Heterogeneous Water Oxidation Electrocatalysts Choi Group: Methods for Electrochemical Synthesis and Photoelectrochemical Characterization for Photoelectrodes Takanabe Group: Insights on Measuring and Reporting Heterogeneous Photocatalysis: Efficiency Definitions and Setup Examples Electrochemical Energy Storage and Conversion Nazar Group: Methods and Protocols for Electrochemical Energy Storage Materials Research Gray Group: Materials’ Methods: NMR in Battery Research Reaney Group: Protocols for the Fabrication, Characterization, and Optimization of n-Type Thermoelectric Ceramic Oxides Methods To Synthesize and Characterize Soft, Hybrid Micro- and Nanostructured Particles Abbott Group: A Practical Guide to the Preparation of Liquid Crystal-Templated Microparticles Caruso Group: Nanoengineering Particles through Template Assembly Methods To Reproducibly Pattern, Quantify and Analyze Order and Structure of Surfaces Buriak Group: Nanopatterning via Solvent Vapor Annealing of Block Copolymer Thin Films Reichmanis Group: Automated Analysis of Orientational Order in Images of Fibrillar Materials Ward Group: Best Practices for Real-Time in Situ Atomic Force and Chemical Force Microscopy of Crystals Computational Methods in MaterialsFundamentals and Design Bredas Group: Computational Methodologies for Developing Structure−Morphology−Performance Relationships in Organic Solar Cells: A Protocol Review Coudert Group: Computational Chemistry Methods for Nanoporous Materials Ong Group: Data-Driven First-Principles Methods for the Study and Design of Alkali Superionic Conductors Methods for Synthesis and Characterization of Porous Materials Bein Group: Talented Mesoporous Silica Nanoparticles Special Issue: Methods and Protocols in Materials Chemistry Published: January 10, 2017 1
DOI: 10.1021/acs.chemmater.6b05235 Chem. Mater. 2017, 29, 1−2
Chemistry of Materials
Editorial
Cooper Group: Synthesis, Purification, and Characterization of Porous Organic Cages Farha Group: Best Practices for the Synthesis, Activation, and Characterization of Metal−Organic Frameworks Tüysüz Group: Protocol for the Nanocasting Method: Preparation of Ordered Mesoporous Metal Oxides Synthesis of Inorganic Nanomaterials Liz-Marzan Group: Design and Fabrication of Plasmonic Nanomaterials Based on Gold Nanorod Supercrystals Parak Group: Selected Standard Protocols for the Synthesis, Phase Transfer, and Characterization of Inorganic Colloidal Nanoparticles Schaak Group: Insights into the Seeded-Growth Synthesis of Colloidal Hybrid Nanoparticles Skrabalak Group: Simple Reactor for Ultrasonic Spray Synthesis of Nanostructured Materials Veinot Group: From Hydrogen Silsesquioxane to Functionalized Silicon Nanocrystals Layered, 2D, and Low-Dimensional Materials Coleman Group: Guidelines for Exfoliation, Characterization and Processing of Layered Materials Produced by Liquid Exfoliation Gao Group: Experimental Guidance to Graphene Macroscopic Wet-Spun Fibers, Continuous Papers, and Ultralightweight Aerogels Kim Group: Layer-by-Layer Assembly for GrapheneBased Multilayer Nanocomposites: The Field Manual Park Group: Guidelines for Tailored Chemical Functionalization of Graphene Vela Group: Synthetic Development of Low Dimensional Materials On behalf of all the authors who contributed to this special issue on methods and protocols in materials chemistry, we thank you for reading, and sincerely hope that these papers are useful and helpful to you in succeeding in your research.
Jillian M. Buriak, Editor-in-Chief
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AUTHOR INFORMATION
ORCID
Jillian M. Buriak: 0000-0002-9567-4328 Notes
Views expressed in this editorial are those of the author and not necessarily the views of the ACS.
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REFERENCES
(1) Buriak, J. M.; Korgel, B. The Experimental Section: The Key to Longevity of Your Research. Chem. Mater. 2014, 26, 1765−1766. (2) Baker, M. Is There a Reproducibility Crisis? Nature 2016, 533, 452−454. (3) Baker, M. Seek Out Stronger Science. Nature 2016, 537, 703− 704. (4) Buriak, J. M. Your Research Results Look Compelling, but Are They Reliable? Chem. Mater. 2014, 26, 2211−2213. (5) Sweedler, J. V. Striving for Reproducible Science. Anal. Chem. 2015, 87, 11603−11604. (6) Buriak, J. M.; Jones, C. W.; Kamat, P. V.; Schanze, K. S.; Schatz, G. C.; Scholes, G. D.; Weiss, P. S. Virtual Issue on Best Practices for Reporting the Properties of Materials and Devices: Record Well, Repeat Often, Report Correctly. Chem. Mater. 2016, 28, 3525−3526 (direct link to the virtual issue: http://pubs.acs.org/page/vi/bestpractices.html). 2
DOI: 10.1021/acs.chemmater.6b05235 Chem. Mater. 2017, 29, 1−2
