The articles of the chapter “Material Sviences” of the LAS Yearbook 2022 unveil the versatile and complex nature of different materials and the novel and unique ways of their application.

“Fusion reactors attract great interest as a potential source of environmentally clean energy. The radiation-resistant insulators (MgO, Al2 O3 , MgAl2 O4 , MgF2 , BeO, etc.) are of great importance for optical windows, diagnostic measurements, and other fusion reactor applications. From a practical point of view, it is very important to understand and predict their properties and functional characteristics in a very wide range of radiation doses under various radiation particle including a whole range of neutrons, protons, swift heavy and light ions as well as gamma radiation. Material properties are defined by radiation defects therein. Such accurate and objective predictions are especially important, since they are made for conditions that are difficult to verify experimentally and implement, due to both the high costs and the inaccessibility of the corresponding reactors.” [Anatoli I. Popov, Eugene Kotomin, Aleksandr Lushchik. Deep Understanding and Prediction of Advanced Materials for Extreme Radiation Conditions]

“Smart materials have properties that can be affected in a controlled manner by external stimuli. For instance, they can respond to light, temperature, pressure, pH, electric and magnetic fields. Due to their pronounced functional properties, smart materials find applications in various technologies including coatings for glasses and windows, security markers, sensors to control environmental conditions, etc. Molybdates and tungstates with a general chemical formula ABO4 (A = Co, Ni, Cu, Zn, etc. and B = Mo, W) belong to a wide class of functional materials with interesting and potentially useful properties. Among them, copper molybdate (CuMoO4 ) and its solid solutions are some of the most fascinating multifunctional materials that exhibit thermochromic (temperature-induced colour change), piezochromic (pressure-induced colour change), halochromic (pH-induced changes in colour), thermosalient, catalytic and antibacterial properties.” [Inga Pudža, Aleksejs Kuzmins. Study of Structure-property Relationship in the Versatile Copper Molybdate]

“Chemistry is a science of molecules and transformations between them. Some reactions proceed in a blink of an eye, whereas sometimes a reaction rate may vary from one week to ten years. To increase the reaction rate, scientists have developed different rate-increasing chemical compounds – catalysts. The main advantage of using catalysts is that they are not consumed during the reaction and remain unchanged after its completion. This property allows one catalyst molecule to deliver one molecule of the desired product from one molecule of the starting material and then take the second molecule, the third one, and so on, continuing the catalytic cycle until all of the starting material molecules are consumed. As a result, a very small amount of catalyst is required for the reaction to proceed fast and productively.” [Liene Grigorjeva, Jekaterina Boļšakova, Lūkass Tomass Lukašēvics, Aleksandrs Čižikovs. Cobalt-catalysed C-H Bond Functionalisation of Amino Acid and Amino Alcohol Derivatives]