Advanced Electronic Materials – Reflecting on Our First Year, and Looking into 2016

Abstract

In February of 2015 we successfully launched Advanced Electronic Materials as the most recent member of the Advanced Materials family. We welcomed you to our inaugural issue with the ambition to publish breakthrough discoveries and high-level fundamental research in all aspects of electronic and magnetic materials. In this opening editorial we wish to take stock of the first year of the life of the journal and to outline our plans for the coming year. The crucial first year for any high-level publication should focus on excellence and there is no doubt that in that respect Advanced Electronic Materials is a success. Some of the highlights of 2015 include: High-Performance Solution-Processed Amorphous-Oxide-Semiconductor TFTs with Organic Polymeric Gate Dielectrics, Vincenzo Pecunia, Kulbinder Banger and Henning Sirringhaus (article number 1400024): a Communication which presents the latest on organic polymer insulators when used as gate dielectrics in MOS transistors. Electroluminescence from Organometallic Lead Halide Perovskite-Conjugated Polymer Diodes, Richard H Friend et al. (article number 1500008): a highly viewed Communication on photovoltaic devices based on 3D inorganic-organic perovskite materials that also exhibited efficient electroluminescence comparable to that of LEDs. Other notable mentions are the Communication by Emil J W List-Kratochvil on all-inkjet-printed organic resistive switches (article number 1400003), the Review by Jingkun Xu et al. on the various approaches to improve the conductivity of PEDOT:PSS (article number 1500017), and the prospective Review by Cheol-Seong Hwang on current and new computational paradigms as applied to semiconductor memory devices (article number 1400056). But beyond bringing you the best work from individual research groups, it is also part of our wider mission to build communities and facilitate conversations. One way we do this is to offer groups of authors the opportunity to collect a number of papers centred on a single theme in the form of a Special Issue. This is the case of this very issue where a number of its articles are part of a focus on Topological Structures in Ferroic Materials, with a selection of papers facilitated by our Guest Editors Jan Seidel and Nagarajan Valanoor. You may read more on the articles of this special issue in their excellent preface to the special issue (article number 1500447). The focus in the past year has been to select the best content in the field and to come out strongly as a clear and strong voice in the field of electronic materials. We have been supported in this effort by our Executive and International Advisory Board members who have contributed some of their own research to the journal. We wish to take this opportunity to thank those who have chosen to join us in this endeavour as well as those who have showed their support as authors, reviewers and readers. The coming year will see us further leveraging the experience of our board and the good will of the community to provide you more excellent Reviews from our ever-growing community of authors and reviewers. We will continue to seek out cutting-edge topics and highlight them in focus issues. And we will, of course, continue to offer high-level Full Papers and Communications from research on materials with unique electronic and magnetic properties as well as key topics in materials science, device engineering, and physics. Stay tuned! Hakim Meskine, Editor Advanced Electronic Materials Stefan Hildebrandt, Editor-in-Chief Advanced Electronic Materials PS. For free access to the journal in 2016, simply ask your librarian to register for access.