Smart Materials and Devices for Sustainable Environment and Healthcare

Smart materials are critical for developing sensors and actuators for various applications. The increase in demand for continuous sensing in many application areas is pushing technological breakthroughs related to innovative materials and devices. Using non-environmentally friendly smart materials and fabrication approaches contributes to the increase in electronic waste and the pollution of water, air, and soil bodies, which affects the ecosystem. There is an urgent requirement to build sustainable material-based smart sensors with non-toxic substances, less material usage, and less energy-intensive fabrication approaches. Furthermore, devices/sensors with integrated energy harvesters can increase the device's lifetime and reduce battery wastage.

This Research Topic highlights smart materials and devices for sustainable environmental practices and healthcare applications. Topics for this article collection must focus on smart materials modelling, the growth aspect of new energy materials, the additive manufacturing of smart materials, optical sensing, the printing of smart materials, packaging, and performance evaluation with applications in sustainable environments and healthcare. Of late, the research in this area has become interdisciplinary in nature, involving materials scientists and technologists. Therefore, the articles which report the interdisciplinary work, starting from materials synthesis and their application in sensing and other devices are welcome. Research work reporting usage of AI/ML methods for materials discovery which are sustainable for their applications in the area of environment and healthcare are also welcome. This collection of articles would provide an overview of recent advances on development on the sustainable materials for environment and healthcare from pure scientific and as well as technology point of view.

We welcome the submission of Original Research, Review, Mini Review, and Perspective articles on themes including, but not limited to:

• Materials for sensors such as gas sensors

• Sensors: Fabrication and evaluation

• Smart materials

• Battery materials

• Additive manufacturing

• Computational materials: applications in energy

• Materials discovery

Keywords: Sensors, Energy, Nanotechnology, Environment, Materials

Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.