Where Do New Materials Come From? Neither the Stork nor the Birds and the Bees! In Search of the Next “First Material”

摘要

Materials discovery and optimization has driven the rapid technological advancements that have been observed in our lifetimes. For this advancement to continue, solid-state chemists must continue to develop new materials. Where do these new materials come from? In this review, we discuss the approaches used by the zur Loye group to discover the next “First Material”, a new material exhibiting a desired or not previously observed property that can be optimized for use in the technologies of tomorrow. Specifically, we discuss several crystal growth techniques that we have used with great success to synthesize new materials: the flux growth method, the hydroflux method, and the mild-hydrothermal method.