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    Materials science in 2026: a crash course

    Frontier materials science designs and tests new materials whose behaviour comes from quantum effects, atom-thin layers or engineered structure, from superconductors that carry current without loss to perovskite solar cells.[1][2][3] As of October 2026 the ambient-pressure superconductivity record is 151 K, perovskite-silicon tandem cells have reached 35.5% efficiency, and AI-driven discovery is booming but has needed corrections.[4][5][6]

    Editor reviewedUpdated Materials sciencePhysicsScience

    Why materials science matters

    This crash course covers the search for materials with new behaviour. One example is superconductors, which carry electricity with no energy loss once they are cold enough.[1] Another is perovskites, cheap-to-make crystals that turn sunlight into electricity.[3] A superconductor that worked at room temperature would remove expensive cooling and could change power grids and medical imaging.[7]

    This course covers materials whose properties come from correlated electrons, topology, dimensionality or engineered structure rather than bulk chemistry alone. Superconductors already enable MRI and accelerator magnets.[8] Perovskite-silicon tandems have pushed past the 33.7% single-junction limit.[9] Topological phases, recognised by the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physics, are pursued for electronics and quantum computing.[10][11]

    The map of the field

    Think of six neighbourhoods:

    Sub-fields and their 2026 benchmarks:

    • Superconductivity. Cuprates hold the ambient-pressure record (151 K), hydrides the high-pressure record (about 250 K at about 170 GPa), and nickelates are the newest family.[4][20][21]
    • 2D and moiré materials. Van der Waals heterostructures and twist angle give tunable flat bands, superconductivity and zero-field fractional Hall states.[2][13][22]
    • Photovoltaic perovskites. The tandem record is 35.5%, and durability is the bottleneck.[5][23]
    • Metamaterials. Negative index and cloaking concepts, plus metalenses in commercial phones since 2023.[24][25]
    • Characterisation, computation and autonomy. Ptychography reaches resolution limits set by thermal vibration. GNoME added about 380,000 predicted stable crystals to the Materials Project, and autonomous synthesis is being tested.[18][26][19]

    Key ideas in one pass

    Structure beats recipe. Graphene is just carbon, but one atom thick it is extremely strong and conducts heat better than any other known material.[27] Two graphene sheets twisted by about 1.1° become a superconductor.[13]

    Claims need checking. In 2023 a material called lk-99 was claimed to superconduct at room temperature. Within weeks other labs showed it was an insulator, and an impurity had caused the effect.[28][29][30]

    Flat bands and correlations. Moiré superlattices flatten bands near magic angles, which brings interaction-driven phases within reach of a gate voltage.[31][13] Strain and metastability as tuning knobs. Epitaxial strain gives nickelate films ambient-pressure superconductivity, and pressure quenching retains an enhanced cuprate state.[32][33] Evidence standards. A resistance drop is insufficient on its own. LK-99’s came from a Cu2S phase transition, and a lutetium hydride paper was retracted in 2023.[30][34]

    Who the main players are

    Research is spread across universities, national laboratories and companies. The University of Houston set the 2026 ambient-pressure superconductivity record.[4] Chinese teams reported the 2025-2026 nickelate records.[35][21] LONGi in China holds the tandem solar record, and Oxford PV shipped the first commercial tandem panels.[5][36]

    • Superconductivity. The University of Houston (151 K), Stanford/SLAC (first ambient-pressure nickelate films), SUSTech (63 K onset), and Shandong University with partners (96 K).[4][37][21][35]
    • 2D materials. Fudan University built the MoS2 processor.[38]
    • Topological and engineered materials. Microsoft makes its topological bet with Majorana 1, and Metalenz with STMicroelectronics makes metalenses.[39][25]
    • AI-driven discovery. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory runs the Materials Project and the A-Lab, Google DeepMind built GNoME, and Periodic Labs raised a $300 million seed round in 2025.[40][26][41]

    Where the frontier is (October 2026)

    Four questions define the frontier now:

    • Can superconductors work at room temperature? The best normal-pressure material is still about 140 °C too cold.[42]
    • Will perovskite panels last for decades?[43]
    • Can 2D chips compete with silicon? A 2025 prototype ran only at kilohertz speeds.[38]
    • Can AI and robots speed up discovery without cutting corners?[6]

    2026 brought a 151 K ambient-pressure record (pending replication) and a 63 K onset in nickelate films.[4][21] It also brought a 35.5% tandem cell and a fractional Chern insulator with C = 7/3 in twisted graphene.[5][44] Perovskite lifetime testing was itself called into question.[45] The debates are set out in room-temperature superconductivity debate and perovskite durability debate; the materials science tracker logs new milestones.

    Questions readers ask

    Has anyone made a room-temperature superconductor?

    No. The best material at ambient pressure works at 151 K, reported in March 2026, about 140 °C short of room temperature. The 2023 LK-99 claim turned out to be wrong.[4][42][29]

    What is twistronics?

    Controlling a material's electronic behaviour by stacking atom-thin layers with a small twist. Near a magic angle of about 1.1°, twisted bilayer graphene becomes a superconductor.[13][31]

    Are perovskite solar cells better than silicon?

    Stacked on silicon they are more efficient, reaching a certified 35.5% in 2026, but durability over decades is not yet proven and they are not made at scale.[5][23]

    Is AI discovering new materials?

    AI has predicted millions of candidate crystals and DeepMind said 736 had been made by outside groups, but a flagship autonomous-lab paper had to clarify that its "novel" compounds were not necessarily new to science.[26][46][6]

    Sources

    Each numbered claim is a statement we checked against the sources listed with it. Status shows how well established it is.

    1. [1]

      Superconductivity is the property of certain materials to carry direct current with no energy loss when cooled below a critical temperature; superconductors also expel magnetic fields as they enter the superconducting state. confirmedas of 2026-10-10

    2. [2]

      Isolated atomic planes of graphene and other 2D crystals can be reassembled layer by layer into designer "van der Waals heterostructures". confirmedas of 2026-10-10

    3. [3]

      Metal-halide perovskites used in solar cells are a family of materials combining organic ions, metals and halogens, with potential for high performance and low production cost. confirmedas of 2026-10-10

    4. [4]

      In March 2026 a University of Houston team reported a superconducting transition temperature of 151 K at ambient pressure in the mercury cuprate Hg-1223, beating the 133 K ambient-pressure record that had stood since 1993. reportedas of 2026-10-10

    5. [5]

      On 14 July 2026 LONGi announced a crystalline silicon-perovskite tandem cell with 35.5% efficiency, certified by the European Solar Test Installation (ESTI), a new world record. confirmedas of 2026-10-10

    6. [6]

      In January 2026 Nature published an author correction to the A-Lab paper acknowledging concerns about structure identification and clarifying that "novel" meant new to the prediction platform, not necessarily new to science. confirmedas of 2026-01-18

    7. [7]

      Most superconductors must be cooled to extremely low temperatures, which makes them expensive and difficult to use; the University of Houston team says room-temperature superconductivity could dramatically improve power grids, medical technologies and energy systems. confirmedas of 2026-10-10

    8. [8]

      Superconducting magnets are used in MRI machines and to guide particle beams in synchrotrons and accelerators. confirmedas of 2026-10-10

    9. [9]

      Silicon-perovskite tandems have a theoretical efficiency limit of up to 43%, above the roughly 33.7% Shockley-Queisser limit for single-junction cells. confirmedas of 2026-10-10

    10. [10]

      The 2016 Nobel Prize in Physics honoured "theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter". confirmedas of 2026-10-10

    11. [11]

      The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said topological materials could find uses in new generations of electronics and superconductors and in future quantum computers. confirmedas of 2026-10-10

    12. [12]

      The 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics went to Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov "for groundbreaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional material graphene". confirmedas of 2026-10-10

    13. [13]

      In 2018 experimenters reported superconductivity at up to 1.7 K in twisted bilayer graphene near the 1.1° magic angle, tunable with an electric gate. confirmedas of 2026-10-10

    14. [14]

      Small perovskite solar cells went from about 3% efficiency in 2009 to over 26%, according to the US Department of Energy. confirmedas of 2026-10-10

    15. [15]

      A metamaterial gets its properties from its structure rather than its composition, using repeated features smaller than the waves it is designed to influence. confirmedas of 2026-10-10

    16. [16]

      Topological insulators are quantum materials whose surface states are protected by time-reversal symmetry. confirmedas of 2026-10-10

    17. [17]

      The Materials Project is a US Department of Energy effort to pre-compute the properties of inorganic crystals and molecules and make the data publicly available to speed up materials discovery. confirmedas of 2026-10-10

    18. [18]

      In 2021 the Cornell team improved its record by a factor of two using an electron microscope pixel array detector and 3D reconstruction, reaching a point where only the thermal jiggling of atoms blurs the image. confirmedas of 2026-10-10

    19. [19]

      Berkeley Lab's autonomous A-Lab was reported in November 2023 to have synthesised 41 new compounds out of 58 targets during 17 days of unattended operation. confirmedas of 2023-11-29

    20. [20]

      Lanthanum hydride (LaH10) was reported in 2018-2019 to superconduct at about 250 K, but only under about 170 GPa of pressure, beating the earlier 203 K record set by H3S. confirmedas of 2026-10-10

    21. [21]

      In April 2026 a SUSTech-led team reported (La,Pr)3Ni2O7 films with a superconducting onset of 63 K and zero resistance at 37 K at ambient pressure, published in National Science Review. reportedas of 2026-10-10

    22. [22]

      A rhombohedral five-layer graphene/hBN moiré superlattice showed integer and fractional quantum anomalous Hall effects at zero magnetic field at several filling factors, reported in Nature in 2024. confirmedas of 2026-10-10

    23. [23]

      DOE lists the main perovskite challenges as cell stability and durability, efficiency at scale, manufacturability and technology validation, and says perovskite PV is not yet manufactured at scale. confirmedas of 2026-10-10

    24. [24]

      Some metamaterials have a negative refractive index, bending light the opposite way to natural materials; nothing in nature has a negative refractive index. confirmedas of 2026-10-10

    25. [25]

      In early 2023 smartphones with metalens-equipped time-of-flight sensors, developed by Metalenz and STMicroelectronics, became the first consumer devices to use metasurface optics. confirmedas of 2026-10-10

    26. [26]

      Google DeepMind's GNoME model predicted 2.2 million new crystal structures, of which about 380,000 were judged most stable, and contributed them to the Materials Project in November 2023. confirmedas of 2023-11-29

    27. [27]

      Graphene is the thinnest material known and also among the strongest; it conducts electricity as well as copper and conducts heat better than any other known material. confirmedas of 2026-10-10

    28. [28]

      On 22 July 2023 a preprint claimed that LK-99, a copper-doped lead apatite, was a superconductor at 400 K (127 °C) or above at ambient pressure, attributing this to a slight structural distortion from copper substituting for lead. confirmedas of 2026-10-10

    29. [29]

      In August 2023 researchers who grew phase-pure single crystals of the LK-99 compound found them highly insulating and transparent and ruled out superconductivity. confirmedas of 2026-10-10

    30. [30]

      An August 2023 study attributed LK-99's sudden resistivity drop to a structural phase transition of a copper sulfide (Cu2S) impurity near 385 K, and observed no zero resistance. confirmedas of 2026-10-10

    31. [31]

      A 2011 theory paper predicted that at "magic" twist angles of about one degree, the lowest moiré band of twisted bilayer graphene becomes flat and electron velocity at the Dirac point vanishes. confirmedas of 2026-10-10

    32. [32]

      The ambient-pressure nickelate films use epitaxial compressive strain from the substrate to mimic the effect of applied pressure. confirmedas of 2026-10-10

    33. [33]

      The 151 K result used "pressure quenching", in which the material is squeezed to enhance superconductivity, cooled, and then released so the enhanced state is retained at ambient pressure; it was published in PNAS on 9 March 2026. reportedas of 2026-10-10

    34. [34]

      On 7 November 2023 Nature retracted a March 2023 paper claiming room-temperature superconductivity in a nitrogen-doped lutetium hydride, after eight of its 11 authors requested retraction; most other groups had failed to reproduce the result. confirmedas of 2026-10-10

    35. [35]

      A Chinese team reported in Nature in December 2025 superconductivity at up to 96 K in pressurised La2SmNi2O7 single crystals grown with an ambient-pressure flux method. confirmedas of 2026-10-10

    36. [36]

      In September 2024 Oxford PV shipped what it called the first commercial perovskite-on-silicon tandem modules, 24.5% efficient, to a US utility-scale project, from its pilot line in Brandenburg an der Havel, Germany; it said the modules can produce up to 20% more than a standard silicon panel. confirmedas of 2026-10-10

    37. [37]

      In a Nature paper published in December 2024, Stanford and SLAC researchers reported signatures of ambient-pressure superconductivity in strained La3Ni2O7 thin films, with onset temperatures of roughly 26 to 42 K but zero resistance only near 2 K. confirmedas of 2026-10-10

    38. [38]

      In April 2025 a Fudan University team reported in Nature a 32-bit RISC-V microprocessor built from 5,900 molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) transistors, running at kilohertz clock speeds. confirmedas of 2026-10-10

    39. [39]

      In February 2025 Microsoft announced Majorana 1, which it described as the first quantum processor powered by a topological core, built from an indium arsenide-aluminium "topoconductor". confirmedas of 2026-10-10

    40. [40]

      The Materials Project is hosted by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, began in 2011, and had over 400,000 registered users by November 2023. confirmedas of 2023-11-29

    41. [41]

      Periodic Labs emerged on 30 September 2025 with a $300 million seed round to build AI scientists and autonomous labs, with new superconductors as an early goal. confirmedas of 2025-09-30

    42. [42]

      Even after the 151 K record, roughly 140 degrees Celsius still separate the best ambient-pressure superconductors from room temperature (about 300 K). confirmedas of 2026-10-10

    43. [43]

      Perovskite solar cells ideally need to support warranties lasting decades. confirmedas of 2026-10-10

    44. [44]

      A Nature paper published on 15 July 2026 reported quantum anomalous Hall insulators with Chern numbers from 1 to 7 and an exotic fractional Chern insulator with C = 7/3 in a moiré system of Bernal bilayer and rhombohedral tetralayer graphene. confirmedas of 2026-10-10

    45. [45]

      A June 2026 Joule study comparing perovskite cells aged 20 months outdoors with lab-aged cells found that standard high-temperature tests (65-85 °C) caused degradation not seen outdoors, while raising light intensity to 2.3 suns reproduced the outdoor degradation patterns. confirmedas of 2026-10-10

    46. [46]

      DeepMind said external researchers had independently synthesised 736 of GNoME's predicted materials. confirmedas of 2023-11-29

    Revision history (1)
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    Created Oct 10, 2026. Last reviewed by an editor on Oct 10, 2026. Next scheduled review: Jan 10, 2027.

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