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With the development of society and the continuous advancement of technology, many materials with unique properties have been discovered—and some have become extremely popular. We often see people, especially those in related industries, introducing these materials with titles such as “the most promising material of the 21st century” or “material of the century,” as if afraid everyone will fail to grasp their importance. Below, let us review these materials and see whether they truly deserve such impressive titles.

Graphene

In 2004, Andrew Geim and Konstantin Novoselov and others used mechanical exfoliation to peel single-layer graphene from flake graphite, announcing the arrival of the “king of new materials” and revealing graphene’s novel physical properties, including excellent electrical performance, outstanding mechanical properties, and extremely high thermal conductivity.

Graphene is a two-dimensional crystal formed by tightly packed carbon atoms. It is currently the thinnest and hardest nanomaterial known, with properties such as ultra-thinness, ultra-lightness, ultra-flexibility, ultra-high strength, ultra-strong conductivity, excellent thermal conductivity, and optical transmittance. It combines multiple excellent properties—good optical transmittance, high thermal conductivity, high electron mobility, low resistivity, and high mechanical strength—and has broad and enormous application potential in electronics, optics, magnetism, biomedicine, catalysis, energy storage, sensors, and many other fields. It is a super material that will lead future high-tech competition.

Andrew Geim, one of the scientists who first exfoliated single-layer graphene from flake graphite, said: “Graphene has high electrical and thermal conductivity and a very stable chemical structure. It is an ideal new material for thermal conduction and heat dissipation.”

Carbon Fiber

Carbon fiber is another king in the field of new materials. It is a fibrous material obtained by high-temperature carbonization of organic fibers in an inert gas, removing elements other than carbon. It enjoys the reputation of “black gold” in industry. Its strength is 5 to 8 times that of steel, but its weight is only one-quarter that of steel. It features high strength, light weight, high-temperature resistance, and corrosion resistance. It is the preferred material for weight reduction and reinforcement and is regarded as a strategic material for the national economy and national defense security.

Carbon Nanotubes

Since the discovery of carbon nanotubes in 1991, they have remained a focus of attention, attracting many researchers to study their thermal conductivity. Carbon nanotubes are formed by rolling single-layer or multi-layer graphite sheets and are divided into single-walled, double-walled, and multi-walled types.

Carbon nanotubes have extremely small dimensions that allow them to freely enter cells. Their unique structure gives them super-strong mechanical properties, extremely high carrier mobility, tunable bandgaps, excellent thermal properties, optoelectronic characteristics, and stable chemical properties. Carbon nanotubes combine various excellent properties, giving them broad prospects and great advantages in engineering materials, electronic devices, energy storage, photodetectors, biomedicine, and other fields. In the film The Three-Body Problem, the “nano flying blade” that cuts hard objects invisibly reflects an important property of carbon nanotubes—light weight and high strength.

Diamond

Diamond is currently the hardest substance known to exist in nature, with a Mohs hardness of 10, making it virtually invincible in materials processing. Diamond is also one of the substances with the highest thermal conductivity in nature, with a thermal conductivity as high as 200–2200 W/(m·K).

At the same time, diamond is an ultra-wide-bandgap semiconductor, with a bandgap of 5.5 eV and characteristics such as high electron mobility (4500 cm²/Vs), high electron saturation velocity (2×10⁷ cm/s), high breakdown field strength (10⁷ V/cm), and high thermal conductivity (2000 W/(m·K)). The Johnson’s figure of merit of its power devices is 10 times that of the wide-bandgap semiconductor SiC. As SiC and GaN power electronics enter a mature stage of development, new demands are driving the development of the next generation of power electronics. Diamond is considered the most promising material for preparing next-generation high-power, high-frequency, high-temperature, and low-power-loss electronic devices, and is hailed by the industry as the “ultimate semiconductor.”

Silicon Carbide

Silicon carbide, as the most mature third-generation semiconductor material currently developed, has become extremely popular in recent years. Especially under the “dual carbon” strategy, silicon carbide has become closely tied to energy-saving and carbon-reduction industries such as new energy vehicles, photovoltaics, and energy storage, attracting widespread attention. Therefore, some people call it “a semiconductor material that is taking off.”

Advanced Ceramics

Advanced ceramics, also known as new ceramics, special ceramics, fine ceramics, high-tech ceramics, etc., are known together with metallic materials and polymer materials as the “three major solid materials.” In terms of materials, the advanced ceramics family is huge. Although it does not refer to one specific material, various advanced ceramic materials almost all have excellent mechanical, acoustic, optical, thermal, electrical, biological, and other properties, so they can be found everywhere in high-end technological fields such as aerospace, electronic information, biomedicine, and high-end equipment manufacturing.

In addition, although people tried using ceramics to make spark plugs for automobile engines as early as the beginning of the 20th century—and it has been researched and applied for a hundred years, so it is not exactly “new”—its application potential is still being continuously explored. For example, from early traditional mechanical components to today’s new energy vehicle components and ceramic components for semiconductor equipment, how great the potential of advanced ceramics is remains unknown.

Superconducting Materials

Superconducting materials are materials whose electrical resistance disappears at a specific temperature. In recent years, the three characteristics of superconducting materials—zero resistance, complete diamagnetism, and the tunneling effect—have attracted worldwide attention. Their most widely known use is in power grids. Because there is no resistance, losses in power grids are zero, which could save 10%–20% of the power lost during transmission.

Aerogel

Aerogel is a lightweight solid material with a nanoporous network structure. This material, called “solid smoke,” is 99.8% air. It has characteristics such as high porosity, large specific surface area, ultra-low density, and low thermal conductivity. In summary, it is ultra-light, ultra-strong, and super thermal-insulating, so it has a very wide range of uses. In fields such as catalysis and thermal insulation, it is called a miraculous material.

Liquid Metals

Liquid metals are a general term for a series of metals or metal alloys with melting points below or close to room temperature. At room temperature or a relatively low heating temperature, they exhibit a flowable, shapeless liquid state. Common liquid metals include rubidium (Rb), cesium (Cs), francium (Fr), mercury (Hg), and gallium (Ga). Liquid metals have excellent electrical and thermal conductivity. Among currently known liquid materials, liquid metals have the highest electrical and thermal conductivity. They are also a class of multifunctional materials combining metallic and fluid properties.

Metal-Organic Framework (MOF) Materials

In recent years, metal-organic framework (MOF) materials, as an emerging class of crystalline porous materials, have stood out and attracted widespread attention. Compared with traditional porous materials such as zeolites and activated carbon, MOF materials are crystalline porous materials self-assembled from metal ions or clusters and organic ligands through coordination bonds. This unique construction method makes their structures highly ordered and easy to tailor, thereby exhibiting rich and diverse properties and functions.

On October 8, Beijing time, three scientists—Omar Yaghi, Susumu Kitagawa, and Richard Robson—won the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their contributions to the development of metal-organic framework materials. The three scientists promoted the development of MOFs from perspectives such as structural design, stability improvement, and function expansion, enabling them to show great application potential in gas adsorption and separation, water harvesting, environmental remediation, catalytic reactions, and other fields. Some scientists believe that MOFs have enormous potential and are expected to become “the material of the 21st century.”

Light Alloys

Titanium alloys have superior properties such as high strength, good ductility, corrosion resistance, and non-magneticity. In addition to titanium alloys, light alloys mainly include aluminum alloys and magnesium alloys. Aluminum alloys were used earlier and are now quite widespread, often appearing in fields such as automobiles and ships. Magnesium alloys are the lightest among practical metals and are one of the most important new materials for achieving lightweight automobiles.

Poly(ether ether ketone) (PEEK)

Poly(ether ether ketone), abbreviated as PEEK, is a linear semi-crystalline thermoplastic specialty engineering plastic. Its main chain is composed of carbonyl groups, ether bonds, and benzene rings, and it has a wholly aromatic structure. It has excellent mechanical properties, thermal stability, and chemical stability. It is the most important and most widely used type of polyaryletherketone specialty engineering plastic. Since its introduction, it has been regarded as an important national defense and military material.

Thin-Film Lithium Niobate

Lithium niobate (LiNbO₃) is a compound of niobium, lithium, and oxygen. It is a negative crystal with large spontaneous polarization (0.70 C/m² at room temperature). Lithium niobate is a ferroelectric material with the highest Curie temperature discovered so far (1210°C). Lithium niobate crystals have characteristics such as many photoelectric effects, strong performance tunability, stable physical and chemical properties, and a wide optical transmission range.

If optical communication is the “highway” of AI computing power, then thin-film lithium niobate modulators are the “ultra-fast charging stations” on this highway—they directly determine the speed, efficiency, and stability of data transmission and are a key link connecting “AI computing power demand” with “optical communication capability.” In addition to optical communication and AI computing power, thin-film lithium niobate also shows great potential in fields such as LiDAR, quantum communication, and ultrafast lasers.

Quantum Materials

If semiconductors are “rigid demand,” quantum materials are “the future.” They support the development of quantum computing, quantum communication, and quantum sensing, representing the next-generation logic of information technology. Topological insulators and two-dimensional materials (graphene, transition metal sulfides) are highly expected, especially for potential applications in dissipationless currents and fault-tolerant qubits. However, the reality is harsh: the commercialization of quantum materials is still far away. In the next decade, it will most likely remain a research-dominated stage, with only a few achievements moving toward prototype applications.

4D Printing Materials

4D printing materials are an extension of 3D printing technology. Through specific materials and structural design, components can undergo controllable changes over time after forming. The technology maturity of 4D printing materials is at the L3–L4 stage, and breakthroughs are expected in flexible electronics and aerospace in the next 5–10 years. Currently, 4D printing materials mainly include shape-memory materials, hydrogels, liquid crystal elastomers, and quantum metals. According to driving mechanisms, they can be divided into temperature-driven, water-driven, electrically driven, light-driven, and magnetically driven types.

Borophene

Borophene is a two-dimensional material composed of a single layer of boron atoms, with directional conductivity, high tensile strength, and metallic properties. Borophene’s unique structure gives it broad application potential in electronics and optics. For example, in electronics, borophene is used in field-effect transistors and sensors to improve device performance and reliability; in optics, borophene is used in photodetectors and optical modulators to improve device sensitivity and response speed; in energy, borophene is used in battery electrodes and supercapacitors to improve energy density and cycle life; in quantum computing, borophene is used in qubits and quantum circuits to improve the efficiency and stability of quantum computing.

Special Graphite

Special graphite, as a high-quality graphite, has higher purity, strength, and density. It is one of the irreplaceable important resources for strategic emerging industries and is widely used in photovoltaics, semiconductors, new energy batteries, metallurgy, chemicals, machinery, electronics, and other industries.