I'm a materials engineer these are two interesting developments in my field at the moment Metamaterials: Essentially a material engineered to have a unique pro

I'm a materials engineer these are two interesting developments in my field at the moment Metamaterials: Essentially a material engineered to have a unique property. By precisely controlling a materials structure you can influence how it interacts with electromagnetic waves, sound etc. You can create materials with unique properties such as a negative refractive index over certain wavelengths. It's kind of a novelty but people are building "cloaking devices" using metamaterials i.e. bending electromagnetic waves around a material in certain ways to make it appear invisible to certain frequencies. Graphene (and other 2D materials): These materials are a relatively recent discovery, graphene was confirmed in 2004 and it has a number of interesting properties. In particular its electrical and thermal properties make it promising for a number of applications. I think it could possibly find applications in batteries, transistors and capacitors. At the moment it is a very expensive material to manufacture which makes it (currently) unsuited for commercial applications. There is a heap of active research involving graphene at the moment.