In this topical review we discuss recent advances in the use of physical insight into the way biological materials function, to design novel engineered materials 'from scratch', or from the level of fundamental building blocks upwards and by using computational multiscale methods that link chemistry to material function. We present studies that connect advances in multiscale hierarchical materi...

Current methods of materials development, relying mostly on experimental tests, are slow and expensive, often taking over a decade and costing many millions of dollars to develop and certify new materials for critical applications. Finding new approaches for materials development is essential. Moreover, it will be increasingly important for materials development to be integrated into overall pr...

We devise a method for designing materials that will have some desired structural characteristics. We apply it to multiblock copolymers that have two different types of monomers, A and B. We show how to determine what sequence of A’s and B’s should be synthesised in order to give a particular structure and morphology. Using this method in conjunction with the theory of microphase separation dev...