This collection features articles on Surface Treatment published in Smart Materials in Manufacturing. All articles are free to read and download.

This collection features articles on Alloy published in Smart Materials in Manufacturing. All articles are free to read and download.

A research team has found that soil type strongly determines how agricultural microbial communities process added carbon and nitrogen and whether denitrification releases nitrous oxide (N₂O) or converts it to harmless dinitrogen (N₂).

A research team has found that overlapping yak urine and dung patches in an alpine meadow do not simply add together to increase soil nitrous oxide emissions. 

A research team has discovered that bacterial rather than fungal denitrification serves as the primary driver for increased nitrous oxide (N₂O) emissions in paddy soils under warming conditions. 

The Hong Kong–Zhuhai–Macau Link’s concrete structures are engineered to achieve a design service life of 120 years, necessitating a robust, science-based framework for long-term durability management. This paper systematically reviews data-driven and physics-informed modeling approaches; establishes a smart, self-cleaning, and self-predictive durability database; integrates validated, application-oriented durability models; develops a life-cycle cost-optimized planning methodology; and proposes performance-aligned maintenance strategies—thereby identifying critical technical and managerial challenges in sustaining structural durability over the whole service life.

Chitosan, a natural derivative of chitin, can alert plants to danger and is already used in crop-protection products, yet scientists have not fully understood how grapevines detect it.

A newly identified small molecule could help grafted plants establish a stronger first connection, potentially expanding grafting in crops that are difficult to join. 

Medicinal plants have long supplied compounds used in health care, cosmetics and natural pigments, but many of their most valuable chemicals remain difficult to produce sustainably.