Congratulations to the 2023 MRS Spring Meeting & Exhibit “Science as Art” Winners! By popular vote, the following images were chosen as 2nd Place Winners.

As a special feature of the MRS Spring and Fall Meetings, the Materials Research Society offers the popular “Science as Art” competition with entry open to all registered meeting attendees.

Visualization methods provide an important tool in materials science for the analysis and presentation of scientific work. Images can often convey information in a way that tables of data or equations cannot match. Occasionally, scientific images transcend their role as a medium for transmitting information and contain the aesthetic qualities that transform them into objects of beauty and art.

figure a

Karl the Moiré Fog

Valerie Hsieh, Columbia University

Karl the Fog is looking a bit … triangular…. This mid-infrared scanning near-field optical microscope phase image of a twisted double-bilayer graphene Moiré pattern is overlaid with the artist’s own photograph of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.

figure b

The Voice of Spring

Xinwen Sun, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Scanning electron microscopy image of FAPbI3 perovskite film grown on a ZnO substrate. The flowers and leaves are the FAPbI3 perovskite film and the background is the ZnO layer.

figure c

Lonely Life

Cong Wang, King’s College London

This colorized scanning electron microscopy image shows the cell–nanoneedle interface of vascular smooth muscle cells. The cells continue to extend and spread, wrapping the tips of their filopodia around neighboring needles, looking like a lone spider walking on nanoneedles. What a lonely life!