Ultrafast Joule heating technology for functional nanomaterials synthesis: Recent progress, challenges, and perspectives

Ultrafast Joule heating (JH) has emerged as a powerful and scalable platform for rapid thermal processing of advanced nanomaterials. By delivering transient, high-intensity electrical pulses, JH induces ultrafast heating and cooling rates on the order of milliseconds, facilitating nonequilibrium phase transitions, defect modulation, and tailored nanostructural evolution. This technique offers unprecedented control over material synthesis and has been successfully applied to a broad spectrum of functional property-driven materials, including graphene, single-atom catalysts, transition metal carbides, oxides, nitrides, phosphides, and chalcogenides, as well as complex multicomponent frameworks such as high-entropy alloys. This review systematically explores the principles governing JH, highlights recent advances in its application to diverse materials systems, and critically assesses current limitations related to process uniformity, scalability, and mechanistic understanding. Particular attention is given to its intrinsic advantages, including energy efficiency, fast rate, environmental sustainability, and compatibility with sustainable manufacturing. Finally, we propose guidance for expanding the utility of JH for new materials discovery, including integration with in-situ diagnostics, theoretical compatibility and data-driven optimization of synthesis to effectively correlate structure-property relationships.