Tough, strong and heat-endure

11-Nov-2020

Modern life relies closely on plastics, even though the petroleum-based production creates serious environmental challenges. The industry opts out to use sustainable materials due to their limited mechanical properties or complex manufacturing processes. An advanced strategy to design and produce ...

more

17-Jan-2020

Cement and concrete haven't changed much as technology in over a hundred years, but researchers in Colorado are revolutionizing building materials by literally bringing them to life. The method developed, presented January 15 in the journal Matter, combines sand and bacteria to build a living ...

more

06-Dec-2019

A new material that stiffens 1,800-fold when exposed to heat could protect motorcyclists and racecar drivers during accidents. Hokkaido University researchers have developed a hydrogel that does the opposite of what polymer-based materials, like plastic bottles, normally do: their material ...

more

13-Sep-2019

Some creatures, such as chameleons and neon tetra fish, can alter their colors to camouflage themselves, attract a mate or intimidate predators. Scientists have tried to replicate these abilities to make artificial "smart skins," but so far the materials haven't been robust. Now, researchers ...

more

Rapid controlled transport of water droplets by sunlight-powered pump

19-Dec-2018

Driven by natural or artificial sunlight, a novel “microtube pump” transports water droplets over long distances. As reported by Chinese researchers in the Journal Angewandte Chemie, the pump consists of a tube whose properties can be changed asymmetrically through irradiation. This results in ...

more

11-Oct-2018

Recipes for three-dimensional (3D) printing, or additive manufacturing, of parts have required as much guesswork as science. Until now. Resins and other materials that react under light to form polymers, or long chains of molecules, are attractive for 3D printing of parts ranging from ...

more

18-Sep-2018

Living organisms expand and contract soft tissues to achieve complex, 3-D movements and functions, but replicating those movements with man-made materials has proven challenging. A University of Texas at Arlington researcher recently published groundbreaking research in Nature Communications that ...

more

23-Jul-2018

The thermal runaway issue has been a long-standing obstacle impeding the development of high energy density and high power delivery batteries. These batteries would generate a lot of heat in ultrafast charge/discharge process or hazardous conditions, such as overcharging and short-circuit. To ...

more

Innovative biohybrid systems with information processing functionality

20-Jul-2018

Scientists from the University of Freiburg have developed materials systems that are composed of biological components and polymer materials and are capable of perceiving and processing information. These biohybrid systems were engineered to perform certain functions, such as the counting signal ...

more

01-Feb-2018

Rutgers engineers have invented a "4D printing" method for a smart gel that could lead to the development of "living" structures in human organs and tissues, soft robots and targeted drug delivery. The 4D printing approach here involves printing a 3D object with a hydrogel (water-containing gel) ...

more