Plant-to-human communication

Movable microplatform floating on droplets

A new approach to microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), developed by a team of researchers at MIT, could offer a new way of making movable parts with no solid connections between the pieces, potentially eliminating a major source of wear and failure. Video: Melanie Gonick/MIT more

Particles attract across long distances

MIT researchers have found a new kind of long-range interaction between particles, in a liquid medium, that is based entirely on their motions. Video: Melanie Gonick/MIT more

Experimenting With Thermopower Waves

“Experimenting with Thermopower Waves,” with MPC-CMSE 2015 Summer Scholar Stephen Gibbs and MIT Chemical Engineering graduate student Tianxiang (Albert) Liu. Recorded in the lab of Michael Strano, Carbon P. Dubbs Professor in Chemical Engineering, MIT. Recording and Editing, Denis Paiste, S ... more

International team improves efficiency of liquid metal batteries

Climate protection means increasingly turning to renewable energies. But in order to store the energy produced by solar, wind and other regenerative processes, sophisticated systems are required. Today’s storage options are still too expensive and hardly or even impossible to recycle. Scien ... more

Breakthrough in sizing nanoparticles using fluid-filled tubes

The functionality of nanoparticles in a host of applications, including drug delivery and nano-optics, is often dictated by their mass and size. Measuring these properties simultaneously for the same nanoparticle has also been challenging. Now scientists from the University of Melbourne and ... more

Physicists create tunable superconductivity in twisted graphene 'nanosandwich'

When two sheets of graphene are stacked atop each other at just the right angle, the layered structure morphs into an unconventional superconductor, allowing electric currents to pass through without resistance or wasted energy. This "magic-angle" transformation in bilayer graphene was obse ... more