(Nanowerk Spotlight) The materials we interact with every day—whether they are steel, glass, or rubber—have properties like strength, flexibility, or brittleness that stem from their chemical ...

Scientists are harnessing cells to make new types of materials that can grow, repair themselves and even respond to their environment. These solid “engineered living materials” are made by embedding ...

Natural materials like bone, bird feathers and wood have an intelligent approach to physical stress distribution, despite their irregular architectures. However, the relationship between stress ...

Atomically thin semiconductors such as tungsten disulfide (WS2) are promising materials for future photonic technologies.

Scientists are harnessing cells to make new types of materials that can grow, repair themselves and even respond to their environment. These solid “engineered living materials” are made by embedding ...

MIT's Self-Assembly Lab has developed materials that can be programmed to transform their shape autonomously -- from flexible carbon fibre and hybrid plastics to wood grains and textiles. Skylar ...

Definition: Programmable Matter refers to materials that can change their physical properties (shape, density, modality, conductivity) in real-time, based on user input or autonomous sensing. This ...

Mechanical engineers at Duke University have demonstrated a proof-of-concept method for programming mechanical properties into solid Lego-like building blocks. By controlling the solidity of hundreds ...

HAVE IDEAS ABOUT BOTH, FROM SPECIAL FILMS THAT ADAPT TO CHANGES IN HEAT. THE REALLY GREAT THING ABOUT THIS IS IT COULD BECOME, YOU KNOW, A SHADING SYSTEM. SO IT’S REALLY EASY TO RETROFIT ONTO EXISTING ...

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaig researchers show their 3D-printed resin prototype of the new bio-inspired material, here attached to a synthetic model of a fractured human femur. CHAMPAIGN, Ill ...

Between day one (left) and day 14 (right), plant cells 3D printed in hydrogel grow and begin flourishing into yellow clusters. Credit: Adapted from ACS Central Science 2024, DOI: ...