Materials

Perhaps you've been hearing a lot about origami robots, flexible bots that can be used in a ton of applications like drug delivery within the human body and search-and-rescue missions. Because these robots need to be flexible, they tend…

As our need for battery power increases and the amount of space available to generate and contain that power decreases, ultrathin batteries are in high demand, particularly for use in medical monitoring devices. Recently a scientific…

Shaped to make air move faster over the top of the wing and decrease air pressure to create the force to generate lift, the leading edges of aircraft wings have to meet a very demanding set of characteristics. New research shows that a…

Bulletproof vests and other forms of body armor are currently made from a product commercially known as Zylon. It’s a material called polybenzoxazole or PBO and is traditionally made by using polyphosphoric acid (PPA) as both a catalyst for…

Globally, air conditioning accounts for between 15 and 70% of total primary energy consumption and generates significant amounts of greenhouse gases. Technologies that use radiative cooling to control the temperature of buildings, such…

Surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) are electromagnetic waves that travel along metal–dielectric or metal–air interfaces. Researchers at Penn State now think these quasi-particles may be the solution to problems caused by shrinking electronic…

More and more, we’re talking about the post-silicon era as silicon-based microelectronic components reach the theoretical limit of available sizes. Recently, physicists from Russia and Europe have demonstrated the real possibility of using…

Smartwatches are cool, for sure. They give the wearer access to almost the same functionality as a smartphone and fitness tracker, combined, all in a device that fits comfortably on your wrist. Or not so comfortably. One drawback to…

Silica aerogel could warm the Martian surface similar to the way greenhouse gasses keep Earth warm

While the University of Manchester scientists who discovered graphene, the thinnest yet strongest two-dimensional material yet known, were awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics, producing it at large scale to use it in new and more…