Smart materials or advanced materials that can memorize a temporary shape and morph in response to a stimulus can revolutionize medicine and robotics. In a new study now on Science Advances, Luai R. Khoury and a research ...
Why did the gecko climb the skyscraper? Because it could; its toes stick to about anything. For a few years, engineers have known the secrets of gecko stickiness and emulated it in strips of rubbery materials useful for picking ...
Pu Zhang likes to compare his team's research on liquid metals to the Terminator—specifically 1991's Terminator 2: Judgment Day, in which a killer robot sent from a grim future can transform into anyone and anything in ...
Soft materials, such as rubber or polymers that can endure drastic changes to their shape, are promising for applications where flexibility and shapeshifting abilities are paramount.
Refreshable braille displays translate information from computer screens into raised characters, often along the bottom of a keyboard. But this technology can cost thousands of dollars and is limited, typically displaying ...
Functionally graded materials (FGM) allow diverse applications in multidisciplinary fields from biomedicine to architecture. However, their fabrication can be tedious relative to gradient continuity, interfacial bending and ...
Advances in biomimicry – creating biological responses within non-biological substances – will enable synthetic materials to behave in ways that were typically only found in Nature. Light provides an especially effective ...
Room temperature liquid metal, for example Gallium-based alloy, has high electrical and thermal conductivity, and excellent fluidity. They can be used in various application fields such as flexible electronics, wearable devices, ...
Marine biologists have adopted "soft robotic linguine fingers" as tools to conduct their undersea research. In a study appearing February 24 in the journal Current Biology, scientists found that jellyfish held by ultra-soft ...
Droplet manipulation in materials science can contribute to water collection, medical diagnostics and drug delivery techniques. While structure-based liquid operations are widely used in nature and in bioinspired artificial ...
