Materials

Scientists have come up with a new hardened form of wood that can be fashioned into sturdy nails or knives that are almost three times sharper than a standard dinner table knife ... and they're dishwasher safe, too.

Scientists at Rice University have cooked up a new alloy with a unique and diverse set of attributes that could prove highly effective at protecting steel from corrosion, and can even heal itself when damaged.

Access to clean water is a major unmet need in many parts of the world. Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin have developed a new hydrogel tablet that could help, with a prototype able to disinfect a liter of river water in one hour.

Concrete is the most widely used building material in the world, but it comes at a huge environmental cost. Engineers in Japan have developed a new technique to make concrete by recycling waste concrete and combining it with captured carbon dioxide.

E-waste is a major environmental hazard, full of valuable metals. Engineers at Rice University have now shown that precious metals and rare earth minerals can be recovered by flash-heating ground-up electronics with a zap of electricity.

Managing heat is a major challenge in electronics and engineering, and it’s controlled using materials that either conduct or insulate heat. A new material blurs that line by blocking heat in one direction but conducting it in another.

As useful a material as glass is, being prone to cracking or shattering is a major downside. McGill University scientists have developed a new type of glass inspired by the mollusk shell that’s stronger and tougher, while retaining good transparency.

Though you can make objects smarter by adding sensors to them, a team of MIT engineers has managed to 3D print metamaterial structures with electrodes directly integrated into them to allow objects to sense user interaction.

By casting one eye to a past where ancient buildings were held together with animal blood, and one eye to a future where humans use Martian soil for on-site construction, scientists have cooked up a new recipe for cost effective "cosmic concrete."

Imagine if there was protective clothing that usually stayed soft and comfortable, but that could instantly harden when needed. Such technology may someday be possible, thanks to a new understanding of a tiny animal's shell.

A first-of-a-kind trial now underway seeks to apply the wonder material graphene's impressive attributes to one of the UK's major thoroughfares, by deploying it in a road resurfacing project along a stretch of the A1.

Ceramic materials are strong and can stand up to heat very well, but they’re notoriously fragile. Now, researchers at Texas A&M have uncovered a previously unknown self-healing mechanism in a certain type of ceramic, which works at room temperature.