Duke University

In a new MIT study – in partnership with Purdue, Northwestern, and Duke universities – chemists have discovered that inserting weaker bonds into polystyrene actually makes the material more resistant to damage.

Most of nature – including humans – is symmetrical, and as creations reflect their creators, many robots we create today feature this symmetry. Flaunting this approach, researchers have created a sea-urchin-like robot with no perceivable symmetry.

In what they're calling the "highest density of mechanical bonds ever achieved," researchers created a super-strong flexible material that works very much like chainmail. The breakthrough has already demonstrated its ability to improve body armor.

In order to keep surgeries minimally invasive, it would be great if implants could be injected into the body in liquid form, then solidified once in place. Well, a new ultrasound-based 3D printing process may one day make that very thing possible.

With AI already a big part of everyday life and its involvement only bound to increase, researchers at Duke University have asked children how they think we should treat intelligent technology.

Researchers have produced a new form of plastic with "unprecedented" mechanical properties that are maintained throughout standard recycling processes, and managed to do so using sugar-derived materials as the starting point.

When we're hot and sweaty, we prefer cool mesh-like clothing, but otherwise … mesh just doesn't keep us warm enough. A new dual-purpose fabric was designed with that conundrum in mind, as it features cooling vents that open upon absorbing sweat.

Eyeing solutions to our e-waste problem, engineers have developed the world's first fully recyclable printed electronics, demonstrated in a transistor that can be reduced to its original building blocks with the help of baths and sound waves.

A new creation out of Duke University is yet another interesting example of an environmental sensing robot, taking after a dragonfly to skim across water and check for oil spills and other abnormalities, and doing so without any electronics onboard.

Cartilage plays a crucial role in your knees, but unfortunately once it’s damaged or worn out it’s hard to repair. Now, researchers at Duke University have created a new hydrogel that’s strong enough to withstand forces as well as natural cartilage.

We've seen flexible supercapacitor designs before, but how about one that's stretchable? A new discovery by researchers at Duke University and Michigan State University could lead to an excellent stretchable power source for wearable electronics.

​Electronic devices typically have to be manufactured with existing rectangular or cylindrical batteries in mind – but what might be possible if that weren't the case? Scientists recently created proof-of-concept 3D-printed batteries, paving the way for batteries that could be made in any shape.