Materials

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.

Why do ants and other small creatures have such sharp bites? According to scientists from the University of Oregon and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), the answer lies in their ability to uniformly add zinc atoms to their teeth.

Autonomous vehicles operate in a complex environment, and recognizing traffic signs is an important part of that. A new microstructured material reflects light in rainbow rings, which can make traffic signs easier for computer vision systems to read.

In a busy workshop, it's possible to lose track of what substance a given sheet of material is composed of – making it risky to cut with a laser. SensiCut is designed to help, by identifying 30 different materials based on their surface qualities.

Concrete may not seem welcoming, but bacteria do live inside it. A new study has examined this concrete microbiome to find out how they get there, how they change over time, and how we might use them in future to monitor or even repair defects.

A new, surprisingly simple method merges two metals into one nanocrystal structure. This could allow almost any two metals to be combined, creating brand new types of intermetallic nanocrystals that could be useful for a whole range of applications.

Nuclear and fossil fuel power plants consume huge amounts of water for cooling, which then goes to waste as water vapor. MIT engineers have now developed a system that can capture and recycle that lost water.

A new thermoelectric material may be the most efficient one yet. The new and improved polycrystalline form of purified tin selenide has all the right properties to make it a practical material for converting waste heat into electricity.

Researchers have discovered a material that can switch between an insulator and a conductor freely, even at room temperature. The material, a compound of manganese and sulfide (MnS2), starts off as an insulator but becomes conductive under pressure.

Spider silk is one of nature’s most impressive materials, exhibiting impressive strength and toughness. Now, researchers at Washington University in St. Louis claim to have created an artificial version that can outperform some natural spider silks.

A group of scientists has come up with a novel coating for everyday cotton that gives it a broader set of useful traits, enabling it to repel oil and water with ease, and most impressively, float even when bearing loads many times its own weight.

Researchers in China have demonstrated a new form of plastic that degrades in just a week when exposed to sunlight and oxygen, which they believe could make for electronics that are easier to dispose of at the end of their lives.