Materials & Coatings

New Programmable Smart Fabric Responds to Temperature, Electricity

A new smart material is activated by both heat and electricity, making it the first ever to respond to two different stimuli. The work paves the way for a wide variety of potential applications, including clothing that warms up while you walk.

Surgical Sutures Inspired by Human Tendons

Next-generation sutures can deliver drugs, prevent infections, and monitor wounds.

Generative Design Puts Hydrogen Fuel Cell Development in High Gear

Toyota Research Institute of North America has developed a simulation-driven generative design method and applied it to the design of flow field microchannel plates, which direct the movement of fluid reactants in microreactors like hydrogen — oxygen fuel cells.

Videos of the Month

See the videos of the month, including one on the VersaBlade wire-to-wire connectors from Molex, one on 3D-printed food technology, and more.

Clean, Sustainable Fuels Made from ‘Thin Air’ and Plastic Waste

Researchers have demonstrated how carbon dioxide can be captured from industrial processes — or even directly from the air — and transformed into clean, sustainable fuels using just the energy from the sun.

How Much Do You Know About Additive Manufacturing?

How much do you know about additive manufacturing? Test yourself with this quiz.

5Ws of ‘Talking’ Concrete

A new technology allows concrete to “talk,” decreases construction time and how often concrete pavement needs repairs while also improving the road’s sustainability and cutting its carbon footprint.

Developing High-Fidelity Martian Regolith Simulants

Researchers at the Exolith Lab, University of Central Florida, are simulating realistic materials to be used for testing a range of technologies for Martian surface interactions and operations.

Smart Material Challenges Newton’s Laws of Motion

The team has developed a prototype metamaterial that uses electrical signals to control both the direction and intensity of energy waves passing through a solid material.

Superlubricity Coating for Nearly Friction-Free Surfaces

Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have invented a coating that could dramatically reduce friction in common load-bearing systems with moving...

Engineers “Grow” Atomically Thin Transistors on Top of Computer Chips

Emerging AI applications, like chatbots that generate natural human language, demand denser, more powerful computer chips. But semiconductor chips are traditionally...

The World’s First Wood Transistor

Transistors are considered by some to be an invention just as important to humanity as the telephone, the light bulb, or the bicycle. Today, they are a crucial component in modern electronic devices, and...

Sensors that Operate at High Temperatures and in Extreme Environments

Extreme environments in several critical industries — aerospace, energy, transportation, and defense — require sensors to measure and monitor numerous factors under...

Making High-Performance Parts Inexpensive and Durable

Idaho National Laboratory has developed world-class capabilities to help industry design efficient SPS manufacturing processes. The lab’s newest addition makes it possible to manufacture new materials at industrially relevant scales.

Using 3D Printing to Strengthen Jet Engines

Skoltech engineers have used a 3D printer to fabricate — and investigate the mechanical characteristics of — samples of bronze-steel alloys previously unknown to materials science.

Multi-Material Digital Light Processing 3D Printing

Researchers from Japan and Singapore have developed a new 3D-printing process for the fabrication of 3D metal–plastic composite structures with complex shapes.

Revolutionizing High-Performance Computer Memory Storage

Magnets generate invisible fields that attract certain materials. Far more important to our everyday lives, magnets also can store data in computers. Exploiting the direction of the magnetic field, microscopic bar magnets each can store one bit of memory as a zero or a one — the language of computers.

Solid-State Thermal Transistor

A research team at Hokkaido University has developed the first solid-state electrochemical thermal transistor. It's more stable than, and just as effective as, current liquid-state thermal transistors.

Cohesive Circuit Protection for Wearable Electronics

The cellulose nanofiber coating counters bending damage and retains electrode function under water.

Extractor for Chemical Analysis of Lipid Biomarkers in Regolith (ExCALiBR)

NASA Ames Research Center has developed a novel technology that provides an autonomous, miniaturized fluidic system for lipid analysis.

Hydrodynamic Effect Helps Motorized Objects Navigate Inclines

The tiny motors mimic how rock climbers navigate inclines.

Battle for the Box

Whether you call them packs, boxes, or trays, the structures that envelop and protect EV battery cells and their supporting electrical and thermal-management hardware are among the industry's top subsystem priorities.

New Polymer Coating Could Boost EV Batteries

Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have developed a conductive polymer coating – called HOS-PFM – that could enable longer lasting, more powerful lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles.

Oxygen-Ion Battery: A Solution for Large Energy Storage Systems

TU Wien has developed an oxygen-ion battery that has some important advantages. Although it does not allow for quite as high energy densities as the Li-ion battery, its storage capacity does not decrease irrevocably over time.

Increased Storage Capacity in Water-Based Batteries

Researchers at Texas A&M University have discovered a 1,000 percent difference in the storage capacity of metal-free, water-based battery electrodes.

Controlling Electric Double Layer Dynamics for All-Solid-State Batteries

Researchers have employed a novel technique to investigate and modulate electric double layer dynamics at the solid/solid electrolyte interface.

New Transfer Process Moves 2D Materials from Growth Substrate to Device Substrate

Purdue University engineers have developed a patent-pending tool to make the manufacture of ultrathin semiconductors more consistent, controllable, and...