The strongest synthetic materials are often those that intentionally mimic nature.
One natural substance scientists have looked to in creating synthetic materials is nacre, also known as mother-of-pearl. An exceptionally tough, stiff material produced by some mollusks and serving as their inner shell...
On bright summer days, the sunlight all around us is breaking bad by breaking bonds. Chemical bonds.
Ultraviolet light shatters the links between atoms in the DNA of our skin cells, potentially causing cancer. UV light also breaks oxygen bonds, eventually creating...
his image of a squirrel was printed in color by controlling the thickness of a colorless ink deposited on a thin film.
Credit: American Chemical Society
From dot-matrix to 3-D, printing technology has come a long way in 40 years. But...
As the world's most popular shoe, flip-flops account for a troubling percentage of plastic waste that ends up in landfills, on seashores and in our oceans. Scientists at the University of California San Diego have spent years working to...
Artificial Intelligence may be just the thing to accelerate spray-on solar cell technology, which could revolutionize how consumers use energy.
A research team at the University of Central Florida used Machine Learning, aka Artificial Intelligence to optimize the materials used...
With a light-spinning device inspired by the Japanese art of paper cutting, University of Michigan researchers have detected microscopic twists in the internal structure of plant and animal tissue without harmful X-rays.
The approach is the first that can fully...
Solar panel installations are on the rise in the U.S., with more than 2 million new installations in early 2019, the most ever recorded in a first quarter, according to a recent report by Solar Energy Industries Association and...
Engineers have created a tiny device that can rapidly detect harmful bacteria in blood, allowing health care professionals to pinpoint the cause of potentially deadly infections and fight them with drugs.
The Rutgers coauthored study, led by researchers at Rochester...
Schematic of a new catalyst made of copper nanoparticles that converts carbon dioxide to multicarbon products (ethylene, ethanol, and propanol). At top left are transmission electron microscope images of the copper nanoparticles. The transformation of the nanoparticles from spheres...
Light can sometimes play tricks on our eyes. If you look at a shiny surface, what you see will largely depend on the surrounding environment and lighting conditions.
Berkeley researchers have now taken ocular distortion a step further, finding a...
Researchers have found that liquid has structure in certain circumstances, and that this structure significantly influences the mysterious and complex formation of metallic glasses.
Moldable like plastic but strong like metal, metallic glasses are a relatively new class of materials...
