Materials Science
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HKU Researchers Uncover Piezoelectric Effect in Diamond Membranes, Upending a Century of Materials Science Consensus
University of Hong Kong team shows ultrathin polycrystalline diamond membranes generate voltage when bent, overturning the century-old classification of diamond as non-piezoelectric.
Researchers Fuse Silk Into Transparent, Lightweight Material Stronger Than Metal Alloys With 6G Potential
Teams at Imperial College London, University of Michigan, and Tufts University transformed natural silk threads into plastic-like materials that outperform metal alloys, resist punctures like carbon-fiber composites, and polarize terahertz light for potential 6G telecommunications use.
Rice and Weizmann Physicists Identify the Electronic Agents Behind Strange Metallicity in a Flat-Band Kagome Metal
Using atomic-resolution spectroscopy on Ni3In, researchers from Rice and Weizmann experimentally confirmed compact molecular orbitals as the drivers of flat-band quantum criticality.
Synthetic Biology Yields Protein Fibers That Dissolve and Reform, Offering a Recyclable Alternative to Synthetic Textiles
WashU engineers used synthetic biology to create SAM — a protein fiber combining mussel, spider silk, and amyloid sequences — that dissolves in formic acid within seconds and can be remade into equally strong fibers across multiple recycling cycles.
MIT Team Maps the 3D Atomic Structure of Relaxor Ferroelectrics for the First Time, Resolving a Decades-Old Mystery in Ultrasound and Sonar Materials
Using multi-slice electron ptychography on a PMN-PT alloy, MIT-led researchers directly imaged a hierarchy of polar and chemical structures, finding that polarization regions are much smaller than leading simulations predicted.
Two Papers in Nature Materials Break the Strength-Ductility Ceiling for Martensitic Steel
Researchers from TU Delft, HKU, and SUSTech published separate Nature Materials studies showing that interface engineering and controlled lattice distortion can simultaneously boost strength past 3 GPa and preserve meaningful ductility in martensitic alloys.
Novoselov Team Turns Arsenic Trisulfide Into a Photosensitive Clay, Sculpting 50,000-DPI Optics With a Single Continuous-Wave Laser
A PNAS paper from XPANCEO and Nobel laureate Konstantin Novoselov shows the van der Waals crystal As2S3 undergoes a refractive-index shift of 0.3 and expands up to 7% under ordinary light, enough to write 50,000-dpi patterns without lithography.
New MXene Synthesis Method Delivers 160-Fold Conductivity Jump, Opening Path to Next-Generation Electronics
German researchers used molten salts and iodine vapor to build atomically ordered MXenes, boosting conductivity 160x over conventional methods.
Monash's Disordered Mosaic Metasurface Packs Multiple Optical Functions Into One Flat Device
A Nature Communications study shows engineered disorder can let one metasurface handle broadband focusing and single-shot polarimetry.
Penn State Team Reveals Iron Telluride Is a Superconductor After Decades of Misidentification as an Ordinary Magnetic Metal
Two back-to-back Nature papers show that removing excess iron atoms from iron telluride unlocks superconductivity at 13.5 Kelvin, overturning a longstanding assumption and suggesting similar hidden quantum states may exist in other correlated materials.
Tel Aviv University Demonstrates Nanoscale Graphene Switch That Flips Stacking Order With Less Than One Femtojoule of Energy
Researchers achieved reversible switching between graphene polytypes at 30-nanometer scale using sub-nanonewton forces and sub-femtojoule energy, opening a path to slidetronic memory and neuromorphic computing.
Hiroshima University Researchers Crack the Code for 3D Printing Tungsten Carbide, One of Industry's Hardest Materials
A Hiroshima University team used a hot-wire laser technique to 3D print defect-free tungsten carbide-cobalt exceeding 1,400 HV hardness, opening a path to cheaper, less wasteful production of cutting tools and industrial components.