Category Archives: Materials
Biological solutions for architectural problems
Materials science is becoming more and more an interdisciplinary field in which almost every traditional subject has its say. Disciplines such as biology, medicine, computational design, architecture or even music, painting or sculpture converge on this open-minded host. As a […]
Sieving at the nanoscale: desalination of seawater through nanoporous graphene
Perhaps the most repeated words in the last few years when talking about graphene – since scientists Geim and Novoselov were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2010 for their groundbreaking experiments – are “the material of the future”. […]
Isotope Anomalies in Superconductors and the Pairing Mechanism
When in April 1911 Kamerlingh Onnes and coworkers measured that the electrical resistivity of mercury suddenly vanished at 4.2K, they could not believe it. They repeated the experiment several times looking for a short circuit that could explain the weird […]
Stuck like a gecko
We all know the story of that Swiss engineer who came up with the hoop-and-loop fastener system (also known under the brand name Velcro) just by paying attention to the burdock burrs stuck in his clothes and his dog’s […]
Bamboo bikes are better for your buttocks
Bicycles are usually regarded as the most sustainable mean of transport for urban environments. Now, when talking about sustainability, there are usually two different discussions: on the one hand, there is energy sustainability, as the fossil fuels won’t last forever […]
Materials for caging the Sun on Earth
The most widely used metaphors for nuclear fusion reactors are the recreation of the Sun on Earth and the controlled explosion of a hydrogen bomb. In both cases, the first thing that comes to mind is the need for high-performance […]
Superparamagnetic nanoparticles and the separation problem
It has been a long time since we have learned that “going nano” leads to new properties arising from matter. One of those size-dependent properties that promises huge benefits due to its potential applications is magnetism. Magnetic materials are classified […]
Carnivorous plants inspire novel liquid repellent surfaces
Natural non-wetting structures, particularly lotus leaves (Fig. 1a), have inspired the development of synthetic liquid-repellent surfaces. These surfaces rely on the formation of a stable air–liquid interface, but present limited repellency to oils with high contact angle hysteresis, failure under […]
Melodies of proteins
The way in which nature manages to create functional diversity in matter is probably the wisest guide for biomaterials engineers, who are always looking for new creative processes to come up with new materials. The conventional way of designing complex […]
Highly sensitive holographic polymers
Nowadays, there is a growing demand for new biosensors capable of detecting specific molecules, contaminants or toxic substances in food, drinking water, air, blood and so forth, with a high degree of sensitivity and specificity. Furthermore, we preferably want these […]