Material Science

Gadolyn, a Kingston, Tennessee-based company has appointed rare-earths analyst Jack Lifton as chair of its advisory board and rare-earth magnet expert Gareth Hatch as an advisory board member. The new appointments will help the company, a 2025 R&D 100 Award winner, in its quest to commercialize a U.S.-based process for making magnet and strategic alloys,…

A UK research team has unveiled a soft, lead-free piezoelectric material that converts motion into electricity. Its efficiency is comparable to commercial lead-based ceramics, while being easier to process and far less toxic. The hybrid material, based on bismuth iodide, is described in a new paper in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Researchers…

Scientists at Sandia National Laboratory won an R&D 100 award for their project “Bleeding Materials and Enclosures,” a tamper-indicating container made of colorful water beads sealed with epoxy, creating an enclosure. Upon contact with oxygen, the beads turn black in an irreversible chemical reaction, indicating that someone tampered with the enclosure. The project was designed…

Scientists from The Hong Kong Research Institute of Textiles and Apparel (HKRITA) have developed a method to turn fruit and beverage waste into a leather-like material and a biocellulose (BC) fiber that can be used for textiles. Saving the environment The team was inspired by the environmental effects of traditional cellulose fibers. Cotton, for example,…

Making industrial and military magnets from rare earth metals is a dirty job, often relegated to countries with limited environmental oversight. Now, Gadolyn Inc., headquartered in Austin, Texas, has developed a way to do it cleanly, paving the way to bringing production back to the U.S. The traditional molten salt electrolysis method, used around the…

The U.S. and China have agreed to pause some planned tariffs and export controls on critical minerals, including rare earths. Markets reacted with sharp volatility as rare-earth miners sold off on the framework announcement, reversing earlier gains triggered by China’s export control threats. On October 9, when China announced new export controls, rare-earth shares surged…

Exploring SiC, GaN and 2D materials in high-power and high-frequency applications For more than half a century, silicon has been the primary material in semiconductor technology. Its mature processing infrastructure and favorable electronic properties made it the default choice for most electronic devices. As demands for higher power density, faster switching and greater energy efficiency…

Scientists at the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory have revealed the molecular movement of lanthanide separation, an essential step in rare earth element extraction. Their study was published in Chemical Science.  The team studied lanthanides, a rare earth element with a wide variety of uses, from TV screens to oil refining. The DOE…

Oak Ridge National Laboratory was named on 20 of the 2025 R&D 100 Awards, 17 as lead developer and three as co-developer.  The showing sets a new record for the lab, accounting for about one-fifth of all winners. Since the 1980s, ORNL has won more than 260 R&D 100 Awards Our sister publication engineering.com recently…

Richard Tapper, an Associate Research Specialist at Dow and the 2025 R&D Technician of the Year, sums up his test philosophy in visceral terms: “I work on fire-retardant materials, and when I approach a test, I am considering that this cable is on fire in my house. So, I am going to view the test…

Scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory built a first: berkelocene. It binds carbon to berkelium-249 and puts the atom between two substituted cyclooctatetraene-based ligands. The surprise? In this molecule, berkelium is tetravalent (Bk⁴⁺), not Tb-like as many models predicted. In plain terms: the berkelium atom ends up more positively charged than expected and bonds to…

“Science shouldn’t necessarily be impacted by a lot of outside factors, geopolitical, economic factors, but the reality is that it will be,” said Thomas Lograsso, director of the Critical Materials Innovation Hub at Ames National Laboratory and the 2025 R&D Leader of the Year. Lograsso has been with Ames Laboratory since 2007, also serving as…

A carbon-fiber composite based on aromatic thermosetting copolyester (ATSP) can repeatedly heal cracks and recover shape when heated to specific temperatures, while maintaining mechanical integrity over hundreds of load–heal cycles, reports Texas A&M University. According to the research team, this material is several times stronger than steel yet lighter than aluminum. While stronger-than-steel claims pop…

R&D World has announced the winners of the 2025 R&D 100 Professional Awards. The honorees were selected by a panel of 54 prestigious industry experts from around the globe. The list of 2025 winners follows, along with highlights from their nomination letters. These winners will be formally awarded at the R&D 100 Awards Banquet at…

A total of 158 Finalists for the 2025 R&D 100 Awards have been announced by R&D World. Now in its 63rd year, this renowned global science and innovation competition drew entries from 13 countries/regions. This year’s esteemed judging panel featured 54 respected industry professionals from across the globe. The Finalists are listed below by category,…

Researchers from the Energy & Environment Materials Research Division of the Korea Institute of Materials Science (KIMS) developed a highly durable flexible perovskite solar cell that remains stable even under high humidity conditions. This could enable the production of perovskite solar cells in ambient air, which would reduce manufacturing costs. They published their findings in…

The detrimental effects of petroleum-derived plastics are well known. As pollution levels rise and concerns about microplastics and forever chemicals intensify, the need for a sustainable solution becomes increasingly evident.  In response to this need, researchers are developing biodegradable plastics. However, bioplastics are not as strong as traditional plastics and only degrade in a high-temperature…

A new wearable sensor, disguised as a temporary tattoo, detects trace amounts of gamma-hydroxybutyrate (GHB) in beverages within one second, using a colorimetric chemical receptor embedded in an agarose gel. Detailed in a July 23 ACS Sensors study, the sticker uses the silicone-based polymer polydimethylsiloxane film and poly(vinyl alcohol) for durability and adhesion, offering a…

Researchers at Case Western Reserve University have developed a new family of flexible, eco-friendly plastics that could be used in wearable electronics, sensors, and cooling devices. The materials are a new type of ferroelectric polymer made without fluorine, a component of environmentally persistent materials known as “forever chemicals.” The team published their findings in the…

SandboxAQ, the Alphabet spinoff whose name reflects its work at the intersection of AI and quantum techniques, thinks testing drugs on animals is already passé. “It’s not so much that we’re going to somehow move a mouse model into computers,” said Nadia Harhen, general manager of AI simulation at the company. “It’s that we hope…

Researchers in Korea have developed a method to synthesize a polyester and polyamide hybrid polymer with a tensile strength of 109 MPa. The polymer decomposes by 92% in 12 months in marine environments. The research team published their findings in Advanced Materials. A possible substitute for nylon Nylon-based products such as fishing nets degrade exceptionally…

For many people, the personal-care aisle may be the last place you associate with machine learning. But for UK-based Unilever, decades of hair-protein data and more than 500 live AI projects have turned those shampoo and skin care shelves into a proving ground. Creating that foundation has been something of a “journey” over the years,…

In a reported first, researchers have successfully used CRISPR gene editing in spiders, inserting the gene for a red fluorescent protein into the major ampullate silk gene of Parasteatoda tepidariorum. The edited orb weaver spun crimson fibers and passed the glow to its young, evidence that spider silk can now be genetically tuned for bespoke…

Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) researchers, working with Seoul National University, say they have designed a fiber‑based supercapacitor that endures more than 100,000 charge‑discharge cycles without performance loss and stays stable in high‑voltage settings. “This technology overcomes the shortcomings of supercapacitors by using single‑walled carbon nanotubes and conductive polymers,” said Bon‑Cheol Ku, Ph.D.,…

A recent paper published in Nature Materials  notes that warm rolling, the same core process that turns aluminum ingots into beverage-can stock, can strengthen silver and copper chalcogenides. It notes, for instance, that “narrow-gap semiconductor Ag2Se can be plastically manufactured by warm metalworking.” Yield and tensile strengths climb significantly in Ag₂Se, Cu₂Se, AgCuSe and AgCuS…