Functional materials are physical systems engineered so that their intrinsic properties—such as electrical conductivity, magnetization, optical response, ionic mobility, or mechanical deformation—can be deliberately modulated by external stimuli (e.g., electric or magnetic fields, light, temperature, stress, or chemical environment) to perform specific tasks. They encompass classes such as ferroelectrics, piezoelectrics, magnetoresistive and thermoelectric materials, shape-memory alloys, solid electrolytes, and stimuli-responsive polymers. In research and device design, functional materials serve as active components enabling sensing, actuation, energy conversion, information storage, and signal processing, with performance governed by their structure–property relationships across atomic, mesoscale, and macroscopic length scales.
Research from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities gives new insight into a material that could make computer memory faster and more energy-efficient.
General Physics
Jul 18, 2025
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Researchers at Forschungszentrum Jülich have successfully created the world's first experimentally verified two-dimensional half metal—a material that conducts electricity using electrons of just one spin type: either "spin-up" ...
Condensed Matter
Jul 17, 2025
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252
The Skoltech Laboratory of Nanomaterials, along with the Ural Federal University and the Institute of Engineering Science Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, have published findings on how single-walled carbon ...
Nanomaterials
Jul 17, 2025
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27
Haozhe "Harry" Wang, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering (ECE) at Duke University and an expert in developing new methods for manufacturing materials, continues to push the boundaries in MXene research.
Nanomaterials
Jul 9, 2025
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33
The Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science has successfully developed a nanomaterial capable of simultaneously performing cancer diagnosis, treatment, and immune response induction. Compared to conventional nanomaterials ...
Bio & Medicine
Jul 3, 2025
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94
Imagine a liquid that flows freely one moment, then stiffens into a near-solid the next, and then can switch back with a simple change in temperature. Researchers at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular ...
Soft Matter
Jul 2, 2025
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75
Chemists from The University of Manchester and The Australian National University (ANU) have engineered a new type of molecule that can store information at temperatures as cold as the dark side of the moon at night, with ...
Nanophysics
Jun 25, 2025
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193
An international scientific collaboration has developed a novel nanomaterial to efficiently harvest clean drinking water from water vapor in the air. The nanomaterial can hold more than three times its weight in water and ...
Nanophysics
Jun 23, 2025
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A research team led by Professor Huang Xingjiu at the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has developed a highly stable adaptive integrated interface for ion sensing. The study was published ...
Nanomaterials
Jun 19, 2025
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40
Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) have developed an innovative new technique using carbon nanofibers to enhance binding in carbon fiber and other fiber-reinforced polymer ...
Nanomaterials
Jun 17, 2025
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