Structural properties as a research area focuses on the characterization, quantification, and modeling of how the arrangement and connectivity of components within a system determine its behavior and performance. This includes investigating geometric, topological, and symmetry-related attributes in materials, molecules, biological assemblies, or engineered structures, and relating these features to mechanical, electronic, optical, or functional responses. Research typically integrates experimental probing (e.g., diffraction, microscopy, spectroscopy) with theoretical and computational methods (e.g., continuum mechanics, graph theory, atomistic simulations) to establish structure–property relationships that enable prediction, optimization, and rational design of systems with targeted structural performance.
The rapidly growing field of research on chiral phonons is giving researchers new insights into the fundamental behaviors and structures of materials. The chirality of phonons could pave the way for new methods to control ...
Condensed Matter
Nov 11, 2025
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Placing materials under extremely strong magnetic fields can give rise to unusual and fascinating physical phenomena or behavior. Specifically, studies show that under magnetic fields above 100 tesla (T), spins (i.e., intrinsic ...
Rice University researchers studying a class of atom-thin semiconductors known as transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) have discovered that light can trigger a physical shift in their atomic lattice, creating a tunable ...
Nanophysics
Nov 4, 2025
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Ribonucleic acid (RNA) is one of life's most versatile molecules, with roles going far beyond being a messenger of genetic code, as it is fundamentally involved in gene regulation, processing, and maintenance across all living ...
Biotechnology
Nov 4, 2025
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Scientists have long sought to make semiconductors—vital components in computer chips and solar cells—that are also superconducting, thereby enhancing their speed and energy efficiency and enabling new quantum technologies. ...
Condensed Matter
Oct 30, 2025
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137
A research group from the University of Osaka, Zen University, and the University of Tokyo has mathematically uncovered the mechanism that causes crack tips to sharpen during the rapid fracture of rubber.
General Physics
Oct 21, 2025
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What happens when you squeeze DNA? Can pressure reveal something about how our genetic material is packed, protected, and accessed?
Molecular & Computational biology
Oct 20, 2025
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In the hunt for new therapeutics for cancer and infectious diseases, lasso peptides prove to be a catch. Their knot-like structures afford these molecules high stability and diverse biological activities, making them a promising ...
Biotechnology
Oct 16, 2025
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In synthetic and structural biology, advances in artificial intelligence have led to an explosion of designing new proteins with specific functions, from antibodies to blood clotting agents, by using computers to accurately ...
Biotechnology
Oct 6, 2025
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91
In nature, random fiber networks such as some of the tissues in the human body, are strong and tough with the ability to hold together but also stretch a lot before they fail. Studying this structural randomness—that nature ...
Nanomaterials
Oct 2, 2025
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