Surface and interfacial phenomena as a research area encompass the study of physical, chemical, and physicochemical processes occurring at phase boundaries, including solid–liquid, solid–gas, liquid–gas, and liquid–liquid interfaces. This field investigates adsorption, wetting, adhesion, capillarity, surface tension, interfacial rheology, and related equilibrium and non-equilibrium behaviors. It integrates thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, spectroscopy, microscopy, and simulation to elucidate structure–property relationships at interfaces. Research in this area underpins advances in catalysis, colloid and dispersion stability, electrochemistry, nanomaterials, biomembranes, microfluidics, and advanced coatings, with emphasis on how interfacial structure, composition, and energetics govern macroscopic material performance and functionality.
The COVID-19 pandemic clearly demonstrated the importance of rapid and reliable diagnostic methods for detecting and monitoring infectious diseases. Nucleic acids, including RNA, are key biomarkers used in the detection, ...
Bio & Medicine
Sep 25, 2026
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5
In their earliest years of development, computers used mechanical gears and levers to store information. Today, researchers are exploring whether a material itself can hold onto information, storing memory in how it bends ...
A drop of coffee on a tabletop often leaves a dark ring behind. This everyday mark is a reminder that a drying droplet is not passive: As water evaporates, it can transport the particles suspended inside it toward the edge. ...
Seeing a bachelor's thesis published in a scientific journal is relatively uncommon. For three theses linked to the same research group to result in scientific publications within just three months is downright rare. Yet ...
Bio & Medicine
Sep 18, 2026
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79
Iron rusts on its own, slowly, over months or years. Now, researchers at Tohoku University have found a way to compress the process of metal reacting with water to form oxide, taking mere hours and using nothing more than ...
Nanomaterials
Sep 17, 2026
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77
Cephalopods are a group of soft-bodied marine mollusks that include cuttlefish, octopuses, squid and nautiluses. Many of these mollusks have muscular suckers on their arms that allow them to seize prey or grip other surfaces ...
Whether on a windowpane at home or during the industrial cleaning of computer chips: droplets sliding over solid surfaces become electrically charged. Yet the physical mechanism behind this charging remains a subject of debate. ...
Condensed Matter
Sep 16, 2026
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10
Put a drop of water into a very hot pan, and it can skitter across the surface on a cushion of vapor. This is known as the Leidenfrost effect. Now, scientists have observed a related phenomenon involving ice and an extremely ...
Nanomaterials
Sep 16, 2026
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21
Through joint research with the U.S. Geological Survey and the University of Tokyo, NIMS for the first time experimentally demonstrated friction completely independent of sliding velocity—an ideal that had never been realized—by ...
General Physics
Sep 16, 2026
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10
The position of biomineralization peptides within liposomes can influence how gold nanoparticles grow, reports a research team from the Institute of Science Tokyo. Peptides localized at the membrane interface promote branched ...
Bio & Medicine
Sep 14, 2026
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