Why seashells' mineral forms differently in seawater

For almost a century, scientists have been puzzled by a process that is crucial to much of the life in Earth's oceans: Why does calcium carbonate, the tough material of seashells and corals, sometimes take the form of calcite, ...

Silicone liquid crystal stiffens with repeated compression

(Phys.org) —Squeeze a piece of silicone and it quickly returns to its original shape, as squishy as ever. But scientists at Rice University have discovered that the liquid crystal phase of silicone becomes 90 percent stiffer ...

Physicists made crystal lattice from polaritons

An international research team produced an analog of a solid-body crystal lattice from polaritons, hybrid photon-electron quasiparticles. In the resulting polariton lattice, the energy of certain particles does not depend ...

Performance and durability combine in liquid crystal transistors

Crystalline organic semiconductors have attracted a lot of interest for convenient low-cost fabrication by printed electronics. However progress has been stymied by the low thermal durability and reproducibility of these ...

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