Untangling the secrets of worm and spider silks

Robot spiders spinning giant silk webs to catch space trash? What may sound like sci-fi fodder to some might actually ignite the imagination of others. Thanks to its exceptional strength, toughness and thermal stability, ...

Strain-induced isomerization of molecular chains

National University of Singapore scientists have demonstrated a strain-induced structural rearrangement of one-dimensional (1D) metal-organic molecular chains for potential use in fabricating functional nanostructures.

Synthesis of helical ladder polymers

Researchers at Kanazawa University synthesized helical ladder polymers with a well-defined cyclic repeating unit and one-handed helical geometry, as they reported in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

'Random walk' of heat carriers in amorphous polymers

The intrinsic structure of amorphous polymers is highly disordered with long, entangled molecular chains. They are usually considered as thermal insulators due to their ultra-low thermal conductivity. One effective way to ...

Resolving tension on the surface of polymer mixes

Better than playing with Legos, throwing polymer chains of different lengths into a mix can yield surprising results. In a new study published in EPJ E, physicists focus on how a mixture of chemically identical chains into ...

A contractile gel that stores light energy

Living systems have the ability to produce collective molecular motions that have an effect at the macroscale, such as a muscle that contracts via the concerted action of protein motors. In order to reproduce this phenomenon, ...

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