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I found this on NewsBreak: Scientists finally make ‘goldene’, potentially breakthrough new material.

Researchers have managed to create “goldene”, an incredibly thin version of gold.

The work follows the successful production of graphene, which is made out of a single layer graphite atoms. That has been hailed as a miracle material: it is astonishingly strong, and much better at conducting heat and electricity than copper.

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I found this on NewsBreak: Scientists Invented a Bizarre New Material That Gets Tougher When You Hit It.

A team led by researchers from the University of Glasgow has developed an innovative wireless communications antenna that combines the unique properties of metamaterials with sophisticated signal processing to deliver a new peak of performance.

Microplastics pose a great threat to human health. These tiny plastic debris can enter our bodies through the water we drink and increase the risk of illnesses. They are also an environmental hazard; found even in remote areas like polar ice caps and deep ocean trenches, they endanger aquatic and terrestrial lifeforms.

Green Li-ion has launched a commercial-scale plant to process unsorted battery waste, or “black mass,” from used lithium-ion batteries.

Within an existing recycling facility in Atoka, Oklahoma, the plant will produce sustainable, battery-grade cathode precursor, lithium, and anode materials – closing the EV recycling loop with the production done all in one plant.

The current recycling process for spent lithium-ion batteries in North America includes sorting batteries before shredding, which are then processed into black mass and further into sulfates. The material is then exported overseas, most often to China and South Korea, for further processing.

New options for making finely structured soft, flexible and expandable materials called hydrogels have been developed by researchers at Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology (TUAT).

Notably, while other scientists have observed similar phenomena in their laboratory data, the mechanisms behind these observations remained elusive until now. Allan Johnson and his collaborators have elucidated the underlying processes, highlighting the formation of polarons and their ordering in specific directions as a key factor in reducing the energy penalty to the metallic phase. Driving the phase transition by exciting this disordered state of motion can be achieved with less energy.

Furthermore, the dynamic barrier lowering means that scientists are able to selectively reduce the energy required for the laser driven phase transition without increasing the probability of thermal switching, in contrast to other methods for improving the efficiency.

The results have been published in Nature Physics. The implications of this research extend beyond fundamental science, offering new avenues for precise material control and technological innovation. As the team continues to optimize the method and explore new materials, the potential for transformative advancements in material science and optical control remains high.

University of Florida engineers have developed a method for 3D printing called vapor-induced phase-separation 3D printing, or VIPS-3DP, to create single-material as well as multi-material objects. The discovery has the potential to advance the world of additive manufacturing.

A reservoir computing system for multimode and multiscale signal processing can be created using optoelectronic synapses that are based on α-In2Se3 and exploit the tightly coupled ferroelectric and optoelectronic properties of the material.