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 Touch buttons have become a normal part of modern electronic devices. Smartphones, tablets, control panels, appliances, cars, and many other products now rely on flat touch-sensitive surfaces instead of traditional mechanical buttons. While these interfaces look clean and modern, they have one important limitation: they do not physically “click.” A mechanical button gives users several types of feedback at once. You can feel the button move, sense a small vibration, and often hear a click. This combination makes it clear that an action has been registered. Now, Quang Van Duong and his team have developed a new type of extremely thin, or “skinny,” touch button that can bring this experience back. The technology can generate both haptic vibrations and audible sounds from the same thin structure, potentially making virtual touch buttons feel much more like physical buttons. Why Touch Buttons Lack the Traditional Click Mechanical buttons are effective because they naturally provide ...

Imagine a thin electronic skin that can stretch like rubber, detect multiple touches at once, recognize gestures, analyze walking patterns, and even work without a conventional power source. Researchers led by Beibei Shao have developed such a system, called untethered triboelectric electronic skin, or UTE-skin . The new electronic skin combines self-powered sensing, large-area coverage, extreme stretchability, and highly accurate touch detection . Most importantly, the researchers addressed one of the biggest problems facing large electronic skin systems: false signals generated by the sensor's own wiring. Why Do We Need Electronic Skin? Human skin is remarkably sophisticated. It can stretch, bend, recover from minor damage, and continuously sense the world around us. It detects everything from touch and pressure to temperature and moisture. Scientists have therefore been trying to create artificial skin that can reproduce some of these abilities. Electronic skin, or e-skin, could...

For millions of years, living organisms have developed an impressive ability to change their shape and behavior when circumstances change. Cells can alter their structure, tissues can respond to forces, and animals can adapt their movements to their surroundings. This ability to adjust is an important part of survival and evolution. Now, researchers are bringing a similar idea into the world of artificial materials. A team led by Yao Du has developed metamaterials that can physically learn how to change shape . Unlike conventional materials, which are normally designed to perform a specific movement or function, these new metamaterials can be trained using examples. They can gradually modify their internal properties, remember learned behaviors, forget old ones, and learn new shape-changing responses. The research could open a new direction for adaptive materials, soft robotics and physical artificial intelligence . What Makes These Metamaterials Different? Metamaterials are specially ...

Imagine a construction site where dozens of small robots work together like a team of builders. Instead of relying on one massive construction machine, these robots could move around, connect with building materials, rearrange themselves, and cooperate to assemble structures. Researchers led by Samuel Leder have developed a modular collective robotic construction system that brings this idea closer to reality. What makes the approach particularly interesting is that the robots don't simply manipulate special laboratory materials. They use timber struts—wooden structural elements commonly used in construction—as both building materials and parts of the robotic system itself. The research combines robotics, architecture, and computer science into a single construction workflow designed for flexible, on-site building. From Factory Robots to Flexible Construction Teams Robots are already used extensively in manufacturing and construction-related processes. However, most industrial rob...

For the first time, Porsche has successfully produced battery cells using cathode active material recovered from its own end-of-life high-voltage batteries. The milestone could mark an important step toward creating a more circular and resource-efficient future for electric vehicles. As electric vehicles (EVs) become more common, the question of what happens to their batteries at the end of their useful life is becoming increasingly important. EV batteries contain valuable materials such as lithium, nickel, cobalt and manganese. Instead of allowing these materials to become waste, manufacturers are exploring ways to recover them and use them again. German automaker Porsche is now testing this approach through a battery recycling pilot project carried out with recycling partners, including German company cylib. The project has reached an important new stage. Porsche has produced battery cells using recycled cathode active materials recovered entirely from its own high-voltage batteries...

When the Solar System began taking shape about 4.6 billion years ago, it was essentially a huge disk of gas and dust surrounding the young Sun. Over time, some of that material came together to form the planets, moons, asteroids, and other solid bodies we see today. But what exactly were these first solid bodies made from? According to a new study led by researchers at Yale University, the answer may reveal an important choice made very early in Solar System history. The first planet-building bodies appear to have strongly favored chondrules—tiny, heat-formed pieces of rock—over fine, icy dust known as matrix . The research, published in Nature Astronomy , provides the earliest geochemical evidence yet that this sorting was already happening within the first million years of Solar System formation. Two Main Ingredients for Building Planets The young Solar System contained a mixture of different materials. One important ingredient was chondrules . These are millimeter-sized, rounded gr...

Imagine a device that works like a leaf—using sunlight to produce clean fuel while also helping remove a dangerous pollutant from contaminated water. Scientists at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore, have developed an artificial leaf that can do just that. The solar-powered device can generate hydrogen from seawater while simultaneously breaking down hydrazine, a highly toxic chemical found in some industrial wastewater. The research, published in Nature Communications in 2026, combines renewable-energy production with pollution treatment in a single system. The approach could eventually contribute to technologies that produce clean fuels while treating contaminated water. How Does the Artificial Leaf Work? Hydrogen is considered a promising clean fuel because using it in fuel cells can produce electricity with water as the main byproduct. One common way to produce hydrogen is through electrolysis. During electrolysis, electricity is passed through water using two elect...