materials science

After their 2015 success, the researchers set out to use their flattening technique to address all finite polyhedra. This change made the problem far more complex. This is because with non-orthogonal polyhedra, faces might have the shape of triangles or trapezoids—and the same creasing strategy that works for a refrigerator box won’t work for a pyramidal prism.In particular, for non-orthogonal polyhedra, any finite number of creases always produces some creases that meet at the same vertex.“That messed up our gadgets,”…

But stability remains a tough challenge.  In one recent study, published in Science in April, researchers discovered a new way to build perovskite solar cells with additives that improved efficiency and lifetime. The cells withstood 1,500 hours of high heat and humidity in the lab.  The problem is translating these results into the real world. It’s hard for researchers to simulate real-world conditions, and silicon has set a high bar, with many manufacturers guaranteeing that their panels will maintain 80% of their…

Next, they proved that the bots could swim. In test tubes containing urea, the microbots reached speeds of up to 4 micrometers per second—“one or two body lengths per second,” says Sánchez. (Humans also swim around one body-length per second.)Then it was time to show that the bots could also kill. But the team agonized over how to prove that they could actually treat an animal’s infection better than by just using passive drops of antibiotics. "That took some time," de la Fuente says.In the end, they devised a setup to…