Smart sensing metamaterials integrate engineered micro- and nano-structured media with sensing, communication, and actuation functions across acoustic, optical, electromagnetic, and mechanical domains. Work in this area spans metamaterial-enabled wave control, metasurfaces, and auxetic or lattice architectures combined with MEMS, e-skins, and e-textiles to monitor physiological signals, structural integrity, and environmental conditions. These systems often employ flexible, printable, or biodegradable platforms, multiplexed readout, and self-powered operation to enable distributed, real-time, and unobtrusive measurement in wearable, industrial, underwater, and aerospace applications.
Engineering
A new set of modular components allows users to create reconfigurable smart devices with electrical connections that keep working no matter what shape the structure forms.
Aug 27, 2026
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Engineering
Shine a light, and the real can be distinguished from the fake. KAIST researchers have developed a security technology that uses unique artificial fingerprints created by the random assembly of nanoparticles. Although extremely ...
Aug 26, 2026
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Hi Tech & Innovation
Nonuniformities can be a big deal on a manufacturing line. But they can be tough to identify in materials measured on a nanometer scale, as Alex Bordovalos came to appreciate during an internship with a solar cell manufacturer ...
Aug 26, 2026
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Engineering
Merchant ships, coastal infrastructure and maritime facilities are often built with iron and steel, which can corrode over time despite their strength, eventually to the point of failure. With lives and goods on the line, ...
Aug 25, 2026
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Engineering
An electronic skin with a sensing system that can detect pressure and temperature could someday help amputees gain feeling in their prosthetics. The work, led by Washington State University researchers and published in the ...
Aug 20, 2026
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Consumer & Gadgets
Prosthetics are a fact of life today. It's estimated that more than 50 million people globally—some 2 million of them in the United States—have lost a limb, and most could benefit or already do benefit from artificial limbs ...
Aug 14, 2026
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Engineering
Optical fiber has already transformed the modern world. New research now suggests it could do even more. A new flat-fiber fabrication technique produces a high-fidelity sensor for a wide range of applications, from batteries ...
Aug 13, 2026
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Engineering
Researchers at the A*STAR Quantum Innovation Center (A*STAR Q.InC), part of the Research, Innovation and Enterprise (RIE) Flagship in Semiconductors, have developed a levitated, millimeter-scale rotor that continued spinning ...
Aug 13, 2026
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Robotics
Recent advances in miniaturized and portable electronics, particularly wearable and flexible devices, have increased the demand for self-powered sensing technologies. Among these, triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) have ...
Aug 10, 2026
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Engineering
The same overheating problem that happens to our laptops also plagues computer servers and data centers around the world—and heat management is only getting harder as computer chips get more compact and powerful.
Aug 6, 2026
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