A research team led by Prof SUN Fei, Assistant Professor of Chemical & Biological Engineering at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), has created a new protein-based stimuli-responsive smart hydrogel that could open doors for future material biology and biomedical applications. Hydrogels, also known as soft matter in the medical world, are leading materials for biomedical applications such as drug delivery and stem...

Sodium-based batteries are a prospective alternative to lithium-based batteries due to the abundance and low price of sodium. However, finding a suitable anode material has been a longstanding hurdle to the commercialisation of sodium-based batteries. As the size of the sodium atom is much larger than lithium, many anode materials widely used in lithium-based batteries show poor performance in sodium-based batteries, most of which suffer from low...