A smart and responsive material can stiffen up like a worked-out muscle, say the Iowa State University engineers who developed it. Stress a muscle and it gets stronger. Mechanically stress the rubbery material – say with a twist or a bend – and the material automatically stiffens by up to 300%, the engineers said. In lab tests, mechanical stresses transformed a flexible strip of the material into a hard composite that can support...

Researchers looking for ways to regenerate nerves can have a hard time obtaining key tools of their trade. Schwann cells are an example. They form sheaths around axons, the tail-like parts of nerve cells that carry electrical impulses. They promote regeneration of those axons. And they secrete substances that promote the health of nerve cells. In other words, they’re very useful to researchers hoping to regenerate nerve cells, spe...

  Money doesn't grow on trees, but electricity might someday. Iowa State University scientists have built a device that mimics the branches and leaves of a cottonwood tree and generates electricity when its artificial leaves sway in the wind.

Within a few years, the U.S. Department of Energy wants plug-in electric vehicles to be just as affordable and convenient as the internal-combustion machines most of us drive today. But we're not there yet. When President Obama and the Department of Energy (DOE) launched the EV (plug-in electric vehicles) Everywhere initiative in 2012, the DOE said electric vehicles need to be 30% lighter, battery costs have to drop from $500 per kW&nbs...

Researchers in Jonathan Claussen's lab at Iowa State University have been looking for ways to use graphene and its properties in their sensors and other technologies. Graphene is a wonder material: The carbon honeycomb is just an atom thick. It's great at conducting electricity and heat; it's strong and stable. But researchers have struggled to move beyond tiny lab samples for studying its properties to larger pieces for real-world applicati...

Reza Montazami, an Iowa State University assistant professor of mechanical engineering and an associate of the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory, has been working on transient technology for years. The latest development from his lab is a self-destructing, lithium-ion battery capable of delivering 2.5 V and dissolving or dissipating in 30 minutes when dropped in water. The battery can power a desktop calculator for about 15 minutes.

Professor Eric Henderson, along with former graduate student Divita Mathur, studies how to build nanomachines that may have real-world medical applications someday soon. He and Mathur recently published an article in the peer-reviewed Scientific Reports describing his laboratory’s successful effort to design a nanomachine capable of detecting a mockup of the Ebola virus. He said such a machine would prove valuable in the deve...

A team of researchers from the Iowa State University in Ames, IA has demonstrated a proof-of-concept 3D paper-based microbial fuel cell (MFC) that could take advantage of capillary action to guide the liquids through the MFC system and to eliminate the need for external power. Their report appears in the forthcoming issue of the journal TECHNOLOGY. The paper-based MFC runs for five days and shows the production of current as a result of biofilm f...

One of the latest innovations from Martin Thuo's lab is finding a way to make micro-scale, liquid-metal particles that can be used for heat-free soldering plus the fabricating, repairing and processing of metals - all at room temperature. The discovery was recently reported online in the journal Scientific Reports. Thuo's co-authors all have Iowa State ties: Simge Cinar, a postdoctoral research associate; Ian Tevis, a former postdoctoral research...

Acceptance of information technology can play a vital role in meeting the demand for food in developing countries, according to a study by Iowa State University researchers. The research is published in the journal Information Technologies and International Development. It's projected that the world population will reach 9.6 billion people by 2050, and therefore food production must increase by 70%.

Iowa State University engineers have developed a flexible, stretchable and tunable "meta-skin" that uses rows of small, liquid-metal devices to cloak an object from the sharp eyes of radar. The meta-skin takes its name from metamaterials, which are composites that have properties not found in nature and that can manipulate electromagnetic waves. By stretching and flexing the polymer meta-skin, it can be tuned to reduce the reflection of a wide ra...