Engineers know how to design submarines on Earth, but building one gets a lot trickier when the temperature drops to -300ºF and the ocean is made of methane and ethane. Washington State University researchers are working with NASA to determine how a submarine might work on Titan, the largest of Saturn’s many moons and the second largest in the solar system. The space agency plans to launch a real submarine into Titan seas in the n...

Washington State University physicists have found a way to write an electrical circuit into a crystal, opening up the possibility of transparent, 3D electronics that, like an Etch A Sketch, can be erased and reconfigured. The work, to appear in Scientific Reports, serves as a proof of concept for a phenomenon that WSU researchers first discovered by accident four years ago. At the time, a doctoral student found a 400-fold increase in th...

Technology being developed at Washington State University provides a non-invasive approach for diagnosing prostate cancer and tracking the disease's progression. The innovative filter-like device isolates prostate cancer indicators from other cellular information in blood and urine. It could enable doctors to determine how cancer patients are responding to different treatments without needing to perform invasive biopsies.

Washington State University researchers have developed a 3D manufacturing method that for the first time rapidly creates and precisely controls a material's architecture from the nanoscale to centimeters. The results closely mimic the intricate architecture of natural materials like wood and bone. They report on their work in the journal Science Advances and have filed for a patent. The work has many high-tech engineering applications.

  A WSU research team has successfully used a mild electric current to take on and beat drug-resistant bacterial infections, a technology that may eventually be used to treat chronic wound infections. The researchers report on their work in the online edition of npj Biofilms and Microbiomes.

Washington State University researchers have developed a low-cost, portable laboratory on a smartphone that can analyse several samples at once to catch a cancer biomarker, producing lab quality results. The research team, led by Lei Li, assistant professor in the School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, recently published the work in the journal Biosensors and Bioelectronics.

Researchers have developed a way to use less platinum in chemical reactions commonly used in the clean energy, green chemicals, and automotive industries, according to a paper in Science. Led by the University of New Mexico in collaboration with Washington State University, the researchers developed a unique approach for trapping platinum atoms that improves the efficiency and stability of the reactions.

Washington State University researchers have developed a unique, multifunctional smart material that can change shape from heat or light and assemble and disassemble itself. They have filed a provisional patent on the work. This is the first time researchers have been able to combine several smart abilities, including shape memory behavior, light-activated movement and self-healing behavior, into one material. They have published their work in AC...

Researchers have reached a critical milestone in solar cell fabrication, helping pave the way for solar energy to directly compete with electricity generated by conventional energy sources. Led by the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory and in collaboration with Washington State University and the University of Tennessee, the researchers improved the maximum voltage available from a cadmium telluride (CdTe) solar...