Category Chemistry/Nanotechnology

1. A closer look at one of the cylinders comprising a new non-metal metamaterial. The arrows depict how different aspects of an electromagnetic field interact with the cylinder.
2. Each cylinder of this new non-metal metamaterial is made of boron-doped silicon and precisely tailored to absorb electromagnetic waves.

Highly ordered sodium silicate particles (bottom right) with a regular array of spherical pores (bottom left) form on silicon surface. The one-step synthesis is directed by the atomic ordering of the substrate, which induces the formation of a soft template for sodium silicate growth. Sodium silicate, in turn, modifies the structure of the soft template during growth, encapsulating it within its structure (top). Credit: Image courtesy of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Topological transitions of a deformed kagome lattice by uniform soft twisting. Two types of triangles (red and blue) are connected by free hinges at their corners, forming a deformed kagome lattice with primitive vectors a1, a2. The angle θ between the triangles defines the twisting coordinate. The blue curve shows (defined in equation (1)) as a function of θ. The 3 white dots on the θ axis represent three critical angles (, and ) where sides of the triangles form straight lines (yellow stripes on the lattices) and topological polarization RT (shown as black arrows above the axes) changes.

NTU researcher Lee Jia Min working on 3D bioprinting of blood vessels. Credit: Image courtesy of Nanyang Technological University