- Professor Jihan Kim's team in KAIST's Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering has demonstrated for the first time that a porous material can arrange disordered gas molecules into a crystal-like structure.

- The team discovered a new principle for controlling both adsorption and separation simultaneously, with potential applications in next-generation carbon-capture and hydrogen-storage materials

- Using machine learning, the team computationally designed candidate materials that induce a desired gas lattice, confirming that gas lattices are a "designable" adsorption state.

In January 2024, physicists at TU Dortmund University demonstrated a continuous time crystal in a semiconductor whose oscillations remained stable for hours. In a new study published in Nature Communications, Prof. Alex Greilich and his team show that many such time crystals can form in the same material and synchronize their electron-nuclear spin oscillations.

University of Waterloo researchers have developed an AI-powered system that uses data from experimental house fires to better understand how modern homes burn and produce toxic smoke. The technology could help improve evacuations, inform building codes and support emergency responders by predicting dangerous changes in fire behaviour.

It has long been recognized that chiral materials can selectively transport electron spins, yet their role in electrochemical energy storage remained unclear. Now, writing in National Science Review, researchers led by Prof. Hongsen Li at Qingdao University demonstrate that regulating the chiral asymmetry factor enhances spin polarization at catalytic sites, accelerates sulfur redox reactions, and significantly improves the electrochemical performance of lithium–sulfur batteries.

Soft, shape-changing materials are attracting growing interest in applications ranging from robotics to wearable devices, but conventional 3D printing methods are limited to a single actuation mode in each printed component. A new study demonstrates the first 3D-printable smectic liquid crystal elastomer ink that can switch molecular alignment during printing, allowing the same filament to either elongate or contract when heated. The advance could enable more versatile soft robots, adaptive surfaces, and minimally invasive biomedical devices.