Nanotube breakthrough promises replacement for silicon

IBM says it's made a big step towards the commercial production of carbon nanotube-based computer chips.

Meter-long nanotubes on the cards

Researchers have calculated that it should be perfectly possible to grow a perfect, meter-long single-walled carbon nanotube 50,000 times thinner than a human hair.

NASA material is blacker than black

NASA engineers have produced the blackest stuff ever created - a material that absorbs more than 99 percent of the ultraviolet, visible, infrared, and far-infrared light that hits it.

Tiny artificial muscles flex like elephant's trunk

An international team of researchers has invented minute artificial muscles that can rotate object a thousand times their own weight.

Team makes breakthrough in development of artificial brain

Researchers have built a synthetic synapse in work that could one day lead to a fully-functioning artificial brain.

MIT finds new way to make electricity

MIT researchers have discovered a completely new way of producing electricity - and they don't fully understand how it works.