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   (Nanowerk Spotlight) Scientists from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Kolkata and IIT Kharagpur have discovered a new class of material which, when fractured, can repair themselves within milliseconds. This research has been published in Science ("Autonomous self-repair in piezoelectric molecular crystals"). The highly crystalline materials, when broken into pieces, can self-propel and re-join in the blink of an eye, and repair themselves so precisely that they become indistinguishable from the undisturbed materials. These new materials may find applications in various high-tech applications. Micrographs of crystals of 1 exhibiting self-healing. Repeat self-healing cycles are shown in panels 1...

Prior to 1970, bulletproof vests were pretty iffy, with a history extending as far as the 1500s when there were attempts to make metal armor that was bulletproof. By the 20th century there was ballistic nylon, but it took Kevlar to produce garments with real protection against projectile impact. Now a 3D printed nanomaterial might replace kevlar. A group of scientists have published a paper that interconnected tetrakaidecahedrons made up of carbon struts that are arranged via two-photon lithography. We know that tetrakaidecahedrons sound like a modern invention, but, in fact, they were proposed by Lord Kelvin in the 19th century as a shape...