Imagine a world where batteries can repair themselves, extending their lifespan, improving safety, and making electronic devices more resilient. This once futuristic concept is now becoming a reality. Inspired by nature’s ability to heal wounds, self-healing batteries can autonomously recover from physical and chemical damage, making them particularly valuable for flexible electronics, wearable devices, and other high-stress applications. A recent review published in Energy Materials and Devices explores the cutting-edge progress in self-healing materials for battery components, shedding light on the challenges and opportunities in this emerging field.

To get around the constraints of quantum physics, EPFL researchers have built a new acoustic system to study the way the minuscule atoms of condensed matter talk together. They hope to one day build an acoustic version of a quantum computer.

Researchers have developed a novel ternary electrolyte system combining ionic liquids (ILs) with water-in-salt (WIS) technology, significantly enhancing the high-temperature stability and voltage capacity of aqueous potassium-ion supercapacitors. The optimized electrolyte achieves a record-breaking 3.37 V electrochemical window and maintains 87.6% capacitance after 2000 cycles at 60°C, offering a breakthrough for energy storage in electric vehicles and industrial applications.

Due to the inherent low atomic number of organic materials, their ability to absorb high-energy rays is relatively weak. Coupled with the low utilization rate of excited-state excitons, the radio-luminescence intensity of organic scintillators is generally lower than that of inorganic scintillators. Recently, the research team led by Professor Shuang-Quan Zang from Zhengzhou university innovatively utilized charge-separated (CS) state traps to capture high-energy carriers, significantly enhancing the radio-luminescence intensity of organic scintillators. The related paper was published in National Science Review.

In vertebrate retinas, specialized photoreceptors responsible for color vision (cone cells) arrange themselves in patterns known as the “cone mosaic”. Researchers at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) have discovered that a protein called Dscamb acts as a "self-avoidance enforcer" for color-detecting cells in the retinas of zebrafish, ensuring they maintain perfect spacing for optimal vision. Their findings have been published in Nature Communications.