Rats and mice can scurry through dark and tight spaces with ease. In caves,  underground burrows, buildings or sewers. Their superpower for this are their whiskers. Now tiny autonomous drones could soon navigate through darkness, dust and smoke using artificial whiskers inspired by these animals. Their small size limits the use of large or heavy sensors for navigation. That's why researchers at Delft University of Technology (The Netherlands) have developed a lightweight whisker-based tactile sensor that enables drones to navigate and explore their surroundings through gentle touch. The study has been published in Nature Communications.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and digitalization are driving rapidly growing demand for ever-faster and more powerful data connections. Researchers at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) have developed a 3D printing process that enables tiny optical components used for data transmission to be connected with high precision and efficiency. The process enables the automated mass production of optical transmitters and receivers. For this innovation, the researchers were nominated for the German President’s Zukunftspreis on September 16, 2026.

Against the backdrop of global food security facing the dual pressures of population growth and climate warming, the search for green, low-cost agricultural yield-enhancing technologies has become increasingly urgent. As a frontier technology in agricultural physical engineering, high-voltage electrostatic field (HVEF) has attracted considerable attention for its potential to regulate plant growth and development in a non-chemical manner.

By giving a maple-seed-inspired robot the ability to plan ahead, researchers improved its flight accuracy without adding motors or mechanical complexity.

Researchers at Soochow University have demonstrated a perovskite/silicon tandem solar cell with a lab efficiency of 34.0%. An independently certified device achieved a steady-state efficiency of 33.5% and an open-circuit voltage of 2.014 V. Discrete zirconia nanoparticles at the buried interface promoted uniform, void-free perovskite growth and suppressed non-radiative recombination through field-effect passivation without hindering charge extraction. The encapsulated device retained 84% of its initial efficiency after 2000 h of continuous operation.

Solar-driven water splitting offers a carbon-neutral path to green hydrogen, but its reliance on freshwater has long raised sustainability concerns. Seawater — covering 97% of Earth’s water — presents an abundant alternative, yet its chloride ions have traditionally been seen as a major obstacle, causing corrosive side reactions and sluggish kinetics. Now, a team led by researchers at Shanghai Jiao Tong University has turned this challenge into an opportunity. They developed a noble-metal-free photocatalyst — MnOₓ(OH)_y/GaN nanowires supported by a silicon wafer — that splits natural seawater efficiently under sunlight, achieving a solar-to-hydrogen efficiency of 6.15% without any sacrificial agents. The catalyst delivers a hydrogen production rate of 15.2 mol g⁻¹ h⁻¹ in natural seawater and operates stably for over 360 min. Surprisingly, the team discovered that chloride ions in seawater are not detrimental but actively beneficial: they reduce the Coulomb attraction energy between photogenerated electrons and holes, and simultaneously lower the energy barrier for water oxidation. Meanwhile, the hydroxyl groups inherent to the manganese oxyhydroxide cocatalyst undergo dynamic exchange with water molecules, further accelerating the formation of key reaction intermediates. Outdoor tests under concentrated natural sunlight confirmed the system’s practical feasibility.

Korean researchers have developed to strengthen biodegradable plastics using hemp hurd, an agricultural by-product. The approach is expected to be applicable to other large-volume agricultural residues, including soybean stalks and rice straw. A research team led by Dr. Hoyong Kim of the Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology (KRICT), headed by President Suk-Min Shin, extracted cellulose from discarded stalks of industrial hemp, which is used to produce traditional hemp textiles. The team then applied a drying process that preserves the microfibrillar structure of the cellulose, enabling it to serve as a reinforcing biofiller for biodegradable plastics.

Researchers led by Prof. DENG Dehui and Associate Prof. LIU Yanting from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) proposed a "seawater to hydrogen and fresh water (STHW)" route that couples alkaline water electrolysis (AWE) with low-temperature vacuum distillation desalination.