(Funded by the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. National Science Foundation)
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Brown University, and the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, RI, have developed an autonomous programmable computer in the form of an elastic fiber, which could monitor health conditions and physical activity, alerting the wearer to potential health risks in real time. Clothing containing the fiber computer was comfortable and machine washable, and the fibers were nearly imperceptible to the wearer, the researchers report. “Our bodies broadcast gigabytes of data through the skin every second in the form of heat, sound, biochemicals, electrical potentials, and light, all of which carry information about our activities, emotions, and health. Wouldn’t it be great if we could teach clothes to capture, analyze, store, and communicate this important information in the form of valuable health and activity insights?” says Yoel Fink, senior author of a paper on the research and principal investigator in MIT’s Research Laboratory of Electronics and the Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies at MIT.

(Funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Defense)
Using an approach called DNA origami, scientists at Caltech have developed a technique that could lead to cheaper, reusable biomarker sensors for quickly detecting proteins in bodily fluids, eliminating the need to send samples out to lab centers for testing. DNA origami enables long strands of DNA to fold, through self-assembly, into molecular structures at the nanoscale. In this study, DNA origami was used to create a lilypad-like structure – a flat, circular surface about 100 nanometers in diameter, tethered by a DNA linker to a gold electrode. Both the lilypad and the electrode have short DNA strands available to bind with an analyte, a molecule of interest in solution – whether that be a molecule of DNA, a protein, or an antibody.

(Funded by the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Department of Energy)
Researchers from Rice University, the University of California Berkeley, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have shed light on how the extreme miniaturization of thin films affects the behavior of relaxor ferroelectrics — materials with noteworthy energy-conversion properties used in sensors, actuators, and nanoelectronics. The findings reveal that as the films shrink to dimensions comparable to internal polarization structures within the films, their fundamental properties can shift in unexpected ways. More specifically, when the films are shrunk down to a precise range of 25–30 nanometers, their ability to maintain their structure and functionality under varying conditions is significantly enhanced.

(Funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Defense, and the U.S. Department of Energy)
Physicists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, and the National Institute for Materials Science in Tsukuba, Japan, have directly measured superfluid stiffness for the first time in “magic-angle” graphene – materials that are made from two or more atomically thin sheets of graphene twisted with respect to each other at just the right angle. The twisted structure exhibits superconductivity, in which electrons pair up, rather than repelling each other as they do in everyday materials. These so-called Cooper pairs can form a superfluid, with the potential to move through a material as an effortless, friction-free current. “But even though Cooper pairs have no resistance, you have to apply some push, in the form of an electric field, to get the current to move,” says Joel Wang, one of the scientists involved in this study. “Superfluid stiffness refers to how easy it is to get these particles to move, in order to drive superconductivity.”

(Funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Defense, and the National Institutes of Health)
Researchers from Caltech; the Beckman Research Institute at City of Hope in Duarte, CA; and the University of California, Los Angeles, have developed a technique for inkjet-printing arrays of special nanoparticles that enables the mass production of long-lasting wearable sweat sensors. These sensors could be used to monitor a variety of biomarkers – such as vitamins, hormones, metabolites, and medications – in real time, providing patients and their physicians with the ability to continually follow changes in the levels of those molecules. Wearable biosensors that incorporate the new nanoparticles have been successfully used to monitor metabolites in patients suffering from long COVID and the levels of chemotherapy drugs in cancer patients at City of Hope. “There are many chronic conditions and their biomarkers that these sensors now give us the possibility to monitor continuously and noninvasively,” says Wei Gao, one of the researchers involved in this study.