'Adaptive protein crystal' could form new kind of protective material
Monday, May 2, 2016 - 14:20
in Physics & Chemistry
Chemists have created an 'adaptive protein crystal' with a counterintuitive and potentially useful property: When stretched in one direction, the material thickens in the perpendicular direction, rather than thinning as familiar materials do. And when squeezed in one dimension, it shrinks in the other rather than expanding, and gets denser in the process.