Researchers have discovered a new two-dimensional material with unprecedented properties: regardless if it is strained or compressed, it always expands. This so-called half-auxetic behavior is ...

Auxetic materials deform in an unusual way when stretched or compressed; they are flexible and adaptable, and, if made from responsive materials, can react to their environment. The opportunities they ...

Most materials get thinner when stretched, but “auxetics” do the opposite and get thicker. Helen Gleeson describes her group’s discovery of a material that is auxetic at the molecular level, which ...

If you stretch an elastic band, it becomes thinner - a physical behavior that applies to most "common" materials. Since the 20th century, an opposite behavior has been known in materials research: The ...