{"id":232137,"date":"2026-02-26T05:23:18","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T11:23:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/02\/a-world-first-at-the-microscopic-scale-metamaterials-that-can-shrink-and-expand-on-their-own"},"modified":"2026-02-26T05:23:18","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T11:23:18","slug":"a-world-first-at-the-microscopic-scale-metamaterials-that-can-shrink-and-expand-on-their-own","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/02\/a-world-first-at-the-microscopic-scale-metamaterials-that-can-shrink-and-expand-on-their-own","title":{"rendered":"A world first at the microscopic scale: Metamaterials that can shrink and expand on their own"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/bFqRtW19B2E?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Leiden physicists Daniela Kraft and Julio Melio have created soft structures that can take on different shapes without any external drive in their lab. They present their <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-026-10217-z\" target=\"_blank\">research<\/a> on microscale metamaterials in <i>Nature <\/i>\u2014a breakthrough that opens the door to smart, reconfigurable materials and microscopic robots.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMetamaterials have completely changed the way we think about materials,\u201d explains Professor of Experimental Physics Daniela Kraft. \u201cIn these systems, movements are no longer set by the material itself, but by the structure\u2014the way particles are connected. We set out to create such functional structures at the microscopic scale. And we succeeded.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Leiden physicists Daniela Kraft and Julio Melio have created soft structures that can take on different shapes without any external drive in their lab. They present their research on microscale metamaterials in Nature \u2014a breakthrough that opens the door to smart, reconfigurable materials and microscopic robots. \u201cMetamaterials have completely changed the way we think about [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-232137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-particle-physics","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232137\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}