A New Way to Engineer Composite Materials By Rachel Berkowitz

Silica nanoparticles affixed with a distribution of polystyrene chains (purple) self-assemble into hexagonal lattices. Depending on how the chains are organized on the particle surface, they tangle together (purple) or unravel (blue) when compressed. (Credit: Tiffany Chen; Ting Xu)

You can find the article here: https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2025/03/06/a-new-way-to-engineer-composite-materials/