Making ceramics that bend without breaking

Ceramics are not known for their flexibility: they tend to crack under stress. But researchers from MIT and Singapore have just found a way around that problem—for very tiny objects, at least.

The team has developed a way of making minuscule ceramic objects that are not only flexible, but also have a "memory" for shape: When bent and then heated, they return to their original shapes. The surprising discovery is reported this week in the journal Science, in a paper by MIT graduate student Alan Lai, professor Christopher Schuh, and two collaborators in Singapore.