Latest research videos: “The Power of NIMS!”

Graphene exhibits various unique properties due to its special structure: the ultimate thin atomic monolayer.
Researchers are able to unveil its most interesting characteristics only through the use of a special crystal.

This is available only at NIMS.
Watch this video and find out what the crystal is, how it is created and why researchers desperately want it.

Copyright © 2025 NIMS. All Rights Reserved.

All-solid-state batteries are promising because they are safe and can be recharged quickly. NIMS has developed a novel approach that vastly increases their energy density at low cost.

This approach has generated intense interest because it utilizes expansion in the volume of Si electrodes to improve battery performance. In general, expansion of Si electrodes during charging is considered to be a serious limitation in the application of the material in batteries.

In this video, we share the story behind the development of this new approach at NIMS.

See https://www.nims.go.jp/eng/press/2019/11/201911070.html for more information.

Copyright © 2025 NIMS. All Rights Reserved.

Coconut crab claws can deliver as much force as a lion's bite without breaking.
An unconventional materials scientist uncovered the secret to these tough claws, giving us valuable insights into the development of unconventional materials.

Copyright © 2025 NIMS. All Rights Reserved.

CFRPs (Carbon Fiber Reinforced Plastics) are promising materials for use in vehicles -- including cars and airplanes -- because their specific strength is ten times that of iron. On the other hand, they are still non-recyclable and have to be disposed of in landfills. However, NIMS has developed a novel method of inducing tough CFRP to decompose into substances that can then be recycled. This was inspired by an organic compound present in the human liver involved in redox reactions. Here is an outline of what we did.

Copyright © 2025 NIMS. All Rights Reserved.

It's not only easy to stick on and peel off; it's inexpensive!
We've developed a completely new adhesion method based on how flies climb glass surfaces.
Our new material was modeled on the fly pupa.
This approach is called "biomimetics": mimicking living creatures to create inventions.

Copyright © 2025 NIMS. All Rights Reserved.

When you tap a piezoelectric material, it generates an electric current. However, these materials have until now always been solids.

Here at NIMS, we created a flexible liquid version.

This was made possible by attaching "branched side chains" to the piezoelectric molecules.

Our skillful researchers continue to develop liquid versions of advanced solid materials.

Copyright © 2025 NIMS. All Rights Reserved.

Exhaled breath and water droplets play a major role in spreading infectious diseases, including COVID-19. Exhaled breath is usually modeled using computer simulations. However, we at NIMS have succeeded in observing it experimentally. Using our custom-designed camera, which detects only infrared light absorbed by carbon dioxide, we've made a fascinating video. We hope this video will help rekindle your commitment to taking preventive measures against infectious diseases.

Copyright © 2025 NIMS. All Rights Reserved.

Have you heard of "metamaterials"? These sophisticated materials contain nano-scale patterns on their surfaces that allow us to control light.

At NIMS, we have developed a novel gas sensor that incorporates a metamaterial with a special pattern on its surface capable of emitting and absorbing infrared light at a desired wavelength.

How does it work? What can it be used for? Watch this video to find out!

See https://www.nims.go.jp/eng/news/press/2020/02/202002040.html for more information

Copyright © 2025 NIMS. All Rights Reserved.

Copyright © 2025 NIMS. All Rights Reserved.

New, highly effective heat manipulation materials urgently need to be developed, including heat insulation materials and materials that can convert heat into electricity. To explore these materials, we need to understand the heat conduction pathways within them at the nanoscale. However, finding these pathways has proven very difficult. Here at NIMS, we have leveraged a unique concept to successfully visualize these heat pathways at the nanoscale. This method offers significant advantages in the effort to develop novel heat manipulation materials.

Copyright © 2025 NIMS. All Rights Reserved.

Artificial intelligence has boosted NIMS's development of new materials!

Using AI, we were able to skip the conventional process of experimenting with thousands of elemental combinations and rapidly discovered a thin film with world-record-breaking insulation capabilities.

How did we use AI? What kinds of thin films did we make?
Watch this video and find out!

News release: https://www.nims.go.jp/eng/news/press/2018/07/201807040.html

Copyright © 2025 NIMS. All Rights Reserved.

• A great deal of active materials research is underway with an eye to the arrival of the hydrogen economy.
• One of the biggest issues is "hydrogen embrittlement": degradation of the mechanical properties of metals induced by hydrogen.
• Detection is very difficult because the appearance of the affected metal doesn’t change at all, unlike rust or metal oxidation.
• NIMS researchers have succeeded in visualizing hydrogen permeates metal and makes it brittle.
• There currently only a few ways of observing the diffusion of hydrogen.
• We are now fielding many inquiries from manufacturers of hydrogen tanks and pipelines.
• Watch this video to learn what we’ve done with our new electron microscope.

Copyright © 2025 NIMS. All Rights Reserved.

NIMS has found the causes of various accidents over the years, including a 1985 Japan Airlines plane crash.

From a few faint clues found in the wreckage at the scene, we identified the immediate cause and technical pitfalls that led to the accident.

In this video, we take a look at how our experts leverage their vast storehouses of metal materials experience and knowledge to solve these mysteries.

Copyright © 2025 NIMS. All Rights Reserved.

Although the general public may view ceramics as fragile, we at NIMS have developed self-healing ceramics to boost the performance of aircraft engines, which operate at high temperatures and must be lightweight and fuel efficient.

The first self-healing ceramic was invented in 1995 in Japan. However, its healing process required heating at 1000 degrees centigrade for 1000 hours.

We elucidated the healing mechanism, in which a liquid substance plays a key role, and succeeded in drastically reducing the healing time to one minute.

This video shares the story of how we created those new and highly practical ceramics.

Reference:
T. Osada et al., A Novel Design Approach for Self-Crack-Healing Structural Ceramics with 3D Networks of Healing Activator,
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-17942-6

Copyright © 2025 NIMS. All Rights Reserved.

Only a few seconds after exposing a water surface to sunlight, vapor appears.

Although the water remains at room temperature, it vigorously emits steam.

This mysterious phenomenon is made possible with novel nano particles developed by NIMS.

This is promising for the desalination of seawater because of its highly efficient conversion of sunlight to heat.

Copyright © 2025 NIMS. All Rights Reserved.

Steel is hard.
However, it breaks when subjected to a force beyond its limits.
Hardness and brittleness are mutually contradictory properties.

For example, bolts should be hard.
We use many bolts in large-scale structures, but if some were to suddenly break, it would be a disaster.

We at NIMS succeeded in producing steel that is both hard and resistant to breakage.
When broken, it resembles bamboo.

In this video, we show you how this material behaves and how we have achieved this
with a video of the fracture taken using a high-speed camera.

Copyright © 2025 NIMS. All Rights Reserved.

Long period ground motion has attracted a great deal of attention, since many skyscrapers swayed long periods of time during the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011.
In order to reduce sway, vibration dampers are installed in most skyscrapers.
A metal plate in the damper unit dissipates vibratory energy but it should be replaced after experiencing a single giant earthquake.
We at NIMS have developed a new material that can be used to make vibration dampers that do not need to be replaced even after experiencing several giant earthquakes.
It is made of a shape-memory alloy with about 10 times the fatigue durability of materials currently used in vibration dampers.
In this video, we share a field report on how one of our collaborators has installed our new material in a skyscraper near Nagoya station.

Copyright © 2025 NIMS. All Rights Reserved.

NIMS performs experiments that involve simply waiting for decades.
We are only one of a few facilities in the world capable of doing this at large temporal and spatial scales.

This experiment is very simple -- we just wait.
However, this work ensures the safety of power plants around the world.

Watch this video to learn what we're doing with this large investment of time and space.

Copyright © 2025 NIMS. All Rights Reserved.