Credit: Seung Sae Hong, Greg Stewart/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
To see how strain affects the electronic properties of a brittle oxide material, researchers at SLAC and Stanford turned it into a super-thin, flexible membrane, used micromanipulators to stretch it on a tiny apparatus and glued it in place to preserve the stretch. The technique can be used to study and design a broad range of materials for use in things like sensors and detectors.