How to make ceramics that bend without breaking: Self-deploying medical devices?

New materials could lead to actuators on a chip and self-deploying medical devices. Ceramics are not known for their flexibility: they tend to crack under stress. But researchers 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.