If a product is advertised as having a self-healing coating applied, chances are you’re more likely to buy it over a similar product without the coating. If a material can self heal, it will stay looking new for longer and is therefore a wise investment. So whoever manages to create a self-healing material that’s cheap to make, consumer friendly, and doesn’t require extra chemicals or takes forever to self heal is on to a winner. And it looks as though the University of Illinois has done just that.
A research team at the university tweaked the ingredients of a polymer, but stuck to using widely available off-the-shelf materials. What they ended up producing was an elastic material made of polyurea (used to make Spandex) that can self heal at room temperature just by pushing the fault back together.
In the video below you see an elastic piece of the polymer cut with a knife before having the fault pushed back together and held for a minute. Then, by leaving the polymer overnight at room temperature, it is completely healed and can be stretched as before without breaking. And if you increase the temperature slightly to 37 degrees Celsius, the healing time is cut considerably.
The combination of cheap ingredients and manufacturing, no extra chemicals required to act as a healing catalyst, and the elasticity of the material, means it can be used to add self-healing properties to a range of products. For example, paints and a range of plastics could easily be tweaked to take advantage of the new polymer. It can even be mixed to reverse the process, allowing a self-healing paint to be applied to a surface and then later easily removed by applying a second, slightly different coating.
The new polymer is still at the research stage, but based on the fact it uses such widely available ingredients and only requires mixing to create, it shouldn’t take long for it to be picked up and used in commercial products.