- Phones with cracked screens is a common sight these days and scientists at University of California have come up with a method to solve this problem.
- They have successfully created a self-healing material which when carved into two parts, can go back together like nothing has happened.
- The material is a made up of stretchable polymer and an ionic salt.
- It can stretch up to 50 times its original size also capable of conducting electricity.
- All these features combined make it a viable material for producing smartphones screen.
- The substance has potential applications in the field of soft robotics as well.
- The polymer is based on the premise that materials consist of a mix of strong covalent bonds and weaker non-covalent bonds.
- When a material gets damaged, non-covalent bonds protect covalent bonds by getting broken first.
- As weak as these non-covalent bonds are, however, they’re also reversible, which means after they’re broken, they can also recover. And this cycle can be repeated over and over again.
- The properties are attributed to a specific kind of bond called ion dipole interaction, basically force between ions and molecules.
- What happens is that when the two ends of the broken material meet, this force causes the ions and molecules to get attracted to each other.
- The ion-dipole interaction causes the broken non-covalent bonds to reunite and reform, resulting in the material healing its own damage.
- The research team’s inspiration for self-healing material was comes from Marvel superhero Wolverine!
Source: NewsNation