self-healing material tagged posts

A digital clock continues to run as damaged circuits instantaneously heal themselves, rerouting electrical signals without interruption. Credit: Nature Materials

Many natural organisms have the ability to repair themselves. Now, manufactured machines will be able to mimic this property. In findings published this week in Nature Materials, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have created a self-healing material that spontaneously repairs itself under extreme mechanical damage.

This soft-matter composite material is composed of liquid metal droplets suspended in a soft elastomer. When damaged, the droplets rupture to form new connections with neighboring droplets and reroute electrical signals without interruption...

Shape Shifters: Demonstrating Tunable Phase Shifting

Scientists devised a new approach that balances attractions between particles and promises to become a useful tool to create designer materials that can repair damage. The discovery of a cross point between temperature-dependent interactions between particles – not previously thought possible – opens the doors for more nimble synthesis. The crosspoint exploits the solubility and adsorption of a polymer. Researchers discovered that a liquid polymer-colloid mixture on cooling and heating forms different solid phases reversibly...