Scientists from the University of Illinois have created a prototype of a self-healing "living" plastic

There are quite a few projects of self-healing plastic. On Habré published some of them, quite promising. But so far, none of the projects has been widely adopted, due to certain problems.



The other day there was information about another project, the idea of ​​which is very unusual. And the idea is to pass through the plastic "capillaries" in which two different substances will circulate.

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When plastic is damaged (the inventors demonstrate holes with a diameter of about 8 millimeters), the capillaries are also damaged, and the fluids mix. When mixed, they form a gel, which after some time hardens, forming a plastic "patch". At the same time, gravity does not prevent the liquid from closing the hole, since the filling occurs rather slowly, with the formation of a gel, as already mentioned above.



Of course, such a system will not be able to repair major damage, but, for example, cracks in pipes or boards, or some other plastic parts can be fixed. It should be noted that the strength of the "patch" is about 60% of the strength of the source material, which was demonstrated in the experiment.



In general, this system is very interesting, but, probably, its implementation is difficult and problematic, because you need to provide a whole “circulatory” system for plastic things, reservoirs with a patch and everything else. On the other hand, it is possible that this or another team of scientists will be able to offer a simple solution to this issue.







via CNet