You drop a plate on the floor – crack! Your tights ladder when you’re putting them on. Your bicycle tire starts emitting a sad little whine. Paintwork gets scratched, shoes leak, cloths fray and holes appear where you least want them – often the prelude to a poignant, reluctant parting of ways. Wouldn’t it be nice if things fixed themselves?
Enter the exciting new world of self-healing. Far from a feelgood slogan or an eyebrow-raising euphemism (ahem), it’s the scientific development of non-living materials that act like biological systems to repair themselves.
Last year we were stunned by the unveiling of a type of rubber with unusually densely-packed chemical bonds. Cut it into two pieces, push them back together, and these bonds latch together just as tightly as in the original piece. In other words, it heals perfectly (and perfectly green). Just imagine if your tights were made from a similar material – you won’t be the first to.
But the most exciting new materials are those modeled on biological vascular systems. The way our bodies heal is truly amazing – and something like a simple grazed elbow can be the start of a process so thrifty, clever and dazzlingly effective that it makes plastic surgery look like strip-mining.
There’s much we can learn – and we’ve already started looking at new materials that are laced with microcapsules containing healing agents. If a break forms, these capsules rupture and the “wound” is flooded with substances that repair the damage. Astounding. And just when we think we’ve got our heads around all this Nature-copying wizardry…along comes a type of paint with scratches that heal in the sun.
In the drive to make everyone look twice at what they’re throwing away, products that continually look and work as good as new would be a priceless resource – and go a long way towards healing our broken relationship with our possessions.
Image: djeucalyptus