This self-healing material can automatically repair your broken smartphone screen.
An incredible Innovation by Kolkata scientists can open several new possibilities in applications of self-healing materials
By owning a smartphone, we desperately want to have a technology that prevents our smartphone screen from being unbroken after falling or the screen automatically repairs itself after being broke. Seems that our wish has been fulfilled. Scientists from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Kolkata and IIT Kharagpur, have discovered a new self-healing material that can repair itself in a fraction of a second.
What are Self-healing materials?
Living organisms have the ability to heal themselves when certain damages and injuries occur. Our skin can recover itself after getting damaged. This unique ability inspired scientists to discover self-healing synthetic materials.
How does it work?
At the time of production, capsules containing healing agents are stored with the base materials. When the damage occurs the capsules burst too and release those healing agents in the material which fills the broken gap and through some chemical reactions the surface bond together.
Bengal innovation: Scientists have developed the world’s hardest self-healing materials.
The Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Kolkata and IIT Kharagpur, have discovered a new self-healing material that can repair itself in a fraction of a second. Since 2001, a broad range of self-healing materials has been developed. Self-healing mechanisms have been developed for metals and ceramics, but self-healing polymers showed lately the largest evolution. Recent developments in self-healing polymer technology have led to applications. This Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Kolkata and IIT Kharagpur's discovery is creating buzz all over because researchers have said that they have now synthesized a new class of solid material which they claim is 10-times harder than other competing materials. Earlier materials developed were in contrast soft and amorphous in nature and needed light, heat, or a chemical to help them repair by themselves. However, the new material is hard and does the repair by itself using its own electric charges.
Prof. Nirmalya Ghosh and his team from IISER Kolkata used a custom-designed state-of-the-art polarisation microscopic system to probe and quantify the structural order of the piezoelectric ( an electrical charge is created when the material is put under physical stress such as when it falls)self-healing organic crystals with nanometer-scale spatial resolution.
The self-healing quality of this material uses electrical charges created to repair the material when damaged, in the same way, that a human tissue often heals itself after being damaged by a fall.
One of the professors of this research Prof. Khatua said, “There is a crystal formation in Android mobiles, LED television sets, and most electronic applications. Our research since 2019 has brought up a self-healing material that can reassemble and realign even after suffering cracks. These piezoelectric crystals can generate electricity when pressure is created by force and make the widening cracks heal in nanoseconds.”
he continued by saying “our team used a needle to trigger mild to severe cracks in such piezoelectric objects and saw how the cracks disappeared very, very soon.”
The application of this material seems immense. whether it could be a mobile phone screen or a modern microscope this self-healing material can be used everywhere.
Woowwww🤯🤯🤯
ReplyDelete