Self-regenerating
plastics.
Written
by: Alex Fortin
Imagine you just dropped your phone;
you slowly pick it up in fear as your screen could be broken. You grab it and
slowly turn it over. Your case looks fine, but wait what’s that? A crack
straight through the middle of the screen! This will ruin your day, you’ll have
to get it repaired for a costly price or even get a new a phone! But what if I
told your there was a simple solution to this problem. What if I told you in
the future that you could break your phones screen all you want without a worry,
because it would just repair itself.
Scientists in Illinois at the Beckman
Institute have managed to create a plastic that can completely and fully
regenerate itself. Scientists have already managed to create materials that can
already repair themselves, but those are on tiny scales, microscopic levels.
This material can however regenerate a much bigger size of damage, the biggest
test they’ve done so far is a hole that simulates the impact of a 9mm bullet,
and they managed to make it repair itself! You may be asking “Well how does
this magic work, I mean surely it must be fake, to create a material out of
thin air? You must be tricking me.” And to you good Sir (or Madame) I say “It’s
not magic, it’s simply fluids and gelatin!”
The way
that it works is that upon the plastic taking damage two fluids will flow into
the plastic and into any cracks or holes in the plastic. When the fluids start
to mix they harden and become a hard polymer material whose colour can vary, by
simply dying the fluids differently, (See figure 1). The biggest challenge for
them to overcome was gravity. Usually the fluids would just fall out, but they
designed the fluids to act like a blood clot and harden, rather than just bleed
out. They may also control the speed of which it hardens and at the rate the
fluid pours out. This would be useful for say many uses. If you get in a car
crash and it fills very quickly, the fluid may miss some dents and cracks here
and there. Where if you say drop your phone you can have the fluid quickly fill
the damage and harden quickly, so your phone would be ready to use.
(Figure 1, this picture was taken about
half way through the process and show the two fluorescent liquids result when
combined.)
This
product is still early in development and its uses are many, ranging from
medical uses where the fluids could be used to fix bones to practical everyday
uses like fixing the screen of your phone. There are many uses and this would
be an amazing development in science and mankind if it manages to succeed. Many
people already think that this product is a good idea, like the Illinois
Newspaper who wrote an article on this. I personally think that this is an
amazing advance into technology and could prove to be very useful in future
use.
If you want more Information on this these are source I
used:
Good job! I really enjoyed reading your blog post, it was really interesting! good choice of words and nice picture :)
ReplyDeleteWell written. I like how you involve the reader right from the top and refer to real life situations. I didn't really understand how this works is the liquid already inserted into the plastic or is it something you add when it cracks. Do you think this will work and why?
ReplyDeleteNot bad! Its really interesting! Good job!
ReplyDeleteAlex, you write very well. Your article is engaging and fascinating to read. Kora asks a good question, which I think you've not quite managed to explain. Also, I think you could elaborate on the applications of this magic self-repairing plastic.
ReplyDeleteIn response to Kora it is tubes that are already connected to the plastic and then flow with gel. Its hard to see in the picture but its, there very minuscule.
ReplyDelete