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We have all had that feeling: we fall, we scrape our knee and we bleed.
Then we run to Mom for help and Mom puts on a bandage. A few days later, the bandage falls off to reveal the scab. A few more days go by, the fall is a memory and there is only a trace of the scab. Then it’s gone, as if nothing happened. All life forms have the ability to heal from injury.
Scientists have spent many years trying to create materials that mimic life with a fair amount of success. We can make materials that feel pretty close to skin, bone and flesh. We can make shapes that mimic human anatomy from feet to hands to ears. But until recently, one attribute we haven’t been able to mimic is healing from injury.
Scientists at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign led by professor Scott White have demonstrated a plastic that heals. The material uses fibers filled with fluid in a network that mimics blood vessels in the delivery of healing agents. Upon injury, the fibers deliver fluid where material is lost and slowly fills in to replace the lost material.
"Perhaps in the near future, we will see car bumpers that heal after impact, glasses that heal after a scratch, or phone screens that heal after they've been dropped."
The Urbana-Champaign team have been working against many external factors that can cause this process to fail, with one of the biggest factors being gravity. As the fluid mixes, it sets slowly enough to allow more fluid to be delivered as older material hardens. The process can be tuned to resist bleeding and to resist sagging against the force of gravity.
The Urbana-Champaign team demonstrated the material at the Beckman Institute and features a plastic sample with tubes running through it. The plastic is punctured, terminating the tubes and creating an 8-millimeter hole. The healing fluids are passed through the tubes by pump to allow the healing materials to be fed to the puncture site at controlled rates in a climate controlled setting.
This isn’t the Urbana-Champaign team’s first crack at the problem — it is the culmination of 13 years of effort. The previous notable breakthrough was with an experimental plastic that could heal tiny cracks, first reported by MIT back in 2007. The Urbana-Champaign team had designed a plastic with fluid-filled tubes that could deliver healing agents to tiny cracks in the surface of the material. Tests on the material showed that the plastics could be cracked and healed seven times before the plastic would not regenerate further.
As a general rule, it takes about 30 years to apply a new discovery to a practical application or product. We are 13 years into it so far. Perhaps in the near future, we will see car bumpers that heal after impact, glasses that heal after a scratch, or phone screens that heal after they’ve been dropped. Scott Dunn is a writer and technology worker living in Salt Lake City, Utah.
