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

Self-healing plastic projects there are quite a lot. Habré published some of them quite promising. But so far none of the projects is not widely used, because of those or other problems.

A few days ago there was information about another project, the idea of ​​which is quite unusual. The idea is to hold the plastic through "capillaries", which will circulate in two different substances.

case of damage plastic (inventors show hole diameter of about 8mm) capillaries also damaged, and the liquid are mixed. When mixed, they form a gel which hardens after some time, forming a plastic "patch." In this case, gravity does not prevent fluid closing hole, as filling occurs slowly enough to form a gel, as mentioned above.

Of course, especially large damage such a system would not be able to fix, but, for example, cracks in the pipes or boards, or even some plastic parts can be corrected. It should be noted that the strength of the "patch" is about 60% of the strength of the starting material, which was shown in the experience.

In general, this system is very interesting, but probably its implementation - is complex and problematic, because you need to provide the whole "blood" system for plastic things tanks "patches" and everything else. On the other hand, it may well be that this or another team of scientists will be able to offer a simple solution to this issue.



via CNet

Source: habrahabr.ru/post/222623/