Self Healing Polymers

When you saw the Terminator heal itself you thought it was cool. Now scientists are coming up with a new science project where this piece of science fiction may actually become fact. Although currently at a very small scale at the Centre for Electrochemical Technologies in Spain.

Ibon Odriozola and his research group have come up with self-healing silicone elastomers using silver nanoparticles as cross-linkers in the past. Unfortunately these needed an external pressure to be applied and the silver was too expensive to be economically viable. Now they have overcome these problems by using common polymeric starting materials.

They managed to show that permanently cross-linked poly(urea-urethane) elastomeric network was able to heal itself within two hours once it was cut by a razor blade.  It goes without saying that this ability will have widespread industrial applications once made available commercially.

The researchers are now going to conduct further scientific research in stronger materials which would be tougher than the softer composite formed by the current self healing polymer. Needless to say that the results of this science experiment will be closely monitored by industry specialists. Who knows it just might be possible to actually come up with an entire robotic machine with such self healing properties as demonstrated by the Terminator some day.