Scott White wants to make obsolescence obsolete. After nearly a decade of research, the associate professor of aeronautical and astronautical engineering, along with fellow scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has developed a plastic that heals itself like skin (translation: self-repairing PDAs, cell phones, garden hoses). When the polymer splinters, invisible capillary-like microcapsules filled with a liquid agent called dicyclopentadiene flow into the crack. As the liquid comes in contact with the powdery catalyst (black spots) embed-ded throughout, the two chemicals coagulate and harden, as in the center-fractured test polymer shown here. The whole process is triggered by a fracture no more than 100 microns in length. Once repaired, the plastic regains up to 75 percent of its original strength. The regenerative material will hit the market in two to three years, showing up first in the sport-ing goods and automotive industries, then the aerospace, microelectronics, and medical sectors, where every component is mission critical. The next challenges are to extend the technique to substances such as ceramic and glass, and to develop a scheme that mimics the body even more closely. "Presently, once the capillaries in one area have broken open, the whole thing is over, and it's like any other plastic," says White. "So we're experimenting with a circulatory system that will pump in replacement fluid automatically."
ELECTRIC WORD
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