Future of Engineering

Self-healing rubber that binds back together after being snapped or punctured could pave the way for self-healing shoes, fan belts, washing-up gloves and more. When the material melds together again, it has just as much strength as it had before, says Leibler, a polymer chemist at the Industrial Physics and Chemistry Higher Educational Institution (ESPCI) in Paris, France.

The material could eventually make it a cinch to repair holes in shoes, snapped fan belts and punctured kitchen gloves. It might also make strange new products possible – for instance bags that can be ripped open and then resealed. Regular rubber gets its strength from the fact that long chains of polymer molecules are coupled, or "crosslinked," in three different ways: through covalent, ionic, and hydrogen bonding between molecules. The solution devised by Leibler and colleagues is to simply get rid of the ionic and covalent bonds. They developed a transparent, yellowy-brown rubber in which crosslinking is performed only by hydrogen bonds. The new substance self-heals when its surfaces are brought together under gentle compression, at room temperature.The material is synthesised from fatty acids and urea, which are cheap and renewable

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Labels: Material-Sciences, Textile-Engineering