the Naval Research Office and Melik Demirel of Pennsylvania State University.
Dressick, Demirel and their team have developed an autonomous self-repairing mechanism for tears in textiles such as cotton, linen and wool, as published in the journal ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces.
Self-repairing material has proven pretty elusive. They either require a complicated set-up, such as the self-repairing plastic that feeds holes with a vascular system, or they take while, such as the self-healing e-skin that takes 30 minutes to knit.
Another approach has involved coating a surface with polyelectrodes that work quickly to repair cracks, but again, this has limitations, such as becoming brittle under dry conditions.
Dressick, Demirel and their team turned to nature for a solution. More specifically, the proteins found in the rings of teeth in squid suckers. These proteins are very similar to the proteins found in spider silk -- both strong and elastic in a wide range of conditions. The team developed a coating based on these proteins, and tested it on fabric.
When dipped in water, the two cut pieces of the fabric bonded together in less than a minute. This coating could be used for quick repairs, to help extend the life of everyday materials and, the researchers said, in military applications such as a barrier from chemicals.
0 comments:
Post a Comment