EVER wished you could turn back time to reverse the damage on something you've broken? A new material that can mend itself after being cracked goes a long way to making that dream possible.
The quest for a material that can "heal" itself has occupied scientists for some time. For instance, engineers at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign have made a polymer that can plug cracks as they form (
In a new approach, Fred Wudl, based at the Exotic Materials Institute at the University of California in Los Angeles, has come up with a material that can mend itself as many times as it's broken.
It works by adapting the Diels-Alder reaction between two organic moleculesa furan ...
To continue reading this article, subscribe to receive access to all of newscientist.com, including 20 years of archive content.