Middle-aged men who attempt skateboarding for the first time are likely to come away from that experience with lots of abrasions and cuts. But, other than cleansing the wounds, they will heal if left alone.
Imagine the engineering possibilities if materials such as steel and concrete had the same self-healing properties of human skin.
Recent research at Clemson University has found ways to give inanimate objects the same healing abilities of human skin. A team led by Marek Urban, who holds the J.E. Sirrine Endowed Chair in materials science and engineering at Clemson, sees applications for many things such as long-lasting nail polish, military vehicles that fix bullet holes, self-healing tires, self-healing prosthetics and self-healing construction materials.
The research has even advanced to materials used in construction projects. This means that the concrete and metal used in roads, bridges, and buildings would be self-healing — and would prevent corrosion.
The secret to the Clemson research is actually pretty sweet: sugar.
Urban says that when an interface breaks, such as a bearing in an artificial hip, the glucose additive allows the materials to stitch themselves back together. Urban and his team's discoveries allow for the melting of infused material into a desired shape or for lacing the material together to form a strong network.
According to Urban, sugar — usually called glucose by chemists — "provides sufficient chemistry at this broken interface to allow the materials to stitch together. It's a baby step in going toward more living synthetic materials."
The majority of Clemson's funding for this project comes from the United States military, with a small grant from the National Science Foundation. The U.S. military has a strong interest, since it spends $20 billion per year fighting corrosion throughout its branches — the equivalent of 3.5 percent of the country's gross national product.
Several industries have already contacted Urban, but the U.S. military has first call on the process and the goods it will protect. As you read this, the Department of Defense's Corrosion Prevention and Control Program is testing this technology by applying self-healing polyurethane additives on large hangar doors at the Corpus Christi Army Depot in Texas.
Richard Lampo, a materials engineer with the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center, discussed the importance of this research with the Greenville (S.C.) News.
"Corrosion of infrastructure and equipment costs the military millions of dollars each year," Lampo said. "Coatings are the first line of defense against corrosion, and a coating that repairs itself when damaged, thus maintaining a barrier to the effects of corrosion, could potentially equate to significant cost savings while maintaining a high level of mission readiness."
