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Self-Healing Plastic Skin
An anonymous reader writes "Scientists have developed a form of plastic skin that can heal itself when damaged. The material relies on an underlying network of vessels — similar to blood capillaries — that carry a healing agent to areas on the material's surface that sustain damage. Unlike previous self-healing systems that relied on capsules of agent buried in the polymer and which became depleted after one use, the new system can respond to damage at the same point many times over."
Plastic skin...
No big win.
A chiseled chin,
Flashy as Flynn:
Burma Shave
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
HAIL Joan Rivers!
... to living forever!
Honestly though, as cool as it sounds, I can't help but wonder what adverse side effects there might be for some individuals.
"if only i had known i would have been a locksmith." -albert einstein
Imagine how this could be applied to burn victims.
Or, on a more humerous note, Michael Jackson. Though I suppose there's no cure for wierdness.
This is a very good break through. With a material like this if it can be mass produced and make correctly we could see this in homes and cars as possible replacements for windows. Saying that if something broke a window it would just fix itself automatically. I assume the military will fine plenty of uses for this too. I noted that the main use they were talking about is related to space, which is great and could potentially saw millions on our various orbiters and probes where as if they are hit by debris in space they can repair themselves and save countless man hours and material in planning a mission to fix them.
Today's Tomorrow is Yesterday's Future! --- "Where Ever You Go, There You Are" -- Diablo 1
Well, if tanks could repair themselves - Now that would be cool. I thought auto-repair was limited to C&C Generals :-)
(write-line *coolsig*)
The problem with socialism is that they always run out of other people's money. - Margaret Thatcher
i welcome the self healing,plastic cyborgs overlords
The skin (largest body organ) I have is already 'self-healing'. That is what medicine is all about. Medicine never 'fixes' anything, it just attempts to promote favorable conditions.
Self-healing kids' toys! The world will never be the same again.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
HELL, Burt Reynolds!
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
S&M Real Doll
"Scientists noticed that whenever an airplane would crash, they'd search through the wreckage and the only thing that ever survives intact are these cute little baby dolls. So they built Starbug out of the same stuff."
Destroy the plastic skin before the T-1000 can come back from the future to grab it and the cybernetic arm and CPU and return to the future to ensure its existence.
Finally, my morning tormentor will be able to heal itself after its otherwise-fatal blow or toss.
Where the hell is my robot girlfriend?
When do we start production of the Model 101 Terminators?
has anybody told Michael Jackson?
..shudders.
I mean he's just got to be beating down their doors on this one....
lets face it, any new design of skin is probably better then what he has.
Pepsi Co. just released a report stating the full acquisition of this technology.
-Will P.
We can do that live action version of The Polar Express
...are enormous.
1) A layer of self-healing plastic inside a space suit to seal off punctures before the astronaut loses too much air.
2) Same thing on a larger scale for boats - just make the plastic sensitive to direct contact to water.
3) Same thing on an even larger scale for planes, especially jetliners.
4) Same thing on the largest scale for shuttles, space stations and true spacecraft.
5) Plastic layers inside the seams and seals of a car so that water-immersed vehicles can slow water flow into a car long enough to increase the accident victim's chances of survival without preventing them from escaping a sinking vehicle.
6) Battlefield plastic skin bandages to protect a wound from further damage, cover and clean it, maintain pressure on the injury and encourage clotting at the wound site.
I could go on for a while on this, these being just the accident-oriented uses...
"Courage is being afraid to do the Right Thing, and doing it anyway."
Save the plastic, save the world.
I bet NASA'll wish they'd put that stuff on Atlantis.
Finally they can make a Stretch man that will be able to repair itself! Never again will we have to worry about the gooey insides coming out. Now we just need to find a way to keep the insides from hardening.
On a more serious note, this could easily be used as a combat suit, think of it as a tight suit that repairs itself. If you get stabbed the suit first protects you from the blade and covers up the wound protecting you from blood loss, I can think up hundreds of practical applications for this outside of the realm of combat too. Pressure sensitive equipment can self-repair, as well as if this material is a good insulator then it might be applicable to wiring.
It can not survive high temperature. Service temperature of most of epoxies is 200C.
Don't you mean Columbia?
Of all major operating systems, UNIX is the only one originally meant for gaming.
Doesn't anybody remember that the first cyborgs had plastic/rubber skin? We could identify them very quickly. The T-1000s were the first to have living tissue over the robotic endoskeleton.
On step closer to Skynet.
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
If they could only get this to work in the low temperature of space, I think they'd have an instant contract with NASA.
IIRC, a science fiction writer once wrote about something similar. Asimov, I think. But the "healing" happened from a gel contained on the inside of the structure, not the outside. The combination of the two ideas could lead to much more hardened space structures.
The best way to predict the future is to create it. - Peter Drucker.
By using Grubb's catalyst, you would need nearly all of the worlds Ruthenium to do anything with these materials on scale. Jeff Moore has been working on things like this for a while, really neat work.
Where is my damn robot battle maid already?
Couple it with the fake blood, couple of variable-speed servos and you can have your very own android.
The eternal struggle of good vs. evil begins within one's self.
...with more information, pictures, and a little video. Oh! And a link to a PDF of the actual article.
http://www.mvac.uiuc.edu/network.html
"Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself." -Richard Feynman
If your "Plastic" skin is damaged, wouldn't it be easier to just switch to a different skin, like "Sky Blue" or "Metal"?
at the pdf figure 3 shows a VIRGIN fracture surface, so it gave a brilliant idea self-sealing - you know what -
That would be really cool if you could activate and deactivate this mode every other month...
eeeeeeee-haaaaaaaaaaa
I think Darkman would really have appreciated this
If they ever make this plastic regenerate its shape as well as structural integrity (*snicker*), I'll want to use one to coat my car with it. All those little dings and scratches - wouldn't it be wonderful if your car could heal itself and always look brand new? :)
Did you know that "FTW" ("for the win") is a direct translation of "Sieg Heil"?
Which is fine, mind you, because neither can the human under it deal with temperatures of over 200 Celcius.
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
dicyclopentadiene MSDS
This is a nifty idea, and all, but... I don't think that it's appropriate for terrestrial applications where there might be... air, and... fire involved in the damaging of the material.
The catalyst should help make the monomer cure/polymerize quickly but, by it's very nature (micro-vascular structure holding monomer in reserve), there's a fair amount of very flammable material close to the surface of the material. Also, with a melting point of ~32.5 C (and a flash point of 32; you get some sublimation before you get flow), you're not going to get a lot of flow in e.g. the cold environment of space.
I would call this a step, rather than a solution. Of course, finding a good monomer for an application like this, which is not reactive could be like trying to find a bucket of dry water.
just another piece of equipment that our troops in the field won't ever have. are huzzahs still in order?
oh marmalade.
What repairs the capillary vessels when they are damaged?
Submit the following tags:
/. account would be one that fails to omit the branch of science which provided the answers
Bionics
Biomimetics
In case you're curious...
Bionics - Application of biological principles to the study and design of engineering systems, especially electronic.
Biomimetics - The development of synthetic systems based on information from biological systems
Figures that the article that would get me to finally break down and get a
(It's also the one I'm getting my degree in, so I'm biased).
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Wow, now I can 'spank the monkeys' without worrying about friction burns on my wee-willy-winky.
I'm suprised noone brought up self healing condoms or cervical caps...
"Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
"Sarah Connor?"
DVD's Fibre wires Monitor Screens any surface where cracks and grooves are unwanted :)