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Scientists Develop Magnetic Ink That Can Self-Heal Gadgets When They Break (theverge.com)
Scientists from the University of California discuss how they plan on fixing broken devices with magnetic ink particles. "Just like the human skin is stretchable and self-healing, we wanted to impart a self-healing ability to printed electronics," Amay Bandodkar, a member of the research team, tells The New York Times. The Verge reports: Sensors printed with this ink would magnetically attach to each other when a rip or tear occurs, automatically fixing a device at the first sign of disintegration. The published study focused on creating sensors that can be incorporated with fabrics. The result is smart clothing that can repair cuts up to three millimeters long in 50 milliseconds. In a sample video, a sensor used to light a small bulb gets snipped in half. In seconds, magnets in the sensor pull the two sides back together and slowly light the bulb again. To create the self-healing effect, the team used pulverized neodymium magnets typically found in refrigerators and hard drives and combined them into the ink. This helps the researchers avoid the traditional process of adding chemicals and heat, which could take hours to complete. Bandodkar estimates that $10 worth of ink can create "hundreds of small devices" that can help reduce waste, since you won't need to throw these wearables and gadgets out when they're broken. "Within a few seconds it's going to self-heal, and you can use it over and over again."
that recovers from "accidents" would be way, way cool.
Sensors printed with this ink would magnetically attack to each other when a rip or tear occurs, automatically fixing a device at the first sign of disintegration.
Someone get the the editors (slashdot and linked article) some of that self-healing ink so that I do not have to put up with these typos ("broken words") any more.
Why do they call it "rare earth" when it comes to these magnets?
And why are we going to start using the rare earth as a fashion accessory? Is the clothing going to be recycled? Or are we going to lost it to landfills at some point in time?
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
Magnetic "ink"? So is it liquid at room temperature? Does it evaporate? It was obviously extremely weak in the video. Does it conduct after it is dry? Soo meny questions.
I make plenty of mistakes when writing, but the submission should say University of California, San Diego, not University of California.
What are the consequences of having super-strong magnetic dust all over the place? Can it get into your lungs? Into your eyes? What if a baby swallows some? Would walking next to a steel car cause perforations through the body?
Not sure I like the idea of more nano particles flying around.
passetspike!
If HP makes the ink cartridges, they will be more expensive than what they repair.
Table-ized A.I.
Instead of showing a device self-healing, it shows a device which -- after some coaxing from the tester's fingertips -- moves close enough to maintain a tenuous (but still easily broken) electrical contact, but which is still very obviously damaged even with the naked eye, and which is attached to fabric which there was not even any attempt to repair.
Without a huge amount more development, this won't result in one single iota less waste because it won't actually *fix* anything, despite the hype to the contrary. It'll perform just fractionally better than just having regular fabric with a circuit attached, given the tiny limitation on maximum tear size.
of course, x number of heals implied, repair/replaceable would be
n/t
It may be a bit chunky until I can get smaller parts, but at least it will heal and self-repair while it takes out those pesky meddling kids!
In far LARGER shapes as a danger to children and their intestines? Now imagine if you have a nice support of neodymium dust you can contaminate food with or flow into one's nose/lungs. This is right up there with carbon nanotube waste under potentially hazardous materials that (based on current trends) should not be used that way.
Subject says it all.
Using the word "repair" is bullshit at best. It doesn't fix anything. The connection is still severed, it simply and ever-so-lightly reconnects because of a combination of luck and the weak magnetic attraction present. This is practically a shitty, ill-imagined magsafe connector except much, much weaker and probably dangerous. If one of my power cables gets severed, I want to know about it so I can fix it properly, re-establish integrity to the cable so that a light breeze doesn't have it dropping in and out every three seconds, and not have the actual wires exposed. I don't want to have it re-attach with only the slightest of magnetic attraction, only connected by pure luck that whatever severed the connection in the first place just so happened to leave the two ends within three millimeters of each other.
I'm sure I don't have any of those in my fridge. Must be out.
Too bad the wires usually break at the connector or soldering points. Will this fix a busted capacitor? What we have here is solution to a non existing problem. "Self healing" my ass.
"Scientists Develop Magnetic Ink That Can Self-Heal Gadgets When They Break"
No, Slashdot. Scientists discover. Engineers create. The Verge, like the rest of today's media, uses the word "scientist" in the headline to give the impression that something is wonderful, true, and worth reading about. You followed right along. The body of the article even says it was done by an "engineering lab team".
Let me tell you what wasn't discovered by these "scientists". They didn't discover an ink that has the same electrical conductivity and reactance as a metal wire or a silicon path. When you build a wire out of magnets, you drop the ability of it to carry radio-frequency signals. In the 1940s, that might have been okay. Today we have electronics that operate at low power in the gigahertz range. A path built from this ink ("healed" or not) is effectively an open circuit to today's UHF+ signals.
This is a "neato" idea. Why don't we make electronics that withstand the stresses that consumers put on them, and why don't we put this kind of story before someone with an engineering background before posting it for the ad revenue? Golly, wouldn't that be nice...
Is this like the structure gel in SOMA?