REAL LIFE NEWS: NEW GLASS THAT HEALS ITSELF COULD HELP MEND CRACKED PHONE SCREENS
by Hazed
A student at the University of Tokyo in Japan accidentally made a discovery that could save us all from the hassle of cracked and smashed phone screens. Researchers have developed his unexpected results to produce a new type of glass that can heal itself from cracks and breaks.
The glass is made from a low weight polymer called “polyether-thioureas” and it can heal breaks without the need for high heat to melt the material – it just needs to be pressed together by hand.
Professor Takuzo Aida, the lead researcher, says the new polymer glass is “highly robust mechanically yet can readily be repaired by compression at fractured surfaces.”
Graduate school student Yu Yanagisawa was preparing the polymer as a glue when he found that if the surface was cut the edges would adhere to each other, healing to form a strong sheet after being compressed by hand for just 30 seconds. Experimenting further, he found that after a couple of hours the healed material regained its original strength.
At first he didn’t believe his results so he repeated his experiments over and over again so he could confirm what he had seen. He said: “I hope the repairable glass becomes a new environment-friendly material that avoids the need to be thrown away if broken.”
Not to mention avoiding the cost of replacing broken phone screens!
