Self-healing glass discovered by accident

[Brink]

New type of polymer glass that can mend itself when pressed together is in development by University of Tokyo after a student discovered it.

Japanese researchers say they have developed a new type of glass that can heal itself from cracks and breaks.

Glass made from a low weight polymer called “polyether-thioureas” can heal breaks when pressed together by hand without the need for high heat to melt the material.

The research, published in Science, by researchers led by Professor Takuzo Aida from the University of Tokyo, promises healable glass that could potentially be used in phone screens and other fragile devices, which they say are an important challenge for sustainable societies.

While self-healing rubber and plastics have already been developed, the researchers said that the new material was the first hard substance of its kind that can be healed at room temperature.

“High mechanical robustness and healing ability tend to be mutually exclusive,” wrote the researchers, saying that while some hard but healable materials have been developed, “in most cases, heating to high temperatures, on the order of 120°C or more, to reorganise their cross-linked networks, is necessary for the fractured portions to repair.”

The new polymer glass is “highly robust mechanically yet can readily be repaired by compression at fractured surfaces”.

The properties of the polyether-thioureas glass were discovered by accident by graduate school student Yu Yanagisawa, who was preparing the material as a glue. Yanagisawa found that when the surface of the polymer was cut the edges would adhere to each other, healing to form a strong sheet after being manually compressed for 30 seconds at 21°C...

Read more: End of the smashed phone screen? Self-healing glass discovered by accident | Technology | The Guardian

 

[chefduane]

Is that like transparent aluminum?

 

[RoWin7]

Fascinating! But I don't see why glass must be used on smart-phones. My flip-phone has a plastic screen that has survived dozens of drops on the floor without a scratch.