Indian scientists' breakthrough on self-healing material may lead to exciting future

They have found the world’s hardest known self-healing material whose unique properties can lead to the development of such auto-repair screens

Would it not be really cool if mobile phone or television screens healed themselves automatically within seconds of getting cracked saving you the repair costs? Well, a breakthrough by Indian scientists may lead to such an exciting possibility in the future.

Researchers from the Indian Institute of Science, Education and Research, Kolkata and the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur have found the world’s hardest known self-healing material whose unique properties can lead to the development of such auto-repair screens.

"The material that we found can’t be used directly for mobile phone or TV screens. But our work on understanding the science of developing such materials may lead to futuristic technologies such as self-healing screens,” C Malla Reddy, the team’s lead investigator from IISER told DH.

The hard organic crystal they described in a research paper in Science is no less exciting though when it comes to precision engineering, drones, and even space probes. It's a piezoelectric material, which converts mechanical energy like pressure into electrical energy and vice versa.

If a tiny part of a space probe gets damaged on landing on the surface of the Moon or Mars, such hard self-healing materials can repair themselves instantly. It can be used to make electronic chips in opto-electronic components. In microrobotics, industrial-scale precision engineering may be carried out using such a material.

For more than three decades, scientists from all over the world have been researching self-healing substances because of their wonder properties. The problem is all of them are soft materials with limited application potential.

"The material (an organic crystal called bipyrazole) that we found is the first hard material with self-healing properties. It is 10 times harder,” said Reddy.

The IISER-IIT team conducted sophisticated laboratory experiments to see how the material cracks under pressure from a tiny needle and self-heals the moment the needle is withdrawn. They also examined the material’s crystalline structure and described why it behaved in such a unique way.

"The self-healing organic crystal can also be used as process sensors in industrial machining,” said Nirmalya Ghosh, IISER scientist, and a team member. “We are keen to work with an industrial partner,” added Reddy. Because of the material’s industrial potential, the team has already filed for patent protection.

The self-repair technology can be transferred to other materials like semi-crystalline films which are more amenable to technology transfer, the team reported.