Look out, super glue and paint thinner. Thanks to new
dynamic materials developed at the University of Illinois, removable paint and
self-healing plastics soon could be household products.
U. of I. materials science and engineering professor Jianjun
Cheng, graduate student Hanze Ying and postdoctoral researcher Yanfeng Zhang
published their work in the journal Nature Communications.
“The key advantage of using this material is that it’s
catalyst-free and low-temperature, and can be healed multiple times,” Cheng
said. “These are very nice materials for internal cracks. This can heal the
crack before it causes major problems by propagating.”