No more broken phone screens: Bangladeshi researchers develop self-healing materials

A team of researchers from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Kolkata and the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur have developed a new class of materials that they claim can repair themselves in the event of a fracture within milliseconds.

The research also appeared in the coveted scientific journal published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Scientists claim that highly crystalline materials can repair themselves and recombine within seconds after being broken into fragments, and can repair themselves so precisely that they are indistinguishable from undisturbed materials.

Scientists hope that this discovery can trigger a revolution in the field of digital technology, such as broken screens in gadgets and other new-age technologies.

Researchers say that the materials used in the technology are subject to mechanical shocks, which often makes the equipment irreparable. This idea prompted the team to study self-healing materials in order to increase the service life of the equipment without external intervention.

“Over the past decade or so, wound healing in living tissues and bones has stimulated the production of many synthetic self-healing polymers, gels, and other soft materials. However, replicating this repair in crystalline materials remains a challenge. , Because they are rigid and will prevent the material from spreading in the damaged part due to the dense and regular arrangement of the molecules,” the team wrote in a statement.

Professor C Malla Reddy is the famous 2015 Swarnajayanti scholarship recipient in the Department of Science and Technology. He and his IISER team in Kolkata have developed a new type of solid material negative electrode. The polar arrangement in the crystalline state produces opposite potentials on the fracture surface. . These charges allow immediate reorganization and self-repair of broken crystals without any external help. Scientists say that during the repair process, the broken debris travels in a bee-like wing-like motion, and its acceleration is comparable to that of a diesel car.

Another team from IISER led by Professor Nirmalya Ghosh used a custom-designed state-of-the-art polarization microscopy system to detect and quantify the structural order of piezoelectric self-healing organic crystals with nano-scale spatial resolution.

Scientists said that these crystals belong to a class of general-purpose piezoelectric materials that can generate electricity under pressure, thereby curing and maintaining their crystal properties, which are important for many applications.

Piezoelectric crystals have a wide range of applications in precision engineering, including sensors, mechanical sensors, energy harvesters, biomedical implants, etc. The piezoelectric research conducted by Professor Bhanu Bhusan Khatua and his student, Dr. Suanta Karan from IIT Kharagpur, evaluated the potential of these self-healing crystals for power generation and equipment durability.

“Since the past ten years, a lot of research has been conducted to find the self-healing properties in the soft and amorphous non-natural polymers, gels and composites in nature. Various strategies have been adopted to simulate nature, but almost All strategies require at least one kind of what Professor Reddy said, such as heat, light, solvents or chemical healing agents. Normally all materials will fail when the damaged part falls apart.

Surojit Bhunia of IISER further said: “We drew inspiration from nature and explored the inherent piezoelectricity of crystal materials in order to find self-healing properties. As we all know, piezoelectricity activates mechanically damaged natural biological materials (such as bones and bones). Collagen. So our findings in organic materials may provide further insights into complex natural materials.”

The other corresponding author of the paper, Professor Nirmalya Ghosh, who is also the recipient of the SPIE GG Stokes Optical Polarization Award, said: “We used a custom-designed state-of-the-art polarization microscope system at IISER Kolkata to detect with nano-level spatial resolution. And quantify the structural sequence of piezoelectric organic crystals. This unique experimental system combined with a suitable polarization analysis model, through the perception of nano-scale structural changes, realizes the quantitative evaluation and understanding of the self-healing behavior of the crystal. Anisotropy .”

Professor Ghosh added that new optical materials that exhibit strong polarization and nonlinear optical responses and have extraordinary self-healing capabilities may open the door to a new generation of integrated and miniaturized photonic devices for optical sensing, high-precision metrology, and optical nanotechnology. Detection and so on.

Dr. Suanta Karan from IIT Kharagpur said that piezoelectric materials can withstand long mechanical loading-unloading cycles in many applications, such as transducers, energy harvesters, mechanical sensors, actuators, etc., which is why its fracture healing Capacity is essential to improve durability.

The team of scientists consists of Professor Reddy, Professor Ghosh, Professor Khatua and the team, including Surojit Bhunia, Shubham Chandel, Summerta Kumar Karan, Somnath Dey, Akash Tiwari, Susobhan Das, Nishkarsh Kumar, Rituparno Chowdhury, Saikat Mondal, Ishita Ghosh. Dar. The materials in the work have been patented by IISER Kolkata.